Re: F8/F9 Multiboot question

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Daniel B. Thurman wrote:

Daniel B. Thurman wrote:
>
> Anne Wilson wrote:
> >
> > On Monday 04 August 2008 18:27:56 Daniel B. Thurman wrote:
> > >
> > > Never mind!  I got myself out of the problem!
> > >
> > How?  Someone will see this in the archives and will want to know the
> > answer :-)
> >
> > Anne
> >
> ok, fair enough!
>
> I followed Tim's instructions, but did this with Fedora-Live CD:
>
> 1) Boot in Fedora-Live
>     + Open Shell Terminal Window
>
> 2) fdisk -l
>
>     *** note!!! ***
> + Disk drives are DIFFERENT, not necessarily the same as when booted
> in Fedora!
>
>         For example, when you boot in Fedora (the real thing), the 3
> disks for
>         me it was:
>         /dev/sda - PATA
>         /dev/sdb - SATA-1
>         /dev/sdc - SATA-2
>
>         In Fedora-Live, is displayed as:
>         /dev/sdb (PATA)
>         /dev/sdc (SATA-2)
>         /dev/sdd (SATA-1)
>
> 3) grub
>
>     a) find /grub/stage1
>         In my case, it showed:
>         (hd1,0) - SATA-2 - boot-sys - the next 2 partitions are the NEW
> drive I am trying to construct per Tim's instructions
>         (hd1,1) - SATA-2 - boot-f8
>         (hd1,2) - SATA-2 - boot-f9
>         (hd2,2) - SATA-1 - boot-f8 - this is my original "untouched"
> drive where I started originally. This was the grub I "popped"
>
>     b) setup (hd2)
>         (grub has installed the MBR and fixed my original drive problem
> - output was similar to Tim's instructions)
>
>     c) quit
> d) Reboot - I was able to get my original drive back up and running!)
>
> The new drive I am still working on is:
>
>     SATA-2 (750GB)
>     ======================
>     *** Note *** Actual sizes are not exact!
>     /dev/sdc1 - boot-sys (100MB)
>     /dev/sdc2 - f8-boot   (100MB)
>     /dev/sdc3 - f9-boot   (100MB)
>     /dev/sdc4 - Extended Partition
>     /dev/sdc5 - f8-root    (175GB)
>     /dev/sdc6 - f9-root    (175GB)
>     /dev/sdc7 - f-App1    (351GB)
>     /dev/sdc8 - swap        (~5GB) (I have 2GB RAM)
>
I have found in 3b, above: "setup (hd2)", it is the same as if
you used "setup (hd2.0)".  I have found that once you have the
partitions for 3 boot directories, boot-sys, boot-f8, and boot-f9,
you can either copy over the existing f8 and/or f9 boot partitions
into the new respective locations (as I did),  and as for the boot-sys
partition, I simply copied over my f8 boot partition, and stripped
everything above grub directory.

While you are at it, you can also copy over your root-f8 and root-f9
files into the root-f8 and root-f9 partitions as well.  How you get
these copied over successfully has mixed results (cp -a, tar, GParted),
but if you rather use a true clone program, try CloneZilla

As a tool for tracking/verification, in each of the 3 partitions,
I created bread-crumbs as empty files: BOOT-SYS, BOOT-F8, BOOT-F9 in
each of the respective directories so that I can ensure that these
directories are easily identifiable and not mistaken for something else
along the way.

At this point, I have also found that I needed to run grub setup on each
of these 3 boot partitions; similar to above instructions:

Boot up the system, if you cannot get into a grub-display at boot-time,
you may need to boot in Fedora-Live or Rescue CD.  If you can get a
grub splash-screen at bootup (w/o CDs), the simply hit 'c' for command.

# grub
grub> find /grub/stage1  (note where your 3 partitions are)
      (hd0.0)       <-- boot-sys  (/dev/sdb1)
      (hd0,1)       <-- boot-f8   (/dev/sdb2)
      (hd0,2)       <-- boot-f9   (/dev/sdb3)
      (hd1,2)

NOTE! Grub saw things differently again. I am assuming that the appearance
of this new order, may have to do with the device.maps that I had before
from the original f8 installation, and for whatever the reasons, it pays to
make SURE you are "in sync" with what grub actually reports.

Ok, with a review, I know why Grub was different in it's order of seeing
things.  The above find list was due to the fact that I was booting directly
onto the SATA-2 drive - a change in the BIOs as to which boot drive is
the primary boot drive!  Had I booted on my original drive (SATA-1)
the outcome is different as follows:

grub> find /grub/stage1
     (hd1,0)
     (hd1,1)
     (hd1,2)
     (hd2,2)

Remember about leaving breadcrumbs earlier?  If you are not sure which
drive is which, you can try searching in this way:

grub> find BOOT-SYS
      (hd0.0)
grub> find BOOT-F8
      (hd0.1)
grub> find BOOT-F9
      (hd0.2)

Note: Now we can go ahead to create grub-bootable partitions
      for each of the 3 partitions we created earlier:

grub> root  (hd0,0)
grub> setup (hd0,0)
<results are shown here>

grub> root  (hd0,1)
grub> setup (hd0,1)
<results are shown here>

grub> root  (hd0,2)
grub> setup (hd0,2)
<results are shown here>

grub> quit


Now it is time to edit the grub.conf files for each of the 3 partitions.

=========[boot.sys]============
# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE:  You have a /boot partition.  This means that
#          all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
#          root (hd0,0)
#          kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sda5
#          initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
#hiddenmenu
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
default=saved
timeout=5

title Fedora 8 SDB1
    rootnoverify (hd0,1)
    chainloader +1
    savedefault
title Fedora 9
    rootnoverify (hd0,2)
    chainloader +1
    savedefault
title Windows 2000
    rootnoverify (hd1,0)
    chainloader +1
    savedefault
title Windows XP
    rootnoverify (hd1,1)
    chainloader +1
    savedefault
title Windows Vista
    rootnoverify (hd1,2)
    chainloader +1
    savedefault

Note: You see the "SDB1" tag?  I wanted to make sure
that I am actually using the correct boot partition and not
from some other boot partition from somewhere else.  I
ran into this trap before - and the reasons has to do with
the way grub finds files (in a different order), mis-configured
boot-grub files, and/or /etc/fstab files and it becomes much
easier to track and identify things by leaving bread-crumbs
to aide in debugging, IMO.

I also found that I cannot boot the Windows drives- this is due to
the fact that the SATA-2 drive does NOT has windows partitions
in them.  So, it looks like that each drives's boot partitions chain-
loaders cannot traverse drives UNLESS of course you hardwire these
instead of trying to keep things generic in the boot-sys partition?

So I plan to place the windows (chain-loaders) text into the boot-wins
partition's grub.conf file.  I planned to make the original drive into a
Windows only drive - and will remove the original f8 copy out of the
SATA-1 partitions.  I think this will work and will report back if this
is not so - otherwise if I don't report back - it works as planned.


=========[boot.f8]============
# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes
# to this file
# NOTICE:  You have a /boot partition.  This means that
#          all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
#          root (hd0,0)
#          kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sda5
#          initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
#hiddenmenu
splashimage=(hd0,1)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
default=saved
timeout=5

title Fedora 8 (2.6.25.11-60.fc8) SDB2
    root (hd0,1)
    kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.25.11-60.fc8 ro root=LABEL=root-f8 rhgb quiet
    initrd /initrd-2.6.25.11-60.fc8.img
    savedefault

=========[boot.f9]============
# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes
# to this file
# NOTICE:  You have a /boot partition.  This means that
#          all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
#          root (hd0,0)
#          kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sda6
#          initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
default=saved
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,2)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
#hiddenmenu
title Fedora 9 (2.6.25.11-97.fc9.i686) SDB3
    root (hd0,2)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.25.11-97.fc9.i686 ro root=LABEL=root-f9 rhgb quiet
    initrd /initrd-2.6.25.11-97.fc9.i686.img
    savedefault

=========[root.f8]============
# Drive: /dev/sdb5
# --------------
LABEL=root-f8 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
LABEL=boot-f8 /boot                   ext3    defaults        1 2
LABEL=f-swap  swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
tmpfs         /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
devpts        /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
sysfs         /sys                    sysfs   defaults        0 0
proc          /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0

=========[root.f9]============
# Drive: /dev/sdb6
# --------------
LABEL=root-f9 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
LABEL=boot-f9 /boot                   ext3    defaults        1 2
LABEL=f-swap  swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
tmpfs         /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
devpts        /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
sysfs         /sys                    sysfs   defaults        0 0
proc          /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0

Now you can test this all out:

1) Make sure when you get the first boot-splash screen,
   it looks like what you expected but also pay attemtion
   to the bread-crumbs - make sure they are what they are
   supposed to be.

2) If you proceed to a fedora-8 or fedora-9 OS, again check
   the bread-crumbs!

3) Finally, make sure that you pay attention to the very beginning
   of the boot process; particularly where drives are mounted, verified,
   and checked - make sure they are the correct ones!  It took me a long
   time to figure out why I was consistently getting my old f8 up and
   running instead of the NEW partitions as I was expecting and it turned
   turned out to be the fact that the new partitions were CLONES of the
original drives much so that the /boot and /etc/fstabs were using UUIDs and "hard links" to the old F8 system and required a complete re-labeling
   and rewrite of these files in order to make each of them unique and in
   the proper partition/drive locations! Doh!

Well, I hope I have not missed or left anything else out, but if I did
please add it to this thread!  I hope this somewhat fragmented thread
helps someone else out!

Cheers!
Dan

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