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extendedping
30th November 2006, 07:23 PM
Here is my situation. I have a laptop that had windows and fedora in a dual boot. Since I have not yet gotten my wireless to work in fedora I shrunk my window partition and put ubuntu on as well thinking (foolishly) that ubuntu could now boot fedora and xp. But it does not see fedora...is there any way to do this? will fedora see ubuntu and let me boot that and xp through grub if I reinstall fedora? or will doing that just make things worse...thanks in advance for your insights...

JN4OldSchool
30th November 2006, 07:30 PM
just get into the fedora's /boot/grub/menu.lst and copy the title entry for the latest kernel. (depending on how you do this you may have to physically write this info down. I like using a live MEPIS CD to do this kind of work all on one desktop.) Then go to the Ubvuntu grub menu.lst and paste this title in. I am assuming here that Ubuntu uses Grub and not Lilo. I believe they do. If Ubuntu does happen to be Lilo then just reinstall the FC grub (you dont need to do the full install) and direct it to the XP and Buntu partitions.

Dan
30th November 2006, 07:36 PM
Not sure this is what you want, but I have a dual boot laptop that requires a PCMCIA card wireless solution, and I've been too lazy to beat my brains into a pulp trying to make ndiswrapper work in FC5. It's been a whole lot easier to just carry the Xubuntu liveCD and stab it in when my travels require wireless. Fast and dirty, I know... but it works! The LiveCD / 1 Gb Jump drive has been a wicked combination! :)

Dan

extendedping
2nd December 2006, 12:32 AM
thanks guys (or gals) as I see my windows is almost out I plan to...

1) erase fedora using qtparted from withing knopix.
2) expand windows 10 gigs from qtparted
3) reinstall fedora 6 with a 20 gig partition

My hope is that fedora will "see" both ununtu and xp...wish me luck...boy do I need it...:).

JN4OldSchool
2nd December 2006, 04:24 AM
You will probably have to manually put Ubuntu into the FC grub while you install in anaconda. I havent tried FC6, but FC5 didnt like other Linux distros. It should however see windows with no problem. Just make sure you know which partition ubuntu is on. Should all be good, even if you have to pick up ubuntu after first boot of FC it aint no thang.

extendedping
2nd December 2006, 05:23 AM
thanks, here is where I am failing..I reinstalled ubuntu and during that process (running qtparted) I erased and (and reinstalled) ubuntu and simply erased my fedora 6. I resized windows up 10 gigs where fedora had been and then when completing my ubuntu installition it looked good. both windows and ubuntu were found by the ubuntu grub loader...here is where I get lost. I left 21 gigs for the reinstall of fedora (hoping fedora when installed would see both window and ubuntu). I go throught the fedora6 install process till it presents me with the 4 options..
1) erase all (no good)
2) erase all linux partitions (also no good cause of ubuntu)
3) use existing free space (looked good but gave and error) -- "could not allocate requested partitions: partitioning failed: could not allocate partitions as primary partitions. not enough space left to create partition for /boot".
I don't know what that means as I left 21 gigs free
4) custome layout (also didn't work). with this option I see...
dev/sda
dev/sda1 ntfs (my main xp) 71 gigs
dev/sda2 vfat (my xp recovery partition) 9 gigs
dev/sda3 ntfs (err don't know that it is for) 1 gig

dev/sda4 extended (for my ubuntu?) 9 gigs
dev/sda5 ext3 (ubuntu minus swap?) almost 9 gigs
dev/sda6 swap (ubuntu swap?) 259 megs
free "free space" (free space right? whats the catch?) 21 gigs

so why is it is confirming that 1 have free space of 21 gigs did it not let me use option #3 (use free space on selected drives) for the install. and why do I also fail with option 4 custom install?

when I hightlight free space 21 gigs and go to edit --- file system type / and ask for 20 gigs of ext3 it says "not enough space"? it saysthe same thing when I go to edit ---file system type and ask for a 500 meg swap.
I thought maybe I was supposed to select new after highlighting the free space but after doing so, putting in /, swap, or physical volume all give the same not enough space message that I got under edit. and speaking of edit...when I select edit --- file system type ---physical volume--- the fedora install just crashes (yea thats pretty annoying) and I have to start again...

so what am I doing wrong here? Do I need partition magic or something? I mean the fedora install sees 21 gigs free but I am unable to do anything at all with it? help a newbie out .... sorry for the length here but I am trying to be as accurate as possible...

Vector
2nd December 2006, 06:58 AM
My proposal is this:
1) Install windows on the first parition if you use it the most.
2) Install Fedora COMPLETELY on the second partition (NOT an extended partition)
3) Install 1GB swap on the third partition.
4) Install Ubuntu COMPLETELY on the fourth partition (NOT an extended partition)

The reason that you're putting the swap between fedora and ubuntu is so that they both share it EFFICIENTLY, meaning that the harddrive's head doesn't have to move any further to read/write to swap when on fedora, than it does when on ubuntu ;)

I've never triple booted (i want to BADLY so i can learn freebsd/solaris), but this should work.

Vector
2nd December 2006, 07:18 AM
Also the GUI ndiswrapper for Ubuntu does not edit all the files that it needs to edit for the drivers and ndis to get loaded, so you must do that yourself, which i cover in the tutorial that i gave you the link to above.

extendedping
2nd December 2006, 07:59 AM
alex-grim I will look at this tomorrow but I must say thanks you are really going all out here with this...its appreciated.

extendedping
4th December 2006, 02:32 AM
ok thanks all I got it going...had to install windows first leaving the partition larger then I wanted, then fed6 and then ubuntu. when installing ubuntu it gave the option to resize the windows partition and install it there so I reduced xp by 10 gigs and installed there. then after starting ubuntu it sees itself and xp but not fed6. So after taking the advice here I copied the info in the menu.lst that I had previously written down from the fedora and copied it into the menu.lst from ubuntu. upon rebooting ubuntu I can now see all three os's. thanks for the help and now I must do the impossible (at least for me) and get my intel 3945 wireless working and I will be ready to really start learning linux (why have it on a laptop if you can't use wireless right?). Anyway this is for another thread and thanks for the advice...

JN4OldSchool
4th December 2006, 03:17 AM
Now, just be aware that whenever you update the kernel in FC you will most likly have to manually put that title into the ubuntu grub. The ubuntu grub will be updated automatically with an ubuntu kernel change. You might want to look into getting a live linux CD to do this kind of work The 30MB Gparted cd is great but you have to manually mount the partitions through the CLI. I use an older simply MEPIS because it comes configured with desktop icons for all partitions. It is a simple click, copy and paste operation to do this.

extendedping
4th December 2006, 03:26 AM
ah good to know that...is there any way if I simply copy the ubuntu stuff to the menu.lst in fedora that I can get the fedora grub to come up instead of the ubuntu? cause I just have ubuntu for the wireless which I can't (3945 adapter) get woking on my laptop with fedora...if I can ever get that I will not even need ubuntu...so any way to copy the ubuntu stuff to fedora's menu.lst and then force the fedora grub to take priority over the ubuntu installed grub? thanks...

walden_pond
4th December 2006, 03:44 AM
are the partitions for the second and third OS installed on Extended partitions or logical partitions?

Alex-Grim advised to NOT have them as extended partitions. What did you use?

I am exploring a similar topic at: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?p=696796#post696796

extendedping
4th December 2006, 03:48 AM
I will check that out tomorrow...

extendedping
4th December 2006, 03:51 AM
if this makes sense to you...than YOU TELL ME :)
from fed6 fdisk/sda using the p option...

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 8658 69545353+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 13240 14462 9823747+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda3 14463 14593 1052257+ d7 Unknown
/dev/sda4 8659 13239 36796882+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 9307 9319 104391 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 9320 13239 31487368+ 8e Linux LVM
/dev/sda7 * 8659 9275 4955989+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 9276 9306 248976 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Partition table entries are not in disk order

JN4OldSchool
4th December 2006, 02:46 PM
It appears your ubuntu is on extended partitions and FC is on LVM. Which is all cool, as long as it all works. As far as the grub thing, you can always install the FC grub over the ubuntu grub but I wouldnt bother. You only update the kernel every once in a while (month and a half up to 3 months) so it isnt much work to just place the entry into the ubuntu grub by hand. Even without the live CD, just go into the FC menu.lst after updating the kernel. On a piece of paper write down the new entry (I believe all you actually have to change is the kernel number) then boot up Ubuntu and just edit that menu.lst under sudo. Believe me, if everything is working dont mess with it. Learn what you can, try to get the wireless working in FC6 so you can just dump ubuntu and maybe by FC7 you may want to dump Windows too. At any rate, by then you will have bounced around this forum and picked up a lot of tricks, such as a seperate /home partition. Just store this knowledge, dont keep reformating. New FC versions come out so fast anyway just enjoy what you have till FC7.

Vector
4th December 2006, 05:03 PM
Also, remember if you get stuck on the wireless to follow that link i (think i) left for you above. I show how to configure your wireless on Ubuntu and Fedora both, so that may be of use for you, especially since they're video taped, as well as text tutorials.

If i didn't leave that link, then just click one of the top two in my signature, Then look on the left for your distro, then look for wireless.

Good luck, it gets rough...