Add FC6 IDE to Win SCSI Setup?

[Trapper]

I have a box with Win NT 4.0 on a SCSI drive. I want to add an IDE drive and install FC6 on it. I suspect I am going to have some difficulties with this. Where do I install grub to, etc. and be able to dual boot?

[stoat]

Hello Trapper,
Where do I install grub to, etc. and be able to dual boot?You have the usual two basic options: 1) install GRUB in the master boot record of the first BIOS hard drive and boot both systems from the GRUB menu, or 2) install GRUB in the first sector of the Fedora boot partition and configure the NT boot loader to boot both systems.

Both work well. I recommend the latter.

The concept in a nutshell is this (some details farther below)...
Install Fedora with GRUB installed in the first sector of the Fedora boot partition.
Create a binary file in the NT root directory that can launch GRUB.
Edit the NT file boot.ini to add Fedora to the NT boot loader menu and launch the binary file.
Advantages of this boot loader method...
The changes made to the NT system are minimal and easy to reverse by editing boot.ini.
The master boot record of the NT hard drive is NOT altered in any way.
Disadvantages...

I can't really think of one.

Some details to make it happen...
During the installation of Fedora, watch for and check the option Configure advanced boot loader options. On the next page, check the option to Install Boot Loader record on the first sector of boot partition. Finish installing Fedora. When you reboot as instructed, your computer will boot straight into NT as normal. THIS IS NORMAL AT THIS POINT.
Download BOOTPART (http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm) from the Internet and unzip the files. It is a free utility that runs in a Windows Command Prompt window and comes with simple instructions. It will create a binary file that can load and execute GRUB, copy it to the NT root directory, and edit boot.ini all in one step. Mauriat Miranda (mjmwired) has a website with a tutorial and example (http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-dell-d810.html#boot) that I used to learn this technique. Mauriat's tutorial is for dual booting XP and Fedora, but NT boots the same way (actually, XP uses NT's boot loader). Al Bento's tutorial (http://home.ubalt.edu/abento/linux/redhat-install/dualbootNT.html) has a little more detail but is also short and to-the-point. With these two tutorials and the BOOTPART instructions, you can figure it out and do the job.
After the BOOTPART procedure, reboot and you will see the NT boot loader menu offering NT or Fedora.

[Trapper]

Thanks for the BOOTPART info. It's pretty straight forward and I tried it per your instructions and per the instructions from the 2 tutorial links you provided. Everything happens correctly concerning creating a bootsect.lnx, making the boot.ini entry etc. One thing is not happening. It isn't booting to Fedora. When I select Linux from the bootloader menu and press enter the highlight simply jumps back to the default NT boot entry. I get no attempt, at all, to boot into FC6.

The one difference between my setup and all the examples is that mine deals with a SCSI disk and BOOTPART is partial to the IDE disk over the SCSI disk and lists my FC6 partitions before my SCSI partitions even though my bios is set to boot from my NT4 scsi disk first.

Whatever, I've found instructions for creating the needed boot image directly in FC6 and then simply transferring it to my NT4 root and adding an entry to the boot.ini to boot it. If that doesn't work I will simply burn grub to the scsi disc MBR. If it then won't boot from NT4 I can simply do a fdisk /mbr to restore the NT boot.

I will let you know the results.

[Trapper]

I have resolved the issue and now can boot from the NT4 SCSI drive or the FC6 IDE drive.

First I tried creating the boot image in FC6, transferred it to the NT root and edited the boot.ini. On a reboot I attempted to boot into FC6 but got a GRUB geometry error message only. That got me thinking. This is what I did:

I booted up the first FC6 install disk and did the following:

Type and enter the following:
linux rescue
chroot /mnt/sysimage
nano /boot/grub/device.map

My drives were listed as:
(hd0) /dev/hda
(hd1) /dev/sda

That's just the opposite of what I need so I changed the mapping to:
(hd0) /dev/sda
(hd1) /dev/hda

I saved the new device mapping and then edited my grub.conf

nano /boot/grub/grub.conf

I changed all my FC6 (HD0,?) entries ( including the splashscreen) to (HD1,?) and all my Win NT entries from (HD1,?) to (HD0,?) and saved the grub.conf.

I then wrote grub to the SCSI drive MBR:

grub-install /dev/sda

and rebooted. I got the grub screen and booted into NT4 successfully. I then rebooted and was also able to boot into FC6 successfully from the grub screen. Works good.