Setting up computer to use windows and linux

[graemekeatley]

Hi there

Hopefully someone can help, I have two hard drives for my computer and was looking to find out what is the best comfiguration to use for drive c for the windows drive and drive d for the linux drive. Do i put one drive on the promary ide channel and the other on the secondary channel with both set a master drive or is there a better way help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks
Graeme

[jim]

yes
Do you have a CD Burnner ? DVD burner? Both ?
If you have a CD Drive and @ Hard drives then you could set it up like so...
Please dont refer to the drives as "C" drive or "D" Drive
Drive A Primary IDE Master
Drive B Secondary IDE Master
CD Drive Secondary IDE Slave

[macgregor]

This is what I did and it worked great. First, make sure your bios correctly detects all drives. Then:
Drive A - Primary IDE Master (Windows drive)
Drive B - Primary IDE Slave (Linux drive)
CD drive - Secondary IDE Master

Install Windows on Drive A first, then install Linux on Drive B but put the Linux bootloader on the MBR of Drive A

[graemekeatley]

Thanks for the reply's. I've done just what you said: Drive A (Windows XP)- Primary Master and Drive B (Fedora) Secondary Master, CD Secondary Slave and it worked great. Thanks for you time and help. Much appreciated

Thanks
Graeme

[graemekeatley]

Hi there I rhought everything was going well as fedora 4 was installing on the drive b but when it finished i tried to boot up into fedora and got the message

root (ad1,0)
Filesystem type unlnown, partition type 0x7
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4 ro root/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet

Error 17: Cannot mount selected partition

Press any key to continue...

Also when I try to boot to windows i get this message

Booting 'Windows XP'

rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

Error 13: Invalid or unsupported executable format

Press any key to continue...

I'm not sure what this all means, so any help would be great

Thanks
Graeme

[jim]

download the rescue cd if you do not have it and burn it.
Is Drive A Windows or Linux?
Depending on who is installed where and the first boot device in your BIOS ( e.g Hard drive )
We need that info before continuing...

[jim]

opps one more thing
did you install grub? if so , Where?
Boot off the Rescue CD and then type
linux rescue at the prompt
after answering the questions it will prompt you type
chmod /root/sysimage
type cd ..
type ls
see if you have /boot
if so cd boot
type ls
you see grub ?
type cd grub
type ls
do you see a grub.conf?

type vi grub.conf

this opens vim a terminal based file editor
you hould see the beginning of the file


# 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/hdb2
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hdb
default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
#hiddenmenu


post back the contents of this file

[graemekeatley]

My drive a is the windows drive, but grub only comes up it i tell the bios to boot from the fedora drive. If i tell its to boot from the windows drive it just boots straight to windows. Where would be the best place to download a rescue cd from?

[jim]

you can get the rescue CD fromthe same site you downloaded the fc4 iso from if that is the way you installed
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/4/i386/iso/
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/4/i386/iso/FC4-i386-rescuecd.iso direct link to download the iso

[graemekeatley]

Hi there here's the contents of the grub.conf file as requested

#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/VolGroup00/LogVol00
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hda
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd1,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hidden menu
password ?????????????????????????????? (Shouldn't need this right)
title Fedora Core (2.6.11-1.1369_FC4)
root (hd1,0)
Kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb
initrd /initrd-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4.img
Title windows xP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

Hopefully this will give you a clearer picture, I blocked out the password section assuming you don't nee that part. Any advice you have would be great

Thanks
Graeme