another dual boot problem...

[thelonesquirrel]

Ok so i know you guys have had a bunch of noobs post questions about getting a dual boot machine off the ground. Well...i am another of them...I have read a few of the threads and am usually lost. Well here it goes and thanks for your help!

I have a athlon xp 2500 (1.8) and 3 internal hdd's running on a asus a7n8x-e Deluxe mb. A few cards but nothing spectacular. I am trying to install the fedora core 4 to a 20GB hdd in my computer. I have 1 sata drive (200GB) that is currently my windows side. and a IDE 120GB that is used as a swap drive. I have run through the installation 5 times trying to get it to work. I want to do a workstation installation.

Currently it will install properly, tell me everything is great, give me a kiss on the cheek and then never boot to that side! I tells me to reboot then just boots into my windows side. When I look at the hdd through the manager it tells me the partitions are setup as a 102Mb and a 18.55Gb on the right drive. but i never get a chance to boot over to that side. Please help, Thanks.

[litdie]

did you add linux to your windows boot.ini?

will do a step by step here.

now first there are different ways to transer files between windows and linux, i use a 1 gig fat32 partition as both can read/write to it safely. if you have a floppy drive hurray.

put in the fedora cd. at the prompt type "linux rescue" minus the quotes. all commands are minus the quotes.

go thru the motions and get to the prompt.

at the prompt type "chroot /mnt/sysimage". enter.

now mount whatever you wanna put this boot file onto.
"mkdir /mnt/floppy" enter
mount floppy= "mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy" enter

you need to know what drive your linux drive is.
"fdisk -l" figure out which drive is your linux drive. hda1, hdb1, hdc1?


"dd if=/dev/urdrive of=/mnt/floppy/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1" enter.
"umount /mnt/floppy" enter.
type exit then enter
and do it one more time to reboot.

copy that off your floppy to your c: of your windows drive.
open boot.ini in notepad.
add this line at the bottom.
c:\bootsect.lnx="Linux"

you should get the option to boot linux in your ntloader. see if it works.

[thelonesquirrel]

The only problem is that me and the floppy drive had a parting of ways a few weeks ago...two of the pins shorted on the floppy board and it caused my whole ps to burn (my case filled with smoke)...i haven't replaced it is there any other way i can do it...could i make a fat32 partition?

[litdie]

if you make a fat32 partitition you need to "fdisk -l" to see what drive it is.
once you have that the commands are pretty much the same.

mkdir /mnt/fat32
mount -t vfat /dev/fat32drive /mnt/fat32

dd if=/dev/linuxdrive of=/mnt/fat32/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1

youll see 1+0 in 1+0 out

then type umount /mnt/fat32

exit twice to reboot.

[thelonesquirrel]

ok so i ran through like the directions....there is one thing i am not sure on...my linux hdd have 2 different partitions on it and i don't know which is important....there is a small one and a big one....i think the smaller one (~100mb) is for system stuff but i am not sure.

Otherwise the copy goes fine but when i try and select linux in the boot sequence it just blinks black and then prompts for which operating system again...ideas?

[litdie]

do you remember which partition you put the boot loader on?

thats the partition you need to do the dd command.

[JohnVV]

the last time i redid my hd i added a small 15 gig fat 32 to the hd that has fedora ( a swap folder for win) then in the install there is a choice for an advanced boot opition (change where grub is ) put grub in the first partion of the linux drive -- hdb1 or hdc1 (NOT IN THE WIN MBR)
dd if=/dev/hd ??? of=dev/fedora4.bin bs=512 count=1"
cp /dev/fedora4.bin /dev/hd??? (your fat part)
boot into win ( IN SAFE MODE) your linux drive should (that is the fat32 part) show up as E:\ or F:\ ?:\
copy fedora4.bin to C:\
open boot .ini ( maby hiden) with note pad
and at the bottom add
C:\fedora4.bin= " Fedora Core 4"

and save boot.ini ( this can only be done in safe mode or with visual stuido )

reboot and hit the down arrow to hilight fedora and hit enter