dual booting with dual drives? help

[scaramoche]

Ok here is where i am

F8 is on master drive
winxp on secondary drive

I am able to see and navigate xp hard drive via KDE and terminal.
this was done using 'fuse'
i also updated fstab and it seems to be working ok

I then added the line
title Windows
root (hd1,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
to grub.conf
but when i try loading into windows by hitting tab on splash screen it will not go? it's as if, which makes sense, the driver to interpret the ntfs partition hasnt loaded? how do i get F8 to load my windows drive?

[scaramoche]

just checked again, cant seem to find any additional info. anyone?

[stoat]

Hello scaramoche,

When XP is not on the first drive, it can behave that way. Try modifying your grub.conf with map lines like this:

title Windows
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader +1

Note: You don't need makeactive for XP. You need rootnoverify with XP instead of root because it prevents GRUB from trying to mount a filesystem that it cannot mount.

After making the suggested changes to grub.conf, save, reboot, press any key at the Fedora splashscreen, see the GRUB menu. You should be able to select "Windows" from the menu and XP will boot.

[scaramoche]

hum...tried, but just got no ntfs loader? so i tried booting from the drive, xp loads fine. is it possible im using another loader?

[stoat]

I imagine you meant to say "NTLDR is missing". That means that (hd1,0) is not your XP partition. You only think it is. Take a moment to copy and paste the result of these two terminal commands run as root:

/sbin/fdisk -l
cat /etc/grub.conf

[scaramoche]

here ya go

[root@localhost ~]# /sbin/fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xcadccadc

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 25 200781 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 26 4865 38877300 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/sdb: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x98099809

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 4864 39070048+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/dm-0: 37.6 GB, 37681627136 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4581 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/dm-0 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/dm-1: 2080 MB, 2080374784 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 252 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x30307800

Disk /dev/dm-1 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/sdc: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xd59b069c

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 * 1 19457 156288321 7 HPFS/NTFS
[root@localhost ~]# cat /etc/grub.conf


and

# 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/sda
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora (2.6.23.1-49.fc8)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.23.1-49.fc8 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.23.1-49.fc8.img
title Fedora (2.6.23.1-42.fc8)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.23.1-42.fc8 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.23.1-42.fc8.img
title Other
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1
title Windows
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader +1
[root@localhost ~]#

[stoat]

Drive sda is 40GB and completely filled by an ext3 boot partition and an LVM physical volume.
Drive sdb is 40GB and almost completely filled by a single NTFS partition.
Drive sdc is 160GB and completely filled by a single NTFS partition.

You should try this in your grub.conf (it does no harm to try things in the grub.conf):

title Windows
rootnoverify (hd2,0)
map (hd0) (hd2)
map (hd2) (hd0)
chainloader +1

[scaramoche]

Wonderful!
That did the trick, I guess i need to look at the info and see why i kept thinking my other 40g was hd1 not hd2?

Thanks for the help. Love the linux community

[stoat]

Well, actually sometimes GRUB gets them mixed up. You may be right in your mind, but sometimes you have "play along" with GRUB. You can also go back and clean up your grub.conf a little (remove that old "Other" section).