A general GRUB question

[kabhinav]

hi, i just wanted to know that during a dual boot installation with windows xp, if fedora is installed after windows, where does the GRUB go on the hard disk? In the /boot partition or the MBR of the hard disk?

thanks

[jpollard]

It can be put in a partition or the MBR. By default it goes in the MBR.

[kabhinav]

so if i put it in the /boot partition, how do i boot into fedora??

[jpollard]

The MBR boot application must start the grub boot.

If grub is in the MBR then the other OS must have it's boot record in its partition,
then grub can use the chainloader ability to start that other boot record.

I do not have the commands on hand to put the other OS boot into its partition..

There are several threads available (via search) on multiboot configuration.

[Zanpactou]

Originally Posted by kabhinav

so if i put it in the /boot partition, how do i boot into fedora??

You wouldn't unless your /boot partition is on a separate disk to the Windows partition because then you could in theory, swap between the two disks using the bios, swapping their boot order.

There must be a boot loader present on the mbr of the first boot device in the bios' boot order or a boot loader installed on the very first physical partition of the first boot device.

You could get the installer to install grub to the root or boot partitions but if Windows is installed on your machine, you would need to install another boot loader to chain load Fedora from wherever it is installed afterwards.
Software for Windows such as Acronis Disk Director contain boot loader software which allow you to boot basically anything and control the boot loader from in Windows.
It's obviously not free software like grub though.

Thanks,
Zanpactou

[kabhinav]

thanks for all your replies.

so tell me if i've got everything right... grub by default is installed on the MBR, so if windows was installed before fedora, it's boot loader will be overwritten.
now, grub auto detects windows and loads it through chain loading (something i've confirmed from the /etc/grub.conf file).
but if i install the grub in the /boot partition only, then i'll have to use some other software within windows to boot into fedora.
and to do so this software must point to the /boot partition of fedora which contains the kernel image and other related files. right??

thanks a lot again

[jpollard]

No auto-detection involved - you have to edit the /boot/grub/grub.conf file to add
other boot options.

The "other software" is still the MS boot - it is just that it needs to be put in the partition with Windows. Grub can chain to that if it is configured to do so.

You might want to read:

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/man...ode/index.html

for details on how grub works, and how to use it in different environments (diskless, CD/DVD, USB, ...)

[SiliconSlick]

If you installed grub in /boot instead of the MBR you can use XP's bootloader to start Linux. For one of many articles/examples on doing that see:

http://www.linux.com/archive/articles/113945

Or google "NTLDR linux"

SS