request advice upgrading 15-16 on dual boot

Raging Furball · #1 15th December 2011, 12:47 AM

Hello everyone. I hope your holiday season is going acceptably well.

I just finished downloading and burning Fedora 16 (Gnome) to a cd and wanted to get some advice from the people that actually know linux before I start making a mess of things.

I'm currently running on a laptop with a single 500 GB hard drive with Windows 7 and Fedora 15. I have the windows boot loader handling the start up as opposed to the GRUB boot loader. The drive is split into 4 partitions as such:

Partition 1 (Windows 7 is here)
C: 350 gb ntfs
Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)

Partition 2 (Fedora 15 is here)
107.42 gb
Healthy (Primary Partition)

Partition 3 (I'm not really sure what this partition is for, but I was told to make it)
6.87 GB
Healthy (Primary Partition)

Partition 4 (Recovery partition for windows, I'm assuming)
1.46 GB
Healthy (Active, Recovery Partition)

And here is the guide I used to set up things the way they are:
http://www.thpc.info/dual/win7/dualb...d_on_win7.html

I like having the windows boot loader in charge of the start up; I've heard the grub can run into issues with some windows updates, and I tend to update windows every chance I get. Plus, in all honesty, I know nothing of Linux. I'm hoping to use this setup to familiarize myself with the OS.

So, what's the preferred way to upgrade from 15 to 16? Should I try to upgrade using the cd or is it better to wipe the whole partition with windows and redo the guide step by step? Is Fedora Gnome even the right version of linux for me to try and learn with? And, slightly off subject, what exactly is that third partition used for?

Thank you all for your advice and time.

viking777 · #2 15th December 2011, 11:40 AM

There is a guide on upgrading Fedora from 15 to 16 here:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Upgrad...-.3E_Fedora_16

and a different method here:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PreUpgrade

But I suggest you read the yellow warning at the top of the first page before you do anything though.

Being a newcomer to Fedora, I have not tried either of these methods so I don't know how successful they are, particularly in relation to EasyBCD. My guess is that they will probably overwrite it with grub although I don't know for sure. If you install from a live cd etc you can follow the section about where to install grub in the guide you pointed to and then add it to Windows loader with EasyBCD. The problem with that is this method is that any customisations that you have carried out to F15 will be lost.

sea · #3 15th December 2011, 11:49 AM

Uhm whats the output of

Code:

lsblk

This will list your partitions that are currently mounted, so at least you know which partitions are needed for linux.

My question to you is, how did you manage to get windows handling the boot?
Did you install first Fedora, then Windows?

I'm sorry to say, but if you use the Live Media CD or the DvD image (regardless if they're on usb), you WILL end up having GRUB as bootloader.
The only way to avoid this, would be the upgrade using yum, from init 3, as described in the link of viking777's post.

viking777 · #4 15th December 2011, 11:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sea

My question to you is, how did you manage to get windows handling the boot?
Did you install first Fedora, then Windows?

.

He' s using this:

http://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/

Although I don't know much about it myself, it does allow win bootloader to boot linux. As I understand it all you have to do is to install grub onto the partition instead of the mbr then boot into windows open the EasyBCD gui and it will find the linux installation for you and add it to windows boot menu.

Raging Furball · #5 16th December 2011, 03:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by viking777

He' s using this:

http://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/

Although I don't know much about it myself, it does allow win bootloader to boot linux. As I understand it all you have to do is to install grub onto the partition instead of the mbr then boot into windows open the EasyBCD gui and it will find the linux installation for you and add it to windows boot menu.

Yes sir, I was indeed using that third party program to setup the Windows boot loader. I was a bit skeptical at first; I don't like having to rely on 3rd party software for something that I think the OS's should be able to do themselves. But, I didn't know of another way, and (most importantly) didn't want to stray from the guide. It worked quite well, and didn't require me to keep the program on my computer; I uninstalled it and deleted it shortly after I saw everything was working, and everything continued to work afterwards.

From what it looks like, my safest bet would be to just wipe the partition and go through the guide again, only with the newer Fedora 16. I'm assuming going through the upgrade process via the cd would require me to redo that step involving the EasyBCD program anyway, so might as well go the route that I know works.

Totally off-subject, I just noticed that this forum shows what OS and browser each person is using when they make their posts. That's really cool! Kudos to whoever implemented that little novelty.

viking777 · #6 16th December 2011, 10:21 AM

Quote:

I was a bit skeptical at first; I don't like having to rely on 3rd party software for something that I think the OS's should be able to do themselves.

It depends which OS you mean. Linux is fully capable of handling this itself - it is just that you don't trust it

And Microsoft don't want you to use anything other than Windows anyway so they aren't going to help out, in fact they continue to provide obstacles like UEFI because obviously refusing to read Linux file systems or work with Linux bootloaders is not enough to stop the penguin from spreading.

As long as you have a solution that works for you that is all that matters.

Quote:

From what it looks like, my safest bet would be to just wipe the partition and go through the guide again, only with the newer Fedora 16.

I agree with you I think that would be the safest way for you to proceed.

Quote:

Totally off-subject, I just noticed that this forum shows what OS and browser each person is using when they make their posts. That's really cool! Kudos to whoever implemented that little novelty.

Do you know, until you pointed that out I had never even noticed it! Even when you had pointed it out I was scanning through posts looking for some text somewhere like "Posted using Linux and Firefox" or some such. Eventually I found out what you were talking about - how is that for observant:

sonoran · #7 16th December 2011, 04:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sea

I'm sorry to say, but if you use the Live Media CD or the DvD image (regardless if they're on usb), you WILL end up having GRUB as bootloader.
The only way to avoid this, would be the upgrade using yum, from init 3, as described in the link of viking777's post.

Actually you can install F16's grub2 to a partition, not the mbr, without adverse effects.
I used a netinst iso to do it but I think the option is there with all installation media.

I use Arch's legacy grub on the mbr to chainload Fedora's grub2:

Code:

title fedora 16
root (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

hd0,0 is a single partition containing all of F16 - /boot, /home, /, etc.

Although I don't use it, I think easybcd can do the same.

zardoz · #8 18th December 2011, 12:40 PM

My advice is "don't do it". Especially if you have Truecrypt system level encryption of the dual boot Windows environment.

Grub2 WILL trash your Truecrypt loader and you will need to have the rescue CD image that you made during system encryption to recover. I know this because that's exactly what happened to me.

Far better to wipe and reinstall F16 over the space used by the original system and select grub to boot from the partition rather than the MBR.

Z.

Dutchy · #9 18th December 2011, 01:58 PM

I also use Easybcd to adjust the Windows bootloader and the manual yum upgrade worked fine for me.
Just install GRUB2 to the partition with the -f option and in Easybcd use the neosmart grub option to point to the right partition (you can actually choose between GRUB legacy and GRUB2).

RHamel · #10 18th December 2011, 03:10 PM

I have not had the anaconda installer properly handle a duel boot system since FC3. I have always had to go in, and manually fix grub. Now I haven't tried recently, but by judging by the number of people who have had problems, I would say there is a good chance, that is what you'll have to do.

Raging Furball · #11 19th December 2011, 06:59 AM

Awesome. Thank you all for the tips. Since I know nothing of the console beside checking IP for APIPA or DHCP settings, I'll indeed go the wipe and re-install route. Once I've found an extra disk drive to back up everything to first, that is.

One last question. How do I marked this topic as solved?