Help with grub in a multiboot enviroment

Albert69 · #1 21st November 2004, 02:05 PM

Hi, i have installed fedora core 3 on my desktop (seems amazing) and just now i'm installing this distro on my noteb
but i have a prob, for my work i MUST use a windows system, and so i must have a ntloader on this notebook
with the previuos distro i'd tryed i had simply put the bootloader (grub or lilo) on a floppy, but during the fd3 installation i haven't this option
but only
-mbr
-first sector boot partion

can i put the grub bootloader in a floppy?

thx to all
ciao

egr · #2 21st November 2004, 02:09 PM

Hmmm I don't understand why you don't want to put grub in mbr, grub will allow you to boot both linux and windows, and you can forget about floppy

Albert69 · #3 21st November 2004, 02:13 PM

yep, thx for the quick reply
i don't know linux so well, in case of ntloader "disaster" i can boot winxp without big problem , with a linux enviroment less, more less (i'm a newbie)
for now i think that is better use a well known loader and an external one for linux s.o.

(sorry the eng..)

foolish · #4 21st November 2004, 02:17 PM

For a dual boot environment, you have to follow these steps (some of them you may have done already).

1. install windows first.
2. Use a partitioning tool to make sure there's as much empty, unpartitioned space on your hard drive as you want to use for Fedora.
3. Install Fedora, tell it to use the unpartitioned space during installation, and do automatic partitioning.
4. Fedora should detect your windows installation and have it in the boot loader, GRUB, as "Other" or "Dos".

To answer your real question, yes, you can make a boot floppy for Fedora Core using the mkbootdisk command as root. Here's an example that will make a boot disk to boot the latest kernel.

Code:

mkbootdisk `(rpm -q --queryformat="%{version}-%{release}\n" kernel | tail -n 1)` --device /dev/fd0

(the `(rpm -q --queryformat="%{version}-%{release}\n" kernel | tail -n 1)` is just a fancy way to get the version of the most recent kernel you have installed)

Albert69 · #5 21st November 2004, 02:23 PM

thx again
the system is already partitioned: now i have xp and a mdk distro
with the fc3 installer i say "use older linux partiton"

thx for this:
mkbootdisk `(rpm -q --queryformat="%{version}-%{release}\n" kernel | tail -n 1)` --device /dev/fd0

if i intall fc3 without grub, there's a chance to boot fc3 (the first time) and launch it?
i have already used grub (or lilo), but on this pc i cannot install a boot loader