I have installed Linux and Windows XP on my hard drive and am trying to set up a dual boot. Unfortunately XP is installed at a high sector, namely block 204438565. The partition table starts:
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 63 2040254 1020096 83 Linux /dev/sda2 2040255 104438564 51199155 83 Linux /dev/sda3 * 104438565 206836874 51199155 b W95 FAT32 ...
I have set up grub.conf as follows:
... title Windows rootnoverify (hd0,2) chainloader +1
The grub initialization screen starts OK, but when I select Windows, grub fails with a disk read error.
Questions:
(1) Is grub.conf set up right for this partition table?
(2) Is it possible to boot XP at this location, or do I have to reinstall Linux and XP with their partition reversed, so as to get the XP partition to a smaller block number?
(3) Is there some quicker way to get the partitions reversed other than reinstallation?
Thanks - jon
On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 11:02 PM, Jonathan Ryshpan jonrysh@pacbell.net wrote:
I have installed Linux and Windows XP on my hard drive and am trying to set up a dual boot. Unfortunately XP is installed at a high sector, namely block 204438565. The partition table starts:
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 63 2040254 1020096 83 Linux /dev/sda2 2040255 104438564 51199155 83 Linux /dev/sda3 * 104438565 206836874 51199155 b W95 FAT32 ...
I have set up grub.conf as follows:
... title Windows rootnoverify (hd0,2) chainloader +1
The grub initialization screen starts OK, but when I select Windows, grub fails with a disk read error.
Questions:
(1) Is grub.conf set up right for this partition table?
(2) Is it possible to boot XP at this location, or do I have to reinstall Linux and XP with their partition reversed, so as to get the XP partition to a smaller block number?
(3) Is there some quicker way to get the partitions reversed other than reinstallation?
Thanks - jon
I don't know about HAVE TO, but I've always installed XP on the first partition and never had a problem dual booting.
Richard
(1) Is grub.conf set up right for this partition table?
Looks good to me.
(2) Is it possible to boot XP at this location, or do I have to reinstall Linux and XP with their partition reversed, so as to get the XP partition to a smaller block number?
You wouldn't have to reinstall, but you don't need to.
(3) Is there some quicker way to get the partitions reversed other than reinstallation?
You *could* image out the partitions, then back in as you wish. You don't need to though, mount the windows partition, show us what's in the root. Also, paste the exact grub error.
Lastly, what was your install order, how did you install windows?
jlc
On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 9:32 AM, Jonathan Ryshpan jonrysh@pacbell.net wrote:
I have installed Linux and Windows XP on my hard drive and am trying to set up a dual boot. Unfortunately XP is installed at a high sector, namely block 204438565. The partition table starts:
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 63 2040254 1020096 83 Linux /dev/sda2 2040255 104438564 51199155 83 Linux /dev/sda3 * 104438565 206836874 51199155 b W95 FAT32 ...
I have set up grub.conf as follows:
... title Windows rootnoverify (hd0,2) chainloader +1
The grub initialization screen starts OK, but when I select Windows, grub fails with a disk read error.
Questions:
(1) Is grub.conf set up right for this partition table?
(2) Is it possible to boot XP at this location, or do I have to reinstall Linux and XP with their partition reversed, so as to get the XP partition to a smaller block number?
(3) Is there some quicker way to get the partitions reversed other than reinstallation?
I read somewhere that windows needs to be the first partition to boot properly. So you may try installing windows at hd0,0 and try again.
Regards
On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 5:13 PM, Rangeen Basu sherry151@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 9:32 AM, Jonathan Ryshpan jonrysh@pacbell.net wrote:
I have installed Linux and Windows XP on my hard drive and am trying to set up a dual boot. Unfortunately XP is installed at a high sector, namely block 204438565. The partition table starts:
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 63 2040254 1020096 83 Linux /dev/sda2 2040255 104438564 51199155 83 Linux /dev/sda3 * 104438565 206836874 51199155 b W95 FAT32 ...
I have set up grub.conf as follows:
... title Windows rootnoverify (hd0,2) chainloader +1
The grub initialization screen starts OK, but when I select Windows, grub fails with a disk read error.
Questions:
(1) Is grub.conf set up right for this partition table?
(2) Is it possible to boot XP at this location, or do I have to reinstall Linux and XP with their partition reversed, so as to get the XP partition to a smaller block number?
(3) Is there some quicker way to get the partitions reversed other than reinstallation?
I read somewhere that windows needs to be the first partition to boot properly. So you may try installing windows at hd0,0 and try again.
Jonathan, I may have better news:
It is widely-quoted advice that (#1): a Windows boot partition must be the first partition on the drive. Most advice suggests installing Windows first. I found this annoying in several scenarios.
However recent problem solving activity on this machine led me to experiment and discover that while this is close to the truth, it is a "sufficient" but not "necessary" condition.
What apparently _is_ essential for the Windows boot loader is specifically that (#2): the Windows boot partition is the first entry in the drive partition table.
In most situations without intervention, the requirement (#2) is achieved as a consequence of (#1). However, in a situation where the first partition on the drive is already in use, I have found it is possible to install Windows on a higher numbered partition and then delete and recreate the parition table entries in the correct order.
For example, I did this on the hard drive on this box, it currently has 3 bootable partitions: Windows 2000, MSDOS, and Fedora 9 shown below.
The following parted output shows each partition in its physical sequence by ascending "Start" sector number. Note that the "Number" column (= the order in which the partition table entries were created) is not in the same order. 3=\boot 2=MSDOS 1=Windows 2000 4=extended partition containing logical partitions 5,6,7,8 5=FAT32 6=swap 7=\ 8=\home
[root@kablamm david]# /sbin/parted GNU Parted 1.8.8 Using /dev/sda Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands. (parted) print free Model: ATA ST320014A (scsi) Disk /dev/sda: 20.0GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags 3 32.3kB 107MB 107MB primary ext2 2 107MB 370MB 263MB primary fat16 hidden 1 370MB 5618MB 5248MB primary fat32 boot, lba 4 5618MB 20.0GB 14.4GB extended lba 5 5618MB 10.9GB 5248MB logical fat32 lba 6 10.9GB 11.9GB 1077MB logical linux-swap 7 11.9GB 18.4GB 6498MB logical ext3 8 18.4GB 20.0GB 1579MB logical ext3
(parted) unit s (parted) print free Model: ATA ST320014A (scsi) Disk /dev/sda: 39102336s Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags 3 63s 208844s 208782s primary ext2 2 208845s 722924s 514080s primary fat16 hidden 1 722925s 10972394s 10249470s primary fat32 boot, lba 4 10972395s 39102209s 28129815s extended lba 5 10972458s 21221864s 10249407s logical fat32 lba 6 21221928s 23326379s 2104452s logical linux-swap 7 23326443s 36017729s 12691287s logical ext3 8 36017793s 39102209s 3084417s logical ext3
I achieved this by first installing Fedora 9 with blank spaces for the fat partitions, and then by hiding each previously installed primary partitions while installing the next OS. This achieved the physical sequence on the drive as shown above, but with parition numbers in ascending order. If I recall correctly, at this point Windows would not boot. I then made a note of all the start and end sector data, and then used parted commands "rm" and "mkpart" and "set" to delete and recreate the partition table shown above.
Why bother? So I can start both Windows and MSDOS from /boot/grub without using Windows ntldr.
I kept the \boot and MSDOS partitions small, so that the start of the Windows partition was not too far from the start of the drive. I have not tested a scenario where this is not the case, and would be very interested to hear back from you to further my knowledge if grub is able to directly boot Windows in your situation.
Its also necessary to hide the two Micro$oft operating sytems from each other; I achieve this in /boot/grub/grub.conf as follows: title Windows 2000 hide (hd0,1) unhide (hd0,0) rootnoverify (hd0,0) makeactive chainloader +1
title MSDOS 6.20 hide (hd0,0) unhide (hd0,1) rootnoverify (hd0,1) makeactive chainloader +1
If you have only one Micro$oft OS then this may not be necessary.
At some point you may encounter grub having trouble locating the correct boot partition. So before you start ensure that you an alternative method of booting into linux in case your hdd grub fails. Then use that to boot and reinstall grub, see "info grub". Once I had a paper record of the parition table, I didnt lose any data in this situation.
Warning: fiddling with the partition table can result in data on the drive becoming inaccessible. Do not attempt any of this this unless you are confident and have backups. You will need or develop a strong knowledge of parted and grub. But if you are that way inclined I knew nothing when I started and was able to achieve what I desired.
Hope this helps, David
Hi David,
I'm trying to triple boot Fedora 10, XP-64 bit, and xp-32 bit. I installed XP-32 bit, XP-64 bit (at this point, I could see both the Os in boot menu). Then I installed Fedora 10. However, after this, I could only see Fedora-10. Editing Grub.conf (from many suggestions) didn't help. Keep getting device read error messages. Then I bumped to ur post. Now, I'm a newbie in "parted". I was hoping if you could provide me some pointers, if it is useful at all for me:
running parted for my machine:
[root@localhost [1] vcamatya]# /sbin/parted GNU Parted 1.8.8 Using /dev/sda Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands. (parted) print free Model: ATA ST3500620AS (scsi) Disk /dev/sda: 500GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags 32.3kB 8225kB 8193kB Free Space 1 8225kB 488GB 488GB extended lba 5 8258kB 43.0GB 43.0GB logical ntfs hidden 6 43.0GB 127GB 83.9GB logical ntfs 7 127GB 358GB 231GB logical ntfs 8 358GB 358GB 206MB logical ext3 9 358GB 488GB 130GB logical lvm 2 488GB 500GB 12.0GB primary ntfs boot
(parted) unit s (parted) print free Model: ATA ST3500620AS (scsi) Disk /dev/sda: 976773168s Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags 63s 16064s 16002s Free Space 1 16065s 953329229s 953313165s extended lba 5 16128s 83987819s 83971692s logical ntfs hidden 6 83987883s 247834754s 163846872s logical ntfs 7 247834818s 698393744s 450558927s logical ntfs 8 698393808s 698795369s 401562s logical ext3 9 698795433s 953329229s 254533797s logical lvm 2 953329230s 976768064s 23438835s primary ntfs boot thanks in advance, Vinay
Links: ------ [1] mailto:root@localhost
vcamatya wrote:
Hi David,
I'm trying to triple boot Fedora 10, XP-64 bit, and xp-32 bit. I installed XP-32 bit, XP-64 bit (at this point, I could see both the Os in boot menu). Then I installed Fedora 10. However, after this, I could only see Fedora-10. Editing Grub.conf (from many suggestions) didn't help. Keep getting device read error messages. Then I bumped to ur post. Now, I'm a newbie in "parted". I was hoping if you could provide me some pointers, if it is useful at all for me:
It would be helpful to see your grub.conf file. Did you try something like this to boot Windows?
title Windows root (hd0,1) chainloader +1
Mikkel
On Fri, Apr 3, 2009 at 6:30 PM, vcamatya no-reply-gw@fcp.surfsite.org wrote:
Hi David,
I'm trying to triple boot Fedora 10, XP-64 bit, and xp-32 bit. I was hoping if you could provide me some pointers, if it is useful at all for me:
Hi Vinay
Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
We must keep in mind that this list is for discussion of *Fedora* issues (and you do not mention any problem inside Fedora itself) so shifting focus to other operating systems (OS) could become inappropriate in this forum. My previous post was to make a specific point that counter to common advice I'd found it unnecessary to install multiple OS in a specific physical order on disk as often stated, if one is prepared to rearrange the partition table (and repair the mbr) afterward. I felt this might be useful to primarily linux users who might want to try install another OS after. But this is not your situation here, you have installed your XP's first. So I think my previous post is not relevant to you at all.
I have zero experience with or interest in XP and its installation scripts. Also, I do not use lvm, I have not seen a grub.conf for an lvm system. So your situation is beyond me in several aspects and I expect there will be other readers here who can assist you better than I. Having said that, here's my suggestions.
Your situation is different to the original poster, so it is a good idea to begin a new thread rather than hijacking this one onto your issue.
I think parted is not the solution you need; I suggest you focus on grub. It is powerful and if configured correctly should be able to boot your other OS.
However some of these other OS seem to be written assuming they are the only OS on the box. A quick google/linux search "boot logical partition" for similar situation to yours, first result thread [1] included: ----- If you _must_ get this grub setup to work, I suspect you'll have to find some way to overcome XP's "code tracking" features that maintains guids and timestamps (and who knows what else) about the boot loader code/files in the registry. The code you copied no longer matches up with what XP's registry values say it should be. ----- So there might be other (non-Fedora) issues for you to research elsewhere, even if you do get those OS to boot.
The reason I did that search is that it looked odd to me that you have only one primary partition after your two XP installs, and that your extended/logical partitions are physically first on the drive. Here I've always used a primary partition for each OS, but maybe thats not necessary. Other readers might confirm what is normal for multiple XP installs.
Editing Grub.conf (from many suggestions) didn't help.
What forum was that discussion? Can you provide a link, to save us going over the same here?
If you want to seek help here getting your Fedora install grub to boot those other OS, it will help to know: 1) In parted output, which partition is XP32 ? 2) In parted output, which partition is XP64 ? 3) Your entire grub.conf 4) (Your parted info again if you start a new thread). 5) The *exact* error message you see in each failed boot situation.
Good luck with it. At least you have the best of the 3 OS running ok ;)
David
[1] http://linux.derkeiler.com/Newsgroups/comp.os.linux/2004-03/0318.html
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David -
Jonathan Ryshpan -
Joseph L. Casale -
Mikkel -
potat0 -
Rangeen Basu -
Richard Shaw