Re: [Unattended] Setting up unattended to allow for windows/linux boots

[Nicholas Young]

On Thu, Oct 14, 2004 at 06:25:37PM -0700, Jordan Share wrote:
 Has this been fixed?  I would like to install multiboot machines onto 
 separate partitions.
 
 Thanks
 Jordan
 
 Patrick J. LoPresti wrote:
 

Yes, all you have to do is ensure you set the partition you want to
install to as active when partitioning the disk and the installs seems
to work perfectly.

-- 
Nich


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Re: [Unattended] Setting up unattended to allow for windows/linux boots

[Patrick J. LoPresti]

Nicholas Young [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 We currently have a partitioning schemeon our machines that looks like:
 /dev/hda1 /boot   100MB
 /dev/hda2 Windows 10GB
 /dev/hda3 /   10GB
 /dev/hda5 swap~512MB

We currently hard-wire the dosemu C: drive to /dev/hda1.  (Well,
actually /dev/dsk1, but same basic idea.)  So this is not going to
work out of the box.

 When using the linux boot disk I manually recreate hda2 so that it contains
 an empty FAT32 partition:
   rm 2
   mkpartfs 2 FAT32 100-9460
   set 2 boot yes

The last command marks the Windows partition active, which is
correct.  The problem is our bad assumption when configuring dosemu.

The DOS-based boot disk would probably be fine with this, by the way.

 From the command prompt given I cannot access C:, When running FDISK
 on the drive it reports that there is only one partition, the /boot
 and it is a linux partition.

Right, dosemu does not actually provide access to the entire disk,
only to the partition which we configure as the C: drive.  When fdisk
tries to access the whole disk, dosemu invents a partition table
containing just that partition.

The band-aid workaround is to edit dosemu.conf (under
Z:\install\linuxaux\etc\dosemu) to replace this line:

  $_hdimage = /dev/dsk1

...with this:

  $_hdimage = /dev/dsk2

Then dosemu will use the second partition instead of the first for the
C: drive.  Of course, this will break if the Windows partition is
supposed to be any other drive.

The correct fix is for us to locate the active partition and
configure dosemu to use it.  Please submit a bug report on the
SourceForge pages and we will get to it eventually.

 - Pat


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Re: [Unattended] Setting up unattended to allow for windows/linux boots

[Jordan Share]

Nicholas Young wrote:
If I use the whole C: option it works correctly so the problem should not be
hardware related.
Has anyone had success in a similiar situation. I believe the problem is
that the C: is not been created correctly so the format fails and the
windows swap cannot be created. My next test is to manually setup the system
and then attempt to do no partitioning and just format the C:, this is
currently been setup, and I will post results of this when it is done.
We use the Unattended system to install our lab machines, so we have 2 
windows partions (for different flavors) and 1 linux partition.  I bet 
your problem is that you are not making the windows partion the first 
active partition on the disk before you try to install Windows.

We install both window's first, then install the linux.  The procedure is:
   * fdisk the disk into the partitions we want to use (6gig win, 10gig 
win, 6gig linux, 2gig linux swap, rest of drive for a second linux 
partition.  I think there is also a boot partition in there.)
  * We use this fdisk command (all one string, no linebreaks):
'fdisk /pri:6000;fdisk /pri:1;fdisk /pri:300 /spec:131;fdisk 
/ext:100,100;fdisk /log:6000 /spec:131;fdisk /
log:2000 /spec:130;fdisk /log:100,100 /spec:131'
   * the $post_cmds string is:
'fdisk /delete /pri:1;fdisk /prio:2000;fdisk /activate:1'
   * Then we install windows via unattended (we are still using 3.5)
   * To install the 2nd windows partition we use this fdisk command:
'fdisk /delete /pri:2;fdisk /prio:2000;fdisk /activate:2'
   * That activates the second partition, and so windows thinks that 
c: is the second (10gig) partition.
   * At this point, you can only boot to the 2nd windows install, so we 
install linux (and grub).
   * Our menu.lst looks like this:
title Windows partition 1
unhide (hd0,0)
hide (hd0,1)
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
makeactive
savedefault
title Windows partition 2
unhide (hd0,1)
hide (hd0,0)
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1
makeactive
savedefault
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.20-30.9rbt)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.20-30.9rbt2 ro root=LABEL=/ 
console=ttyS0,9600n8 console=tty0
initrd /initrd-2.4.20-30.9rbt2.img
savedefault
   * As you can see, grub does makeactive and hides/unhides the 
appropriate partitions to make windows see the C: drive properly.

This system works pretty well.  If you need to reinstall one of the 
windows, you can just recreate the proper partition, and make it active. 
   Then install windows (blowing away grub from the MBR of the disk). 
Then, you boot to a grub floppy (although we just netboot a memdisk 
image of a grub floppy), and reinstall grub to let you boot any of the 3 
operating systems.

Jordan

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