Making Dual-Booting More Livable
Matthew Newton
05/11/2004 10:48:35
Six years ago this month Linux became my primary operating system; it happened
almost overnight. The startup company I had been working for imploded. I was at
home, working on my resume, when my Windows PC crashed for the umpteenth time.
I knew a bit of Unix (when I first started using the Internet, my only means of
access was a Unix shell account) and was not at all intimidated by the idea of
installing something Unix-y on my PC. I took the plunge and never looked back.
My main box has been a dual-booter for six years now. When it powers up, the
first screen following the BIOS message asks me to choose between Linux and
Windows. If there is no response after thirty seconds, Linux is chosen by
default, and a short while later, Linux has booted and is waiting for me.
But the way the boot process works presents a problem when I want to play Myst
IV: Revelation and go to bed four hours late. When it's Myst time, I tell Linux
to reboot. I wait for it to shut down. The system restarts. I wait for the boot
loader screen. I select Windows. Then I wait for Windows to boot. I have to do
all this sitting and waiting because I have to be present at that key moment
when I have to select Windows instead of Linux. But I'd really rather be
fetching a tasty beverage from the fridge.
What I need is one button on my Linux desktop that starts the
reboot-with-Windows process and needs no further action from me until Windows
is up and running. Sound useful? Let me show you the magic spell.
Hacking Your Boot Loader
On most Linux boxes, the boot loader is a tiny bit of code called LILO (for
LInux LOader). You can alter LILO's behavior for its next boot very simply,
using its -R command-line option. For instance, on my Mandrake box, the
following command tells the system to boot into Windows next time without any
additional prompting:
lilo -R windows
That command must be issued when you're logged in as the root user.
It's only a couple more steps to write a shell script that fires off that
command and also causes the machine to reboot. First, open your text editor of
choice. If you don't have a favorite editor, press Alt-F2 and enter gedit if
you're a Gnome user, kedit if you're a KDE user. Now, create a text file called
"bootwin" and put these lines in it:
#!/bin/sh
/sbin/lilo -R windows
/usr/bin/reboot
Now, back on the command line, make bootwin executable with the following
command:
chmod u+x bootwin
If you're logged in as root, issuing ./bootwin will run the script. The problem
is, only the root user can tell the boot loader to do something different on
the next boot, so when you are logged in with your normal user account, the
bootwin script will conk out. (On my Mandrake box, the LILO command fails but
the reboot command succeeds, so the machine reboots into Linux. Nuts.)
The solution is to somehow make your script run as a root user. There are many
ways to do this. Here's one:
su -c ./bootwin
You'll be prompted for the root password, and then the script will execute as
if the root user (or the "superuser"--hence "su") launched it. Even better, if
you have the sudo command installed and configured on your box, you can simply
issue:
sudo bootwin
With the proper sudo setup, you won't even be prompted for a password. Bootwin
will simply run with root privileges, despite the fact that an ordinary user
launched it.
Fine-Tuning Your Script
There are three potential problems with the bootwin script at this stage.
First, our LILO command assumes that your Windows partition is named "windows"
in LILO's configuration. That might not be the case. To find out what LILO
calls your Windows partition, enter this command as root to reveal LILO's
configuration file:
cat /etc/lilo.conf
You're looking for two lines that look something like this:
other=/dev/hda1
label=dos
In this case, LILO thinks my Windows partition is called "dos," so I need to
replace "windows" with "dos" in my bootwin script. Easy enough.
A second potential problem is that in your particular flavor of Linux the LILO
and reboot commands may live elsewhere than at the paths in the script. As
root, you can use which lilo and which reboot to find out the full path to
these commands. If you find, for instance, that on your system reboot lives
under /sbin instead of /usr/bin, then alter the final line of bootwin to point
at /sbin/reboot instead of /usr/bin/reboot.
When Things Get Grubby
Now then, there's one more potential problem, and it's a doozy. It could be
that your Linux box isn't booting with LILO. There's another popular boot
loader called GRUB (for GRand Unified Bootloader). It lurks, for example, on my
box that runs Fedora Core. I've long been convinced that it was impossible to
craft a bootwin script on a machine with GRUB, because GRUB has no equivalent
to the LILO command-line option for automating the next boot choice.
But when Myst IV arrived (is my obsession clear yet?), I decided to give it a
shot again. To make a long story short, there was nothing out there on the Web
(at least, nothing that Google turned up) about how to make this magic happen.
So I'm going to change that right now. Here's a version of bootwin that works
on my Fedora Core system, where GRUB is the boot loader:
#!/bin/sh
/sbin/grub --device-map=/boot/grub/device.map --batch <<FOO
savedefault --default=3 --once
quit
FOO
/usr/bin/reboot
Similar caveats apply here as before: The GRUB and reboot commands may live in
different directories on your machine. The script needs to run as root. And
you'll need to check to see where your Windows partition is referenced in the
file /etc/grub.conf. Issuing the following command as root will yield the
contents of that file:
cat /etc/grub.conf
You're looking for an entry that looks like this:
title Windows 2000 SP4
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
In my grub.conf, this was the fourth entry. GRUB counts entries starting with
zero, so the first entry is 0, the second entry is 1, and this, my fourth
entry, is 3. That's why there's a 3 on the "savedefault" line in my bootwin
script. You'll need to change that digit to match the number for your own
Windows partition entry.
If you've stuck with me this long, then you've got a script that will reboot
your system into Windows. Now, how to make the script easy to access? Why not
add a button to your system panel? In Gnome 2.6, right-click the panel and
select Add to Panel, Launcher. In KDE 3.2, right-click the panel and select
Add, Special Button, Non-KDE Application. Gnome users, look to the "Command"
field; KDE users, find the "Execute" field. Enter the following command there,
replacing "/path/to" with the full path of the directory where you've put your
bootwin script:
su -c /path/to/bootwin
In both Gnome and KDE, select an icon for your button and be sure to select the
"Run in terminal" check box before closing the dialog box. Voila!
If a button doesn't interest you, you can instead move the script to a
directory in your command path (/usr/local/bin is one good possibility) so that
you can press Alt-F2 (in either Gnome or KDE), type bootwin, and be off to the
races. (Or, in my case, to the Myst IV realms of Tomahna, Serenia, Spire, and
Haven.)
About to Switch to Ubuntu?
The Community release of Mandrake 10.1 has been out for about a month. Mandrake
Community releases are roughly akin to an open beta: The idea is that by
spreading the Community release far and wide, Mandrake can supplement its own
QA efforts and shake out any obscure (or not-so-obscure) bugs turned up by a
wide user base before a new version gets pressed to CD.
I hope that there's a good deal of difference between the Community release of
Mandrake 10.1 and the forthcoming Official release: The Community release has
given my trusty IBM Thinkpad (which ran 10.0 without issues) nothing but
trouble. It's been so frustrating, I'm considering replacing it with a brand
new flavor of Linux.
Ubuntu Linux is a new distribution out of Britain. It's based on Debian,
pledges to always offer a cost-free version (as does Mandrake), and is the
first distribution to sport the Gnome 2.8 desktop environment. Yes, folks, this
may in fact be the user-friendly, Gnome-based distribution I've been hunting
for so long. I've got a prerelease version of Ubuntu running on a test machine
here at PC World HQ, and it's awfully slick.
The only thing that gives me pause is Ubuntu's inability to play or encode MP3
files. Fedora Core has the same problem, as I've mentioned before, and I hate
having to muck around under the hood just to enable support for such a popular
file format. I've been using Fedora since last spring, and I still can't get
MP3 previewing to work in Nautilus, the Gnome file manager. (In Nautilus, when
you hover your cursor over an MP3 file, it's supposed to start playing and
continue until you move the cursor again.) That's nonsense, and I don't want to
be stuck in the same boat with Ubuntu. So once again, I'm looking for
solutions. Stay tuned.
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From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fri Nov 5 09:31:13 2004
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (hashir n a)
Date: Fri Nov 5 09:31:54 2004
Subject: [Mailinglist] Multiboot CD How ?
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Hello evry1
Hope all are doing great .
I was just wondering if it was possible to make a multiboot cd tht cld boot
more than one distros.
is possible to boot into dos,linux 1,linux 2 stored in a single CD? How cld i
make such a CD?
Please Help.
Thank You
lv
hashir
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From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fri Nov 5 11:28:52 2004
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (hashir n a)
Date: Fri Nov 5 11:28:11 2004
Subject: [Mailinglist] multibooting cd - grub or lilo
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Helllo
I am looking for a way to install grub /lilo onto a cd ,
so that i can create a multiboot cd;
Has anybody done this before,
so as to help me do it once more;
How do i configure the grub.conf to boot the images on the cdrom itself,
for it wld b a nuisance if i left it to itself;
is it a conundrum or is there a solution,
please help this newbie find a solution.
Please help Please help Please help
Thank You
lv
hashir
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From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fri Nov 5 11:55:08 2004
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bijoy)
Date: Fri Nov 5 11:57:07 2004
Subject: [Mailinglist] multibooting cd - grub or lilo
In-Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Dear Mr. Hashir,
Normally hard disks only have the MBR, and grub or lilo writes
to there.
Regards
Bijoy V
_____
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of hashir n a
Sent: Friday, November 05, 2004 11:29 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Mailinglist] multibooting cd - grub or lilo
Helllo
I am looking for a way to install grub /lilo onto a cd ,
so that i can create a multiboot cd;
Has anybody done this before,
so as to help me do it once more;
How do i configure the grub.conf to boot the images on the cdrom itself,
for it wld b a nuisance if i left it to itself;
is it a conundrum or is there a solution,
please help this newbie find a solution.
Please help Please help Please help
Thank You
lv
hashir
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From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fri Nov 5 12:51:21 2004
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Rajesh)
Date: Fri Nov 5 12:51:26 2004
Subject: [Mailinglist] You(we) can Multiboot-from CD
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Dear linuxens
we can create multiboot cd by writing a permanent grub
to cd's MBR( CD have MBR's).We have edit grub
correctly bz we can't change that again.
I will give you complete details after creating this
OK thank you
Regards
One Linuxen
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