Neil L. Little wrote: > Ok, noob time again... > > I have installed FC4 on a system that is primarily a Windows XP > machine (for now). > > WinXP (NTFS file system) is on the Master drive (hda). > FC4 is on the Slave drive (hdb). > > Having installed FC4 on the slave drive So I finish the load and > reboot expecting to have grub load, direct it to the FC4 drive and go > through my first boot. > > Well, it never happeded. WinXP boots and continues on like nothing has > ever changed. > > I have discovered that grub never got installed on my Master drive. I > attempted to manually install grub and recieved a message "file system > unknown" as soon as I tried to set the root device to my windows > partition. > > Doing some research I have discovered that there is a problem reading > NTFS... or its a feature that is turned off in the kernal... or I > have to add support which means a kernal rebuild (gnashing teeth and > pulled hair at this point). Maybe not even being able to write to NTFS > at all (beating of the head on first available flat surface). Ok, its > late at night and its time to drop back and regroup. > > So here are my questions at this point... > > 1. Can I get Linux to read/write to/from an NTFS drive. Meaning put > grub on it.
This is a two part question, but with a little explanation that will become clear. First, it's possible though not reliable or recommended, to write to an NTFS partition for Linux. Thankfully, that does not really concern the second part of your question, which is, can I put GRUB on that first hard drive as the boot loader. Every hard drive is laid out in such a fashion that the first 512 bytes are reserved for the "Master Boot Record". After that comes the partition table (depending on your architecture), and that partition table references 1 or more partitions, which may also contain their own 512 byte section for boot loaders associated with that partition. If the bios attempts to boot to a device, it will blindly take the first 512 bytes, read them into memory, and attempt to execute them as machine code. If that fails, it will consider that device unbootable. If that machine code runs (which in your future happy case will be the GRUB stage-1 boot loader), it can then look to other places on the disk for more complete booting information, decide what the options are, present a menu to the user, etc. - up to the limits of the software of the boot loader (which these days is pretty high). So the answer is, Yes, you can put GRUB on that first drive. No, it does not have to be able to understand NTFS, and your kernel need not write to NTFS to do it. > 2. Will I be able to avoid having to to fancy presti-digi-tations to > get this Dual boot thing going like: > a) changing boot sequence in BIOS Possibly. > b) adding a special FAT partition Very unlikely. > c) adding a switch to change master/slave jumpers. Do you mean a relay or solid state switch to "physically" change the jumpers, from software? :) That's a rather ingenious solution that I surprisingly haven't heard before. Fear not, if that's what you really mean, it's way over kill, but points for ingenuity. :) > 3. Adding a boot loader that runs from the WinXP side. Well this is actually possible, although unnecessary. You can, with a modicum of effort, teach the Windows XP boot loader to load up your GRUB boot code. (Yes, there is a Windows XP boot loader, although most people don't run into it, you can use it for dual-booting Windows XP and other Windows operating systems rather easily, such as Windows 98, NT4, etc) > So. can anyone shed any light? I would suggest that by hook or crook (or probably most reliably by using a boot CD) you should get back into a working Linux system, with GRUB at your disposal. You should then see about running `grub-install hd0`, which will, all things being in the right place, install GRUB on the master boot record of your first hard drive. Unfortunately, there is a good deal of work to a) get access to the boot partition of the old hard drive, b) running GRUB correctly (you may need the --config-file= option), c) ensuring that the menu.lst used as the config file contains the correct entries for root (probably root (hd1,0)?), then d) adding an appropriate title section to GRUB for booting your Windows XP system. Unfortunately, with out concrete details of exactly how your system is laid out (which partition on the linux drive is the /boot partition (do you even have a boot partition), what boot CD are you using (I'd recommend a recent Knoppix), etc), I can't be of great assistance with the stumbling blocks listed above. There are a myriad resources on Google (some of them confusing, some enlightening), but hopefully armed with the understanding of boot sectors and partitions above, you'll have more luck progressing forward. And of course, if not, feel free to post back more details and we'll see what else we can help out with. > 73, 73! > Neil Little, WA4AZL JARS Forever! ...er, TRILUG too! Aaron S. Joyner, KF4FUW TriLUG Forever... or at least as much as I can from the other side of this chunk of dirt. :) -- TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/ TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/
