xp, knoppmyth, ubuntu, confusion

[suicidal_monkey]

I'm getting rather confused now... so it's time to ask stupid questions

My pc has two hard drives, both PATA, both on primary IDE, 120Gb master, 80Gb slave.

The master 120Gb is my windows drive which is partitioned (strangely) as follows (partition numbering done by windows, as reported in cfdisk under linux)
/hda1 is FAT32 and is where windows stuck it's boot partition, along with some confused programs
/hda5 is NTFS where XPpro is installed, along with a few programs that couldn't handle being elsewhere
/hda6 is NTFS where the bulk of the programs, games, and files are stored

The slave 80Gb is where I want to install linux/mythTV so I figred knoppmyth would be a good idea. This is where the problems start...

I have to use the "manual install" option as knoppmyth is heading for hdb rather than the default hda. I've tried partitioning the slave drive into bits for linux. 6Gb for / 2Gb for swap 2Gb for /cache rest for /myth. The install instructions give ambiguous info on this saying make 3 partitions, then it names 4, and the installer only wants one...arg. Anyway, it seems happy with me selecting hdb1 and installs sucessfully...supposedly using lilo.

on booting up I stop the pc from going in to XP and select to boot from IDE1 (slave drive)

it finds the boot record, but:
GRUB loading stage 1.5
...
Error 15 (means file not found - what file I don't know...)



earlier I had a go at installing Ubuntu, and that went fine, it installed happily on the slave drive, and set up a dual-boot selection thingy etc. I did have to use the XP recovery to fixboot and fixmbr to get windows to work again after I overwrote ubuntu of course but what I really want is for knoppmyth to work! Must be something in the setiings during install that I'm missing...

if I opened up the pc, removed the primary master, set the primary slave to master, installed knoppmyth on there, then set it back to slave, put in the original master, should I be able to select to boot up off the slave drive?

[DogMeat]

Are you sure that dual booting a media PC is the right way to go about it?

:g:

[suicidal_monkey]

really this is for me to test out mythTV before the pc becomes a media pc. Once it's a media pc it'll probably get a nice clean install of it's own

at the moment I have given up on making knoppmyth the linux option in the dual boot and have gone with ubuntu, however my pc now works in a very very odd manner. I installed Ubuntu on hdb1, no problems, and requested that it place grub on hd1. This is where it gets strange... If I select to boot from IDE-1 Grub loads up fine with the linux options and one for windows. All of the linux options produce the error 15 message, file not found, although they are all pointing at root (hd1,0) as they should be. However, if I select the windows option from the IDE-1 grub I then get presented with a lilo options menu for booting Linux, windows (hda1), winnt (hda4), winnt(hda5). From here linux will boot ubuntu sucessfully, and windows will boot XP properly. You would have thought this means the windows bootloader has been overwritten by lilo, but if the pc is left to boot from IDE-0 it boots stright to XP, so the XP bootloader would appear to be fine???

strangeness...
perhaps it's a BIOS thing where booting from IDE-1 alters the nomenclature of the drives under linux and hd1,0 points at IDE-0 rather than IDE-1? The lilo part is the confusing bit because it's only there if I boot off IDE-1, and then select the windows option...

[Carr0t]

You've managed to get Grub, Lilo, and the XP Bootmanager all working together :blink: Reinstall FTW TBH. I'm trying to work out in my head how you've ended up in that situation, and it makes my brain hurt.

[suicidal_monkey]

You've managed to get Grub, Lilo, and the XP Bootmanager all working together :blink: Reinstall FTW TBH. I'm trying to work out in my head how you've ended up in that situation, and it makes my brain hurt.

well, I can load them up at least...just not entirely sure how or where lilo is installed though or how it is co-existing peacefully with the XP one!

IDE-0 boots straight to XP
IDE-1 boots to Grub (ubuntu installed perhaps) but all linux options produce file not found errors, and the windows option within grub managed to open a lilo (!) bootloader, from where both the linux and windows options work..


for now I will just live with it, or possibly re-do grub from within ubuntu so that it sits on the primary master and provides the main selection. it's just so I can test out linux and whether mythTV works okay on this machine sigh

[Carr0t]

Grub can be installed on the disk, with an entry in the MBR telling the bootloader where to look to get the Grub files (generally /boot). Or it can be installed directly into the MBR. Lilo, or so I thought, had to be installed directly into the MBR.

Sounds to me like your MBR for IDE-0 still contains the XP bootloader, which knows not about any of the new stuff you have installed. MBR on IDE-1 contains Grub, or a pointer to same. I have no idea why your linux installs don't work from Grub. Probably just a configuration error in the grub.conf file, but having that on a new install like this doesn't bode well for the distro in question, and i've always found ubuntu to be pretty reasonable and user-friendly.

Then it sounds like somehow Lilo has been installed *not* in the MBR of IDE-0. Possibly because Windows was there first it did something really funky like whack it in the first bit of disk after the Windows install/partition, thinking that was the MBR (:blink:), and the Grub Windows option actually points to that 'fake' MBR, rather than the real one. Then Lilo is configured up right to load everything. It probably got confused about where to stick Lilo becuase your Windows boot partition and install partition are not the same.

In your grub.conf, probably in /etc if it's like any sane distro i've used, there should be a couple of lines for your 'Windows' install something like:

title Windows
     rootnoverify (hd0,1)
     chainloader +1

What does that actually say? I have a theory that the rootnoverify line will be pointing to some partition other than 1, on IDE-0. Try pointing it at various different partitions on disk 1, and see which one gets it to boot straight into XP. I'm going to theorise that it's currently pointed at hd0,5, and pointing it at hd0,1 will get it to boot straight into Windows. Or possibly the other way about.

I know this doesn't help, as it's Lilo that currently works to boot Linux, but i'm curious

[suicidal_monkey]

title Windows
     rootnoverify (hd0,1)
     chainloader +1

it says exactly that, or very similar to it (might be hd0,0 or 0,4 - I forget). the various linux, linux rescue etc options all start off with the line:

root (hd1,0)

now, the linux ones don't work with this but I found that if I tell bios to boot from IDE-1, and then manually edit the grub script to read:

root (hd0,0)

it loads ubuntu fine.
What I think is happening is that when I tell the bios to boot from IDE-1 that IDE-1 becomes known to linux as hd0, rather than hd1. lilo could be on the 1st partition of IDE-0, but I wouldn't know where/how to start looking


still, pc is working fine, and can be booted into ubuntu with a little effort, which works for now - just want to check it out, see if I can make mythtv work (unfortunately mythtv is a little more complex when not installed with the OS (hence the keen-ness to use knoppmyth (which I think was the distro with the dodgy installer when it came to being non-standard...)