Chris Wilson Posted January 8, 2007 Share Posted January 8, 2007 I have Win2000 on a pair of SATA drives in Raid 0 format, and Ubuntu Linux on an IDE drive on the cables from the IDE ports on the m/. board. I can boot Windows by setting the m/bopard bios to boot scsi first. I can boot Linux by setting the m/board bios to boot HD0. I would like a more elegant way of doing this. Can I custom write a Windows boot.ini file to "see" the Linux intallation and boot it as a menu option? Currently my boot.ini looks like this, how would you add in Linux? Thanks. If that wouldn't work what SIMPLE options are available please? [boot loader] timeout=10 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted January 8, 2007 Share Posted January 8, 2007 I'm not sure that you can use the window boot loader to pull up linux.. In the past I used something like boot magic which did, and gave you a nice little front end GUI. Seem to remember it wasn't OVERLY difficult to configure.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thorin Posted January 8, 2007 Share Posted January 8, 2007 From linux you should just be able to do... dd if=/dev/hda2 of=/root/linux.bin bs=512 count=1 Substituting /dev/hda2 for whatever your IDE drive with linux on is, and change the /root/ bit to wherever you want to save the file. This should create a copy of the boot sector. Then copy this file to the root of your C drive and put the following at the end of your boot.ini file. c:\linux.bin="Linux" Should work... I think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted January 8, 2007 Share Posted January 8, 2007 Some options here as well... but I've not tried the software on here myself so I can't comment... http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/downloads/bootmagic_software/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thorin Posted January 8, 2007 Share Posted January 8, 2007 You shouldn't need bootmagic or anything like that as the windows boot manager should be able to handle it all. The alternative would be to install the linux grub boot manager on the windows drive and configure that to boot windows as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DamanC Posted January 8, 2007 Share Posted January 8, 2007 Chris, with the amount of IT related questions i have come to the conclusion that you are building a death star. Is this true? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted January 8, 2007 Share Posted January 8, 2007 Chris, with the amount of IT related questions i have come to the conclusion that you are building a death star. Is this true? :rlol: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thorin Posted January 8, 2007 Share Posted January 8, 2007 It'll handle better than that piece of crap vader built. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Wilson Posted January 8, 2007 Author Share Posted January 8, 2007 From linux you should just be able to do... dd if=/dev/hda2 of=/root/linux.bin bs=512 count=1 Substituting /dev/hda2 for whatever your IDE drive with linux on is, and change the /root/ bit to wherever you want to save the file. This should create a copy of the boot sector. Then copy this file to the root of your C drive and put the following at the end of your boot.ini file. c:\linux.bin="Linux" Should work... I think. Right, firstly, sorry for so many daft questions, but once I get a bee in my bonnet I get pretty wrapped up in something. Having now got Windows 2000 and Ubuntu working, albeit with me changing the m/board bios boot order to boot either one, I am detrmined to add them to Windows boot loader. Now, Thorins way looks the most user friendly, but I can't get the dd lark to work in Linux. I have now got a utility to read Linux files in Windows, can I do anything from the OS I am happy working in? Or do I have to use all this cryptic mumbo jumbo in Linux itself? What I'd really like to do is e-mail the required file to someone that knows ehat the hell they are about, have them do what's necessary, and them e-mail it back to me to put in C:\ Is that possible? I can edit boot.ini OK Thanks everyone. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thorin Posted January 9, 2007 Share Posted January 9, 2007 Don't think you'll be able to get the boot sector off the linux drive from windows but there may be some tool to do it I don't know. Why didn't the dd command work chris? Any error message? If you don't know what your IDE drive is (thinking about it if it's the only IDE drive and a single partition of linux it's probably /dev/hda1) then I think using the df command (disk space free) should list what drive it is. To run the command you'll probably need to be root, as you're using ubuntu try... sudo dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/home/yourusernamehere/linux.bin bs=512 count=1 ...as one command from a terminal shell (substituting your account name), it should then ask you for a password, just enter your default password and it should save the file in your home folder. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Wilson Posted January 9, 2007 Author Share Posted January 9, 2007 Hi, thanks for sticking with me on this. I tried this last night, found which drive linux was on, logged on as true root, and created the file on a removable drive. I then booted Windows and copied the file to C:\ I called it linux.bin I rebooted, and the Windows boot loader saw the added string and *something* happened. I got a sort of purply coloured screen with a white flashing - cursor top left. That's it though, no boot. I used the df command to double check i was copying from the right drive and partition, and triple checked it had the boot folder in it. So close.... Will the Windows install being on 2 SATA drives in Raid0 and Linux being on an IDE drive matter> Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thorin Posted January 9, 2007 Share Posted January 9, 2007 Will the Windows install being on 2 SATA drives in Raid0 and Linux being on an IDE drive matter> Shouldn't do but I've just thought... When you select to boot from your IDE (linux) drive, your pc probably see's that as the first hard drive (hda1). But then when you swap it round to boot from SATA it will then see that as the first drive and the IDE drive might then be hdc1 or something and so isn't booting properly... maybe. Easiest would probably be to install the grub bootloader onto your SATA drive and confirgure that to boot into windows too... but I've not done that before other than when letting the linux installer do it at install time. I'll have a look later and see if it's easy enough to do, I don't want to trash your master boot record so you can't boot into windows! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Wilson Posted January 9, 2007 Author Share Posted January 9, 2007 What if I copy the file that I copied with the DD command from EVERY drive? Would that work or bugger things? My fear too is corrupting the MBR, although I have made a Windows reapair disk, but i don't know if that will fix a trashed MBR, too?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thorin Posted January 10, 2007 Share Posted January 10, 2007 What if I copy the file that I copied with the DD command from EVERY drive? Would that work or bugger things? My fear too is corrupting the MBR, although I have made a Windows reapair disk, but i don't know if that will fix a trashed MBR, too?? Don't think that would work. The repair disk should fix MBR though. Have a look at this http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Linux+Win9x+Grub-HOWTO/proc.html If you set your pc to boot from linux then edit /boot/grub/grub.conf to add a window boot bit in that... title Windows 98 map (hd0,0) (hd0,2) map (hd0,2) (hd0,0) rootnoverify (hd0,2) chainloader +1 ...the hd0 bits will be different on your pc though, can you post the details of your partitions? ("fdisk -l" as root I think) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thorin Posted January 10, 2007 Share Posted January 10, 2007 oh and your current grub.conf might be handy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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