Member Avatar for z80-2-Risc

Hello,
I tried to find something for me before starting a new thread but every situation is different. Mine is that I am installing Red Hat 9 onto a partition that I already created using Partition Commander. What I have in physical order:
25G NTFS for my W2K
509M who knows - I think I created it for grub or lilo
11G for Linux
103M not sure

Here, I bare my ignorance to all:
1. Startup has to go somewhere physical. I assume sector 0. Can boot software reside anywhere in any partition and get referenced somehow in the boot sector?
2. I already cringed and installed Red Hat, letting it decide partitions and used GRUB. It installed and locked up on a reboot. Before digging out my Windows recovery disk, I powered down and back up and Windows came up fine. Whew!
3. I guess it's on there. I need a Linux boot disk or something. I don't see where install makes one. I only have a writable CD on this machine anyway.

Question: Can I rerun install using Update and get a dual-boot on my system given this partition info?

Thanks,
-- John

  • 2 Contributors
  • 1 Reply
  • 108 Views
  • 2 Days Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by DMR
Member Avatar for DMR

What I have in physical order:
509M who knows - I think I created it for grub or lilo
11G for Linux
103M not sure

Judging from the sizes, I'd guess the 509M partition was created for swap (virtual memory), the 103M partition looks more like the one created for /boot (where, among other things, the Grub or Lilo files would live). The 11G is obviously for the main Linux / (root) partition.

During the Red Hat install, Grub should have detected your Windows install and properly configured itself to dual-boot if you chose to install Grub in the Master Boot Record (MBR), although this doesn't always go the way it should.

If you think Linux actually got installed correctly but just needs to be "fixed", you can boot into rescue mode from the first RH install CD to access Linux. See the following section of Red Hat's Customization Guide for more information:

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-9-Manual/custom-guide/ch-rescuemode.html

Once you've booted into rescue mode and done the "chroot /mnt/sysimage" dance described in the guide, view the contents of your Grub config file and post the contents here:

less /boot/grub/grub.conf

It would also be very helpful to post the output of this command:

fdisk -l

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.