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
  • 129 Views
  • 2 Days Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by DMR

Dani AI

Generated

Quick summary for building on 's reply: the sizes you listed strongly suggest a small /boot partition, a swap partition (~512MB) and an 11GB root. GRUB is split between a tiny loader written to the disk (the MBR or a partition boot sector) and the bulk of its files under /boot/grub. If Windows still boots after the RH9 install, either the installer failed to write GRUB into the MBR or GRUB was written into the Linux partition instead of the MBR.

Practical next steps (high level, to follow from the Red Hat rescue environment you were pointed to): have the installer mount your installed system and change into it, then verify /boot contains kernel + initrd and /boot/grub contains stage files and the configuration file. If those files are present but you still boot straight into Windows, reinstall GRUB to the disk MBR. You can do that with the grub-install utility if present (example: grub-install /dev/sda) or by using the legacy GRUB shell to locate the /boot area (find), set GRUB’s root to the correct partition (root (hd0,X)) and run setup (hd0) to write the MBR.

If you prefer to avoid overwriting the Windows MBR while troubleshooting, install GRUB into the Linux partition’s boot sector and add a Windows chainloader stanza to GRUB’s config later. If something goes wrong and you need to restore Windows booting, the Windows Recovery Console can repair the MBR and boot sector; after that you can reinstall GRUB cleanly.

Further reading: the GNU GRUB legacy manual explains the find/root/setup workflow used on older systems like RH9 (). Post the contents of your /boot/grub directory listing and a partition map if you want specific commands and exact values to use.

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.