Re: Working on making a dual boot again, WinXP & Ubuntu
- From: Grant <bugsplatter@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2006 09:26:30 +1100
On Fri, 24 Feb 2006 12:05:12 -0800, "Timothy Daniels" <TDaniels@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
How is the "selection" of Linux done? Is its partition
specified by the "active" flag in the partition table and thus
"selected" by the MBR,
I run dual boot like this, primarily windoze boxen default to
windoze, primarily linux default to loading linux. In any case
I let MSFT own the MBR and pass control to lilo via active flag.
My question is about
where the point is in the boot procedure where it becomes
MS- specific or Linux-specific.
Depends which OS wrote the MBR, run winxp recovery console then
fixboot, fixmbr, and MSFT owns the MBR (reinstall windoze takes
over the MBR too).
Run lilo with 'boot = /dev/hda' parameter and it writes a lilo
MBR, similarly for grub (I don't use grub).
If you let MSFT own the MBR, you may change the active flag from
whichever OS is running -- people who push lilo or grub MBR bitch
about MSFT installer 'cos they need to boot a recovery CD to repair
their GNU/Linux after repairing or installing windoze.
Related:
To discover which OS owns the MBR you could do:
lilo (Slackware only box):
grant@deltree:~$ dd if=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1 |xxd |head -2
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
0000000: faeb 2101 b401 4c49 4c4f 1605 00ab e943 ..!...LILO.....C
0000010: 0000 0000 6771 1f43 7799 ef28 8100 8060 ....gq.Cw..(...`
ntloader:
root@tosh:/home/grant# dd if=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1 |xxd
....
0000120: 32e4 8a56 00cd 13eb d661 f9c3 496e 7661 2..V.....a..Inva
0000130: 6c69 6420 7061 7274 6974 696f 6e20 7461 lid partition ta
0000140: 626c 6500 4572 726f 7220 6c6f 6164 696e ble.Error loadin
0000150: 6720 6f70 6572 6174 696e 6720 7379 7374 g operating syst
0000160: 656d 004d 6973 7369 6e67 206f 7065 7261 em.Missing opera
0000170: 7469 6e67 2073 7973 7465 6d00 0000 0000 ting system.....
See: http://bugsplatter.mine.nu/test/boxen/tosh/lilo.conf
for one way to triple boot Slackware, Windoze, FreeBSD from MSFT MBR.
Ubuntu installer wants to take over MBR. I dislike the attitude
that grub and only grub is the answer -- grub has serious problems
in dual-boot boxen as windoze programs may use boot cylinder unused
sectors 2..63 which is where, surprise, grub 1st stage resides.
I see a problem with grub there.
Grant.
--
.... The computer scientist, who had listened to all of this said,
"Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?"
.
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