Re: System with 2 hard-drives
On Wed, Jun 14, 2000 at 03:23:48AM -0400, S. Salman Ahmed wrote:
> >>>>> "PM" == Pat Mahoney <pat7@gmx.net> writes:
> PM> I'm having trouble understanding this, but, um, you're Linux
> PM> fits on a floppy??
> PM>
>
> No, not quite. Its just the boot sector that I am copying to the
> floppy. Frankly, I don't quite understand all the details myself (its
> been a while since I read the NT+Linux HOWTO) but the NT boot loader
> needs the first few bytes/kilobytes of another OS's installation's boot
> sector and then it can boot the other OS.
>
> Once this is done, I copy the debian21.lnx (or whatever) file to my
> primary partition where the NT boot loader has been installed and add an
> entry in c:\boot.ini for the new OS:
>
> c:\debian21.lnx "Debian GNU/Linux 2.1"
>
> and viola you can use the NT boot loader to boot Linux. The downsides of
> this approach are:
>
> (1) its easy to hose the NT boot loader (and your precious NT
> installation) if you make a mistake during the Lilo installation since
> the NT boot loader is very sensitive to changes.
>
> (2) every time a new kernel is compiled, the procedure has to be
> repeated so the NT boot loader knows about the new kernel.
>
> See the NT+Linux HOWTO for more details, and a better explanation!
>
> PM>
> PM> I am not familiar with NT's bootloader, but if it can do a
> PM> chainload style boot like grub or lilo does then you sould be
> PM> ok.
> PM>
> PM> 1) Install lilo or preferably grub on the mbr of the second
> PM> disk, and configure to boot linux on second disk (you should
> PM> also be able to configure it to boot everything else).
> PM>
> PM> 2) Boot to NT bootloader (after configuring it to boot up second
> PM> drive) and boot second drive.
>
> how would I do step 2 ? I assume that I would follow my own instructions
> on creating a new entry under the NT boot loader ?
Bios boots NT bootloader, NT boots bootloader (grub) on second drive
(if NT bootloader can do this).
> PM>
> PM> 3) Boot linux from grub on second drive.
> PM>
> PM> 4) Fall in love with grub and install it on first disk.
> PM>
>
> Can you tell me a little more about grub ? What does it offer over Lilo
> ?
Grub is a general bootloader. It has a shell which you can use to
boot many kernels (linux, *bsd, hurd, others I suppose). Besides
those, it can boot any kernel that conforms to the "multiboot
standard" which is apparently a new thing because linux and bsd are
not there yet (I think, don't know about hurd). It can also boot
proprietary kernels through the "chainloader."
When you install grub on the mbr, you probably want to have it read a
config file on one of your drives (/boot/grub/menu.lst on the linux
drive; it can read files off any drive).
The menu.lst config file contains the commands that you would type in
at the grub shell and grub parses this and displays an ncurses style
(not sure if it is ncurses or what...) menu that lets you pick
entries from menu.lst.
You can edit menu.lst and grub will recognize changes without having
to reinstall grub (unlike lilo).
The menu entry for NT (it boots NT through the "chainload" thing, the
same way lilo boots windows) looks like this in the example included
with grub:
# For booting Windows NT or Windows95
title Windows NT / Windows 95 boot menu
root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
The (hd0,0) means the first bios device, first slice (partition),
boot sector of that slice ( (hd0,0)/file would name a specific file
as opposed to the boot sector).
Installing grub is a bit confusing, but it comes with an extensive
info file from where most of the above info came from.
Install the grub deb's (it won't mess with anything on its own).
Read its info file and install grub onto a floppy. Make sure grub
can boot NT; then install grub on mbr.
>
> I know that Caldera is using Grub for the OpenLinux. Does Grub do the
> whole Graphical os-selection thing, or is that a Caldera-specific thing
> ?
>
Don't know what Caldera does. See above for my experience with grub.
> Thanks.
>
> --
> Salman Ahmed
> ssahmed AT pathcom DOT com
>
> http://www.pathcom.com/~ssahmed
> GnuPG Key fingerprint = A6DB 6C85 DE5A 33BB E873 E437 58B2 09CD 977B 900B
>
>
Hope that helps
*ps* A while back, there was some discussion of grub on the
debian-hurd list. Grub comes with a stage1 and stage2 file. Stage1
goes on the mbr and stage2 goes in /boot/grub/. One guy in the
discussion was telling grub to use stage2 from
/usr/share/grub/i386-pc/stage2. That's a no no because a grub
upgrade will overwrite that file and break your booting.
I guess the moral is follow the directions exactly.
--
Pat Mahoney <pat7@gmx.net>
He knows not how to know who knows not also how to unknow.
-- Sir Richard Burton
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