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Re: grub/dual-boot problem



On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 15:58:12 -0500
Alex Malinovich <demonbane@the-love-shack.net> wrote:
>
> Based on the partition listing you gave in your original message, grub
> should be set up as follows:
> 
> Windows: root (hd0,0)
> Debian:  root (hd0,2)
> 
> Keep in mind that in grub, partition 1 is actually 0, 2 is 1, 3 is 2,
> and so on.

Yes, but I still don't think you've got it quite right.  He had XP on the
first partition, /boot on the second, / on the third, and swap on the
fourth.  To grub, those are partitions 0, 1, 2 and 3 respectively, just
as you say.  However, the partition that you give grub with the "root"
command is NOT intended to be the root partition of the booted operating
system.  It's where grub should look to find the kernel.  If he has /boot
in the second partition on his hard drive, he wants to tell grub that
it should look in that second partition for the kernel:

root (hd0,1)

and then, to get linux to use the correct partition (the third one)
for the root filesystem of the booted OS, one passes that information
to the kernel as an argument, e.g.

root (hd0,1)
kernel vmlinuz root=/dev/hda3
boot

or something like that.

Not that this solves the poster's problem at all; but I just wanted to
make sure that people didn't get the wrong idea about that "root"
grub command.


> Since you said that the computer goes directly into Windows, I'm
> wondering if grub is kicking in at all? If you see "GRUB" on the screen
> when you boot, you can try holding left shift while booting to get the
> boot menu. The other possibility is that Windows overwrote your
> bootloader. This happened to me before, but you said you installed
> Debian AFTER you installed Windows, so this shouldn't be an issue.

I agree that it shouldn't be an issue; but that's very much what
this smells like.  If he's not seeing "GRUB" or even briefly seeing
the menu he's set up for grub, I bet the copy of grub in the MBR
got trashed by Windows somehow.

-c

-- 
Chris Metzler			cmetzler@speakeasy.snip-me.net
		(remove "snip-me." to email)

"As a child I understood how to give; I have forgotten this grace since I
have become civilized." - Chief Luther Standing Bear

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