grub master boot record problem
Bear with me on this one... I have 3 hard drives, hda is a ntfs drive
for extra space on windows, hdb is supposed to be a debian etch drive...
And the kicker, sda is the windows drive with the master boot record.
When I install debian testing it see's windows on sda but installs the
mbr on hda. (the extra ntfs drive that is nothing more than extra
space). I figure, no big deal, it should still be able to call sda for
windows and hdb for linux even if its there. Nope, it won't boot the
SATA windows drive (sda) but it boots hdb (debian) just fine. So I
figure, ok.... grub-install /dev/sda. But instead of working it starts
up giving me this
GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB.... (to infinity, it just
keeps going forever)
So of course now windows doesn't boot anymore so I boot to the xp cd and
fixmbr... which also stuffs it on hda with the RETARDED F6 YOU HAVE TO
GO TO A MUSEUM TO GET A 1.44 MB FLOPPY DRIVE TO LOAD SATA DRIVERS FOR
WINDOWS AT BOOT TIME. (yes, i think that was ill thought out for
something written from 2000-2003). So whatever... I unhook all of the
other drives and fixmbr again to fix the problem.
Now that is fine and all, but now i'm right back where i began....
except with ntloader on hda instead of grub because windows wanted it on
hda more than sda too. Which is fine, i can just grub-install /dev/hda
with a rescue disk to fix that one too.
So if no matter what I do, its always going to install the MBR on hda if
it has a choice with both SATA and ATA drives in the same system. How do
I get around something like this? I just want the mbr on sda so grub can
boot both drives. Or am I going about this all wrong
/dev/hda (ntfs windows extra space)
/dev/hdb (ex3 linux)
/dev/sda (ntfs windows drive with MBR)
Any suggestions?
-Mike
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