Installing grub to dual boot

[Mike Reinehr]

On Friday 10 June 2005 10:57 am, Brad De Vries wrote:
> On 6/10/05, Mike Reinehr <cmr at amsent.com> wrote:
> > On Friday 10 June 2005 08:15 am, Brad De Vries wrote:
> > > Everyone/Anyone, I could use some assistance here.  I'll start with a
> > > little history to make the current state and desired direction a bit
> > > clearer:
> > >
> > > 1) Got a laptop with win2000 pro from work with a 20GB HD formatted
> > > FAT32. 2) Ran the disk defragment and error checking tools so
> > > everything was "clean." 3) Booted Knoppix and successfully ran "parted"
> > > to reduce the FAT32 partition from 20GB to 10GB.
> > > 4) System failed to boot win2000 due to error "NTLDR is missing."
> > > Figured I'd fix that later.
> > > 5) Installed Fedora Core 3 into the newly freed up 10GB.
> > > 6) System booted fine into FC3 and the crowd went wild.
> > > 7) Verified the grub.conf had an option to the win2000 side and
> > > rebooted. 8) Chose the win2000 option from the grub menu but it failed
> > > to boot due to "NTLDR is missing" error.
> > > 9) After much googling, hunting, and trying I was able to fix the
> > > win2000 boot problem but in doing so overwrote grub from the MBR.
> > > 10) Figured that since the original problem (see step 4) came from
> > > changing the disk partition size, all I'd have to do is boot the linux
> > > side and run grub-install.
> > > 11) I've booted from the FC3 disk in rescue mode and Knoppix and
> > > neither will successfully run "grub-install /dev/hda2".  The command
> > > hangs.
> > >
> > > So the current state is that I can boot win2000 fine (hda1,) I have
> > > FC3 installed (hda2) but I can't re-install grub so that I can boot
> > > either O/S.
> > >
> > > What I'd like is to have grub appear at boot time and allow me to
> > > choose either FC3 or win2000.  How do I re-install grub to allow that
> > > to happen?
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > > Brad.
> >
> > Brad,
> >
> > >From the GRUB Manual:
> >
> > 3.3 Installing GRUB using grub-install
> >
> >         _Caution:_ This procedure is definitely deprecated, because there
> > are several possibilities that your computer can be unbootable.
> >
> > Grab a copy of the GRUB Manual & read parts 3, 3.1 & 3.2 which will
> > describe how to create a GRUB boot floppy & then install GRUB to the MBR.
> >
> > Cheers!
> >
> > cmr
>
> Mike, I appreciate the "read more" comments and will continue to do so
> but I am unable to follow-through with your second suggestion.  I
> can't create a bootable floppy because the laptop has either a CD or
> the floppy drive installed at any given time and I need the CD to
> boot.  I've never tried removing the CD drive while the system is
> running and installing the floppy drive but I can't image that would
> be good.
>
> Once I get back home where I have other Linux machines, I'll be able
> to create a bootable floppy.  I am curious however, what would it do
> differently that booting from CD doesn't allow?
>
> Brad

I don't think that it really makes a difference whether you have booted from a 
floppy or a CD. The gist of paragraph 3.3 was the danger or running 
grub-install from a "live" system.

I apologize for my comment sounding like a RTFM. I really was referencing the 
paragraphs because they were rather lengthy to quote & I was too lazy to 
paraphrase them. The important part was in 3.2, Installing GRUB natively, 
because it provides you with the individual commands which are used in 
setting up the MBR. Install-grub is just a shell script incorporating these 
"native" commands. That way you can see where the problem is.

cmr

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