teacher Posted May 23, 2004 Share Posted May 23, 2004 According to /.: "It seems Fedora Core doesn't like to boot alongside Windows 2K or XP. According to a bug first reported in February on Fedora's bugzilla site it has a tendency to chew up partition maps making it impossible to dual boot into Windows. No one seems to know quite what is causing the problem and a lot of people are ending up with unbootable machines."Link: http://slashdot.org/articles/04/05/23/1448...tid=110&tid=187Julia Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SonicDragon Posted May 23, 2004 Share Posted May 23, 2004 oh! how strange. thanks for the warning! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peachy Posted May 24, 2004 Share Posted May 24, 2004 Gee, Julia, we must have been reading /. at the same moment. Anyway, I posted my experience with dual-booting XP/Fedora 2 earlier: http://forums.scotsnewsletter.com/index.ph...l=fedora+core+2It didn't bite me.There are some comments that indicate it is kernel 2.6 specific and that it has manifested itself in Mandrake 10. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jodef Posted May 24, 2004 Share Posted May 24, 2004 Well I installed FC2 and am multi booting with Mandrake 10.0 , WinXP (upgraded from Win98).I didn't have any problems with grub install but then my XP install is an upgrade from Win98.I did get a warning during install about an invalid MBR structure or something of the sort but I just ignored it.Peachy : I saw the info on 2.6 and Mandrake 10.0 some even indicating they still had the same problem even though Mandrakesoft indicated it was fixed.I even some mentioning this same problem in Suse9.1.Unfortunately no 100% solution given.Did come across this post from a user might be worth the read: However, FC2 has many other major bugs that I and others have found:- Nvidia drivers don't work (i know it's nvidia's fault, but it's a stumbling block)- As Xorg is in use, ATI drivers are a bitch to install (although if you use google there is a very good howto out there).- The kludge i had to use to get software mixing working (dmix under alsa) was inexcusable. With alsa in 2.6, you'd think by default you'd have software mixing. An OS where I can't listen to XMMS and hear GAIM alerts at the same time is just ludicrous. Even sillier is the fact that GAIM alerts are queued, so when i close XMMS i get a minute solid of notification noises playing. Simultaneous sounds SHOULD work out of the box. Esound and arts are not in the equation any more, as alsa mixing is a much better solution - so why isn't it implemented?- Totem just won't work. G-Streamer broke totally shortly afterwards.- There's no easy way to edit your applications menu, without either SUing, or logging in as root. This seems daft for a multiuser OS like linux. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zox Posted May 24, 2004 Share Posted May 24, 2004 Thanks Julia for heads up.Fortunately I am running Fedora without any issues so far.-It did not trash my XP partition nor any other for that mater.-Even though it is X.org's X server, my ATI has full 3D support "out of box" so to speak, I didn't do anything and it worked like a charm -My Totem works ok-Gstreamer is perfect except I still haven't added mp3 support for Gstreamer so I can only play oggs but in XMMS I play MP3's without problems-For editing applications menu, it was made intentionaly that way as I understand.They have nice intruction how to go and replace one file in oder to get full read-write-edit of menu, they figured it is better to take away that capabillity from inexperienced user while giving all the power to experienced one.I don't care about editing menus as I never do it anyway but I know how to edit it if I need :)There are bunch of other things that were left out or wrong from two reasons, 1st being kernel 2.6 as it is still not 100% bulletproof but they are working on it and second being red Hat pushing them for release even though it was not fully tested nor some bugs fixed but Red Hat needed this release at that time so they basically released Test 3 with couple of fixes as a final.I know that a lot of the people from Fedora community did not take it lightly as they know about bugs no being fixed.Hopefully they will work it out for the next update.Major problem they had is with Firewire.Apparently it is something with kernel 2.6.5 and they said by next update they should have it fixed so you have no firewire support as it is if you are not going to recompile your kernel I have to admit that I am impressed with speed and look of Fedora and at the moment it is my default with big thumbs up Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peachy Posted May 24, 2004 Share Posted May 24, 2004 Well, I installed Fedora Core 2 on a second machine that had two existing drives: In GRUB terms hd01, had Red Hat Linux 7.3 and hd1,2 had Windows XP Pro. In Linux terms, Red Hat 7.3 is /dev/hda1 and Windows XP is /dev/hdg2. Fedora Core 2 was installed in /dev/hda5. GRUB picked up the Windows partition and added it to the menu and I manually added RH7.3 from the GNOME gui tool. Right now, only Fedora will boot from GRUB. So, looks like I've encountered some variation of this bug. But, my setup is bit more complex. It corresponds to the situation mentionned in the links posted that the issue comes up when dual-booting two disks. But, at the same time, it can't boot the other Linux distro on the same disk as Fedora. Another variable is that the XP installation is on a Promise FastTrack TX2 RAID controller (though RAID is currently not setup). Booting from the disk on the Promise controller boots XP as it normally should.So, this is intriguing. Guess I will be doing some detective work. Will post report later... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peachy Posted May 25, 2004 Share Posted May 25, 2004 Okay, fixed the problem with not being able to boot into XP with GRUB and Fedora Core 2. All I had to do was add the map command (twice) and the makeactive command to the /etc/grub.conf configuration file.title Windows map (hd0) (hd1) map (hd1) (hd0) rootnoverify (hd1,2) makeactive chainloader +1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruno Posted May 25, 2004 Share Posted May 25, 2004 Great job Peachy . . . it looks pretty unusual, but if it works . . . . . . . . Will have to bookmark this thread . . . . . who knows that in a few weeks there will be others with the same problem ! Bruno Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peachy Posted May 25, 2004 Share Posted May 25, 2004 The map command tells GRUB to switch drive 0 for drive 1 because some operating systems can only boot if they are drive 0 in a multi-drive setup. In this case, XP was on drive 1. You notice that two map commands were used. This is so that XP will see the Linux drive as drive 1 instead. The makeactive command sets the partition as active for the boot item. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peachy Posted May 26, 2004 Share Posted May 26, 2004 So, this is intriguing. Guess I will be doing some detective work. Will post report later... Inspector Peachy has returned with a positive report! So, multibooters take heed! If you plan on installing Fedora Core 2 know that there is a bug, most likely in the script routine that writes the configuration for the GRUB menu. If you add other OSes from the install screen or in the graphical boot menu config in GNOME, it will write incorrect menu entries in the following cases:1) the script appears to write the menu entries for all other operating systems using the format of rootnoverify (hd0,x)chainloader +1 , where x is the partition of your operating system starting from 0 for the first partition. This will fail for other Linux distros, but not for Windows.2) The above GRUB commands will fail to boot any Linux on another physical disk as well as fail to boot any Windows installations on another disk. To correct for the Windows boot, two map commands must be added to switch the hard drive disk order so that GRUB will think disk 1 is disk 0 and disk 0 is disk 1.To boot another Linux distro properly, the fix is to use the format for normally booting a Linux distro. In other words, the commands should resemble the ones for Fedora Core 2. For example, I had a Red Hat Linux 7.3 installation installed with the /boot partition on /dev/hda1 and the / on /dev/hda2. I was able to get back RH7.3 by editing the /etc/grub.conf file and fixing the Red Hat Linux entry like so: title Red Hat Linuxrootnoverify (hd0,0)chainloader +1 to be title Red Hat Linuxroot (hd0,0)kernel /kernel-2.4.18-3 ro root=/dev/hda2initrd /initrd-2.4.18-3.img .This was verified by running GRUB interactively from a GRUB command prompt. So, my multiboot problems have been fixed and I've seemed to have figured out why it was messed up. This issue was reproduced and resolved on two different systems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zillah Posted February 5, 2006 Share Posted February 5, 2006 (edited) 1- In GRUB terms (hd0,1), had Red Hat Linux 7.3 and hd1,2 had Windows XP Pro. 2- In Linux terms, Red Hat 7.3 is /dev/hda1 and Windows XP is /dev/hdg2.3- Fedora Core 2 was installed in /dev/hda5.Peachy did you mean these partitions below, or you meant something elase,,,please correct my understanding if I misunderstood you.1- Red Hat 7.3 was installed in /dev/hda1------In Grub terms is (hd0,0) not (hd0,1)2- Windows XP was installed in /dev/hdb2-----In Grub terms is (hd1,1) not (hd1,2)3- FC2 was installed in /dev/hda5--------------In Grub terms is (hd0,4) Edited February 5, 2006 by zillah Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peachy Posted February 5, 2006 Share Posted February 5, 2006 zillah,My values are correct because /dev/hda1 has the swap partition at GRUB value (hd0,0). RH7.3 has the / partition at /dev/hda2 and thus GRUB value (h0,1). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zillah Posted February 5, 2006 Share Posted February 5, 2006 My values are correct because /dev/hda1 has the swap partition at GRUB value (hd0,0). RH7.3 has the / partition at /dev/hda2 and thus GRUB value (h0,1).Here is fine.But the value in your post # 6 is different (may be it is typo) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.