/boot in first 1024 sectors?

TheBaronTheBaron Austin, TX
edited July 2003 in Science & Tech
trying to have a 160 gig winXP pro part and a 30 gig redhat 9 part

does my boot partition need to be in the first 1024 sectors of my drive? i used partition magic and cleared the rear 30 gigs of a 200gig wd2000jb running off a promise ata controller, but when redhat finishes installation (told it to automatically utilize all free space, and put the boot loader on the first sector of /hde2, using GRUB or LILO) the boot loader wont run and the boot disk it created wont work either. so i tried using partition magic again and putting the free space for the boot partition at the beginning of the drive. it then gave me some message about the partitions tables begin improperly referenced because of incorrectly read bios geometry... or something along those lines. it said it could be ignored, but i didn't try that yet. will putting the linux partitions here solve my boot loader problem?

i have currently reformed all my free space into one big 190 gig partition, i'd like to split it up again once i know how to get this working :-/

Comments

  • TheBaronTheBaron Austin, TX
    edited July 2003
    bump!
  • kanezfankanezfan sunny south florida Icrontian
    edited July 2003
    install windwos first, then install linux and install the boot loader on hda1 when it asks. it doens't matter if linux is on the last 10 GBs or wherever you put it (at least in my experience) as long as you put the boot loader on hda1. Just make sure that during the installation you tell linux that winows exists and which partition it is in, otherwise the installer will install grub and the only entry will be for linux and then you'll come in here crying that you can't boot windows anymore.
  • TheBaronTheBaron Austin, TX
    edited July 2003
    well right so you're saying the boot loader needs to be on /hda1.

    i currently have a huge NTFS partition on /hda1, so that is not an option unless i shift that partition around, which is my main question. if i move my NTFS partition and put the boot partition first, that should solve the problem yes?
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited July 2003
    Sorry, it is a mix of issues like this that leave me with RH on one HD, XP on another.

    RH likes 80 Gig to work with pre-9.0 as max. 9.0 non-enterprise kernel like ~90 Gig outside max. 9.0 Enterprise kernel is what you want, Ido not own Enterprise Workstation at this time.

    While you can have Linux first, and XP last and you can get it to work, it massively limps versus separate HDs. What you cannot have unless wither linux or PM does ALL the partitioning is Primary Linux, XP in Extended, more primary. Mixing a PM and a RH install usually results in
    PM choking sometime down the line or RH not liking the way PM numbers partitions (in essence, they number differently, and RH thinks the part numbers have changed after PM has played with the part structure and cannot find parts of itself as a result)-- if PM does not choke, I suggst going back to Windows only on that drive.

    While people have indeed had Linux and XP working and they work to a degree, XP keeps trying to resolve the part table and see what is on parts it has no business looking at and cannot see properly.
    That is why XP runs slow when Linux is installed on same HD. Slackware and Mandrake will run fine on separate HDs also, again XP tends to try and figure out what else is there and take up operating time doing it-- less so than if the XP stuff and Linux stuff are jumbled.

    I can run either\or by having either XP or Linux in computer using HD trays, XP is happy as a clam in NorthEast Coast mud. One other HD is used for common stored stuff used by both O\Ss, it is always slave drive-- and is FAT32 partitions.

    I went through about 20 Linux installs just trying this kind of stuff out. The one on the separate HD has run since Mandrek 9.1 arrived.

    FYI, I used Ranish to recover my XP a few times before making sure it had its own HD. My advice is to back up XP first.
  • TheBaronTheBaron Austin, TX
    edited July 2003
    as an afterthought, browsing through the redhat knowledge base i noticed that i had not enabled the "force lba32" option, which is required for the redhat boot loader to be past the first 528 megs of my hd, i guess i'll be trying again later (but i want linux at the rear end of my drive!) if this doesn't work, i'll just go salvage a small hd
Sign In or Register to comment.