Hi,
VMWare is working so well on my new desktop machine that I'm
finally progressing toward getting my laptop to dual boot. Gentoo is
completely installed and ready to go but I've not yet installed
grub/grub-static.
What I'd like to understand is what's the best way for me to set up
grub-static on this machine so as to be VERY sure I won't stop Windows
Vista from dual booting. I want to remove Vista later in favor of
possibly XP running in XPWare, but for now I NEED Vista to absolutely
work for the next few days until I prove VMWare works on this machine.
As is typical for these sorts of things the disk partitions look a
bit confused bet they make historical sense. The disk shipped with two
partitions - sda1 & sda2. sda1 is the Vista installation, and it
covered the whole drive except for the last 7GB which is a restore
partition that you can run if the main install gets hosed. I shrunk
the Vista partition on BOTH the front and back sides to make room for
Gentoo. Now I have this:
sda3 - 100MB primary ext2 partition at start of drive. Empty and can
be used for boot.
sda1 - Vista
sda4 - extended partition residing between sda1 & sda2
sda5 - logical - swap
sda6 - logical - ext3 - LABEL=myroot - main Gentoo install is done
sda7 - FAT32 - empty and can be deleted
sda8 - logical - ext2 - empty and can be used for boot
sda2 - rescue partition
Now, I want to go slow at this and try to understand it because the
other machine I just built didn't boot Windows after I installed grub
and I cannot have that happen this time if at all possible.
So:
1) Is this layout acceptable or should I move anything around before
installing grub-static.
2) Would it be better to use the Primary sda3 or the logical sda8 for
the boot partition? Or does it not matter?
3) When I get around to actually installing grub is it going to go on
a partition or in the MBR? I think it should go on the boot partition
but I'm unclear how the system then finds grub to execute grub.conf
and eventually get to Windows.
Thanks,
Mark
livecd ~ # fdisk /dev/sda
The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 9729.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)
Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x6d56ef53
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 14 5112 40957717+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 8874 9729 6875820 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 5113 8873 30210232+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 5113 5367 2048256 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 5368 8548 25551351 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 8555 8873 2562336 b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda8 8549 8554 48163+ 83 Linux
Partition table entries are not in disk order
Command (m for help):
VMWare is working so well on my new desktop machine that I'm
finally progressing toward getting my laptop to dual boot. Gentoo is
completely installed and ready to go but I've not yet installed
grub/grub-static.
What I'd like to understand is what's the best way for me to set up
grub-static on this machine so as to be VERY sure I won't stop Windows
Vista from dual booting. I want to remove Vista later in favor of
possibly XP running in XPWare, but for now I NEED Vista to absolutely
work for the next few days until I prove VMWare works on this machine.
As is typical for these sorts of things the disk partitions look a
bit confused bet they make historical sense. The disk shipped with two
partitions - sda1 & sda2. sda1 is the Vista installation, and it
covered the whole drive except for the last 7GB which is a restore
partition that you can run if the main install gets hosed. I shrunk
the Vista partition on BOTH the front and back sides to make room for
Gentoo. Now I have this:
sda3 - 100MB primary ext2 partition at start of drive. Empty and can
be used for boot.
sda1 - Vista
sda4 - extended partition residing between sda1 & sda2
sda5 - logical - swap
sda6 - logical - ext3 - LABEL=myroot - main Gentoo install is done
sda7 - FAT32 - empty and can be deleted
sda8 - logical - ext2 - empty and can be used for boot
sda2 - rescue partition
Now, I want to go slow at this and try to understand it because the
other machine I just built didn't boot Windows after I installed grub
and I cannot have that happen this time if at all possible.
So:
1) Is this layout acceptable or should I move anything around before
installing grub-static.
2) Would it be better to use the Primary sda3 or the logical sda8 for
the boot partition? Or does it not matter?
3) When I get around to actually installing grub is it going to go on
a partition or in the MBR? I think it should go on the boot partition
but I'm unclear how the system then finds grub to execute grub.conf
and eventually get to Windows.
Thanks,
Mark
livecd ~ # fdisk /dev/sda
The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 9729.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)
Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x6d56ef53
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 14 5112 40957717+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 8874 9729 6875820 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 5113 8873 30210232+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 5113 5367 2048256 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 5368 8548 25551351 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 8555 8873 2562336 b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda8 8549 8554 48163+ 83 Linux
Partition table entries are not in disk order
Command (m for help):