alright, I am trying to dual boot win2k and redhat 7.3. I have both successfully installed, but I am running into a problem booting into linux.

I followed these instructions to make linux a choice in the nt loader...

boot into linux with linux boot disk
insert windows boot disk into a:
dd if=/dev/hda2 of=/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1
mount -t msdos /dev /fd0 /mnt
umount /mnt

reboot into windows
copy bootsect.lnx to the c: drive
add c:\bootsect.lnx="Linux" to the boot.ini file
restart machine and get OS choices

this works until i try to boot into linux. when I choose Linux from the nt loader, it just sits at a black screen with a blinking cursor (windows boots fine), with no drive activity. I can boot into linux if I use the boot disk I created during installation.

My setup is an 80gb disk (60gb ntfs partition, the rest of the space for linux). any ideas? I figured this would be the place to ask a linux question.

thanks,

Jeremy

Are you sure that you copied the boot sector from the correct partition?

Boot using your linux floppy and run ``fdisk /dev/hda''. Press `p'. It'll show you your current partition table. In the boot column, you'll see one of the partitions will have an asterisk. This is the one that the computer will try to boot on startup. It's probably your Windows partition. Make a note of it.

Does /dev/hda2 appear to be the Linux partition that you want to boot from? If so, try setting it to be the bootable partition (you might have to clear the flag from the current bootable partition) and hit `w' to save and exit, then reboot. If not, try a partition that does look right. If you can get your machine to boot directly into Linux, you're most of the way there. In fact, that's pretty much a prerequisite to get dual-booting to work.

Once you get Linux booting directly, boot off of your Linux floppy again and set the bootable partition back to what it was before. Then perform the steps you already listed again, replacing /dev/hda2 with whatever partition you set as bootable that got Linux to boot directly.

That should work. You might have trouble getting Linux to boot directly at all. You'll then have to look into getting your Linux boot loader (likely lilo or grub) fixed. That can be complicated, but this should at least point you in the right direction.

thanks for the quick reply. i gave a shot, and unless I am doing something wrong (which is very possible), still no luck. here is the partition table. it is pretty obvious that hda2 is the incorrect device, but the other ones don't seem to work either.

/dev/hda1 * 1 7649 61440561 7 hpfs/ntfs
/dev/hda2 9665 9729 522112+ f win95 ext'd (lba)
/dev/hda3 7650 7655 48195 83 linux
/dev/hda4 7656 9664 16137292+ 83 linux
/dev/hda5 9665 9729 522081 83 linux swap

I am assuming that I should be using hda4. does this shed any light on the situation?

thanks,
Jeremy

I could also be hda3. Did you try that one? (Red Hat used to, and may still, create a /boot filesystem that it, well, boots from. This was to avoid the 1024 cylinder BIOS bug. I'd guess that that's what your hda3 is, but I can't tell from just that.)

Were you able to get Linux to boot directly? If you tried both hda3 and hda4 as the bootable partition and neither one worked, then you're going to have to reload your boot loader. This is not quite as difficult as it sounds, and isn't all that uncommon, as Windows likes to overwrite it.

But it's kinda involved, so let's get a response to the above before I get into it.

alright...hda3 confuses me. i actually get somewhere using that, but it puts me to a grub prompt. i thought i chose to install lilo, but whatever. typing help gives me a list of commands, but none of them make much sense to me.

thanks for all the help so far. slowly but surely it is getting there.

Jeremy

I have used this method and had it work successfully many times (edit: with lilo most times but with grub too). Basically what you needed to do when you install the boot sector is to install it to /boot (/dev/hda3 it would seem in your install) and not the MBR.

I assume you are booting from a floppy into RH. If so, let's see your /etc/grub.conf. Reloading the bootloader is no chore at all.

Ok, you're getting there. The fact that you get a grub shell indicates that /dev/hda3 is the boot partition of your linux distro.

Try the following in the grub shell, and see if anything boots:

root (hd0,4)
kernel /bzImage root=/dev/hda4
boot


If that fails, also try;

kernel vmlinuz root=/dev/hda4

or

kernel vmlinux root=/dev/hda4

ok, here goes

root (hd0,4) gives "Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x82" (I assume that is a zero, not the letter o)

kernel /bzImage root=/dev/hda4 gives "Error 17: Cannot mount selected partition"

Runnint the vmlinu* variations gives me the same thing (I assume I should be running them with the / in front of vm. leaving the / out gives another error about filename not being an absolute pathname or blocklist)

here is grub.conf

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd0,2)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hda4
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hda3
default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,2)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.18-3)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.18-3 ro root=/dev/hda4
initrd /initrd-2.4.18-3.img

except that everything underneath the line "Title Red Hat" is indented. not sure if that formatting will show up in the post.

I'd try using the 'find' command to see exactly where everything is. For example, if the name of your kernel is correct in your grub.conf, try:

find /vmlinuz-2.4.18-3

Seems like you're close...

For reference, the grub manual can be found here.