Selecting boot drive from BIOS

[Steve]

Hi,

Here's a strange question, that I wonder if anyone has tried...

I have 2 physical drives. Currently XP is on the master. Can I set my
BIOS to boot from the slave before the master, where I would have
Fedora installed? This would negate any need to configure GRUB (ie.
would not need to put it on the master's MBR). Then, if I needed to
boot into XP, just reboot and modify the BIOS...

Thanks for any help or opinions...

[Pybe]

You would need to install grub to /dev/hdx where x is the 2nd hd.

I assume this would work never thought about it really.

Pybe

On Fri, 1 Oct 2004 10:35:11 -0400, Steve  wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Here's a strange question, that I wonder if anyone has tried...
>
> I have 2 physical drives. Currently XP is on the master. Can I set my
> BIOS to boot from the slave before the master, where I would have
> Fedora installed? This would negate any need to configure GRUB (ie.
> would not need to put it on the master's MBR). Then, if I needed to
> boot into XP, just reboot and modify the BIOS...
>
> Thanks for any help or opinions...
>
> --
> fedora-list mailing list
> [e-mail]
> To unsubscribe: http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list

[Paul Howarth]

Steve wrote:
> Here's a strange question, that I wonder if anyone has tried...
>
> I have 2 physical drives. Currently XP is on the master. Can I set my
> BIOS to boot from the slave before the master, where I would have
> Fedora installed? This would negate any need to configure GRUB (ie.
> would not need to put it on the master's MBR). Then, if I needed to
> boot into XP, just reboot and modify the BIOS...

An alternative approach would be to install grub on the slave and chain-load 
grub from the XP bootloader (you'd get a menu with XP and Linux on it). No 
need to fiddle with the BIOS and the XP bootloader stays on the MBR. One way 
of doing this is by using "bootpart" - see http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm

Paul.

[Filippos Klironomos]

> An alternative approach would be to install grub on the slave and chain-load
> grub from the XP bootloader (you'd get a menu with XP and Linux on it). No
> need to fiddle with the BIOS and the XP bootloader stays on the MBR. One way
> of doing this is by using "bootpart" - see http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm

Yep, that's the bet approach since it doesn't break anything and
incase you need to rebuild XP you don't have to worry about possible
MBR corruption problems if XP isn't very gentle with it.

This is the way I dual boot on my laptop. Just install GRUB on the
slave driver when you are given the option and leave the MBR alone
(Windows XP has to has to has to have it!). Then boot to linux and
give the following command:

dd if=/dev/hdX of=/tmp/bootrecord.bin bs=512 count=1

This will create the file /tmp/bootrecord.bin which has the 512 bytes
of GRUB. Copy that to your win XP dir most likely 'C:' and edit
boot.ini file in the same dir and add at the end of it:

C:\bootrecord.bin="Fedora Core 2"

Save and exit and you should be all set! Here is a link:

http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux/grub-w2k-HOWTO.html

[Steve]

On Fri, 1 Oct 2004 11:14:29 -0400, Filippos Klironomos
 wrote:
> This is the way I dual boot on my laptop. Just install GRUB on the
> slave driver when you are given the option and leave the MBR alone
> (Windows XP has to has to has to have it!). Then boot to linux and
> give the following command:
>
> dd if=/dev/hdX of=/tmp/bootrecord.bin bs=512 count=1
>
> This will create the file /tmp/bootrecord.bin which has the 512 bytes
> of GRUB. Copy that to your win XP dir most likely 'C:' and edit
> boot.ini file in the same dir and add at the end of it:
>
> C:\bootrecord.bin="Fedora Core 2"
>
> Save and exit and you should be all set! Here is a link:
>
> http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux/grub-w2k-HOWTO.html

Thanks for your very concise instructions! My first question was a
scenario where I would not want to boot to XP very often... but your
idea gives more flexibility.