F8/F9 Multiboot question
Dan Thurman
dant at cdkkt.com
Tue Aug 5 15:28:34 UTC 2008
Daniel B. Thurman wrote:
>
> Anne Wilson wrote:
> >
> > On Monday 04 August 2008 18:27:56 Daniel B. Thurman wrote:
> > >
> > > Never mind! I got myself out of the problem!
> > >
> > How? Someone will see this in the archives and will want to know the
> > answer :-)
> >
> > Anne
> >
> ok, fair enough!
>
> I followed Tim's instructions, but did this with Fedora-Live CD:
>
> 1) Boot in Fedora-Live
> + Open Shell Terminal Window
>
> 2) fdisk -l
>
> *** note!!! ***
> + Disk drives are DIFFERENT, not necessarily the same as when booted
> in Fedora!
>
> For example, when you boot in Fedora (the real thing), the 3
> disks for
> me it was:
> /dev/sda - PATA
> /dev/sdb - SATA-1
> /dev/sdc - SATA-2
>
> In Fedora-Live, is displayed as:
> /dev/sdb (PATA)
> /dev/sdc (SATA-2)
> /dev/sdd (SATA-1)
>
> 3) grub
>
> a) find /grub/stage1
> In my case, it showed:
> (hd1,0) - SATA-2 - boot-sys - the next 2 partitions are the NEW
> drive I am trying to construct per Tim's instructions
> (hd1,1) - SATA-2 - boot-f8
> (hd1,2) - SATA-2 - boot-f9
> (hd2,2) - SATA-1 - boot-f8 - this is my original "untouched"
> drive where I started originally. This was the grub I "popped"
>
> b) setup (hd2)
> (grub has installed the MBR and fixed my original drive problem
> - output was similar to Tim's instructions)
>
> c) quit
> d) Reboot - I was able to get my original drive back up and running!)
>
> The new drive I am still working on is:
>
> SATA-2 (750GB)
> ======================
> *** Note *** Actual sizes are not exact!
> /dev/sdc1 - boot-sys (100MB)
> /dev/sdc2 - f8-boot (100MB)
> /dev/sdc3 - f9-boot (100MB)
> /dev/sdc4 - Extended Partition
> /dev/sdc5 - f8-root (175GB)
> /dev/sdc6 - f9-root (175GB)
> /dev/sdc7 - f-App1 (351GB)
> /dev/sdc8 - swap (~5GB) (I have 2GB RAM)
>
I have found in 3b, above: "setup (hd2)", it is the same as if
you used "setup (hd2.0)". I have found that once you have the
partitions for 3 boot directories, boot-sys, boot-f8, and boot-f9,
you can either copy over the existing f8 and/or f9 boot partitions
into the new respective locations (as I did), and as for the boot-sys
partition, I simply copied over my f8 boot partition, and stripped
everything above grub directory.
While you are at it, you can also copy over your root-f8 and root-f9
files into the root-f8 and root-f9 partitions as well. How you get
these copied over successfully has mixed results (cp -a, tar, GParted),
but if you rather use a true clone program, try CloneZilla
As a tool for tracking/verification, in each of the 3 partitions,
I created bread-crumbs as empty files: BOOT-SYS, BOOT-F8, BOOT-F9 in
each of the respective directories so that I can ensure that these
directories are easily identifiable and not mistaken for something else
along the way.
At this point, I have also found that I needed to run grub setup on each
of these 3 boot partitions; similar to above instructions:
Boot up the system, if you cannot get into a grub-display at boot-time,
you may need to boot in Fedora-Live or Rescue CD. If you can get a
grub splash-screen at bootup (w/o CDs), the simply hit 'c' for command.
# grub
grub> find /grub/stage1 (note where your 3 partitions are)
(hd0.0) <-- boot-sys (/dev/sdb1)
(hd0,1) <-- boot-f8 (/dev/sdb2)
(hd0,2) <-- boot-f9 (/dev/sdb3)
(hd1,2)
NOTE! Grub saw things differently again. I am assuming that the appearance
of this new order, may have to do with the device.maps that I had before
from
the original f8 installation, and for whatever the reasons, it pays to
make SURE
you are "in sync" with what grub actually reports.
Remember about leaving breadcrumbs earlier? If you are not sure which
drive is which, you can try searching in this way:
grub> find BOOT-SYS
(hd0.0)
grub> find BOOT-F8
(hd0.1)
grub> find BOOT-F9
(hd0.2)
Note: Now we can go ahead to create grub-bootable partitions
for each of the 3 partitions we created earlier:
grub> root (hd0,0)
grub> setup (hd0,0)
<results are shown here>
grub> root (hd0,1)
grub> setup (hd0,1)
<results are shown here>
grub> root (hd0,2)
grub> setup (hd0,2)
<results are shown here>
grub> quit
Now it is time to edit the grub.conf files for each of the 3 partitions.
=========[boot.sys]============
# 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 (hd0,0)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sda5
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
#hiddenmenu
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
default=saved
timeout=5
title Fedora 8 SDB1
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1
savedefault
title Fedora 9
rootnoverify (hd0,2)
chainloader +1
savedefault
title Windows 2000
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1
savedefault
title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd1,1)
chainloader +1
savedefault
title Windows Vista
rootnoverify (hd1,2)
chainloader +1
savedefault
Note: You see the "SDB1" tag? I wanted to make sure
that I am actually using the correct boot partition and not
from some other boot partition from somewhere else. I
ran into this trap before - and the reasons has to do with
the way grub finds files (in a different order), mis-configured
boot-grub files, and/or /etc/fstab files and it becomes much
easier to track and identify things by leaving bread-crumbs
to aide in debugging, IMO.
=========[boot.f8]============
# 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 (hd0,0)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sda5
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
#hiddenmenu
splashimage=(hd0,1)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
default=saved
timeout=5
title Fedora 8 (2.6.25.11-60.fc8) SDB2
root (hd0,1)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.25.11-60.fc8 ro root=LABEL=root-f8 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.25.11-60.fc8.img
savedefault
=========[boot.f9]============
# 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 (hd0,0)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sda6
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
default=saved
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,2)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
#hiddenmenu
title Fedora 9 (2.6.25.11-97.fc9.i686) SDB3
root (hd0,2)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.25.11-97.fc9.i686 ro root=LABEL=root-f9 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.25.11-97.fc9.i686.img
savedefault
=========[root.f8]============
# Drive: /dev/sdb5
# --------------
LABEL=root-f8 / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=boot-f8 /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
LABEL=f-swap swap swap defaults 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
=========[root.f9]============
# Drive: /dev/sdb6
# --------------
LABEL=root-f9 / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=boot-f9 /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
LABEL=f-swap swap swap defaults 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
Now you can test this all out:
1) Make sure when you get the first boot-splash screen,
it looks like what you expected but also pay attemtion
to the bread-crumbs - make sure they are what they are
supposed to be.
2) If you proceed to a fedora-8 or fedora-9 OS, again check
the bread-crumbs!
3) Finally, make sure that you pay attention to the very beginning
of the boot process; particularly where drives are mounted, verified,
and checked - make sure they are the correct ones! It took me a long
time to figure out why I was consistently getting my old f8 up and
running instead of the NEW partitions as I was expecting and it turned
turned out to be the fact that the new partitions were CLONES of the
original drives much so that the /boot and /etc/fstabs were using UUIDs
and "hard links" to the old F8 system and required a complete re-labeling
and rewrite of these files in order to make each of them unique and in
the proper partition/drive locations! Doh!
Well, I hope I have not missed or left anything else out, but if I did
please add it to this thread! I hope this somewhat fragmented thread
helps someone else out!
Cheers!
Dan
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