Hi. I recently rebuilt my PC to learn Linux. XP Pro went on first, also creating an empty NTFS data partition and two 20GB unformatted (well, i suppose fat 16) partitions.

Using custom settings and Advanced configs (to try and learn/see stuff) I installed Fedora Core 4 to 18GB free space after deleting the 2 empty partitions during the install (also creating 2GB swap). ext3 was used.

i told it use the linux boot loader GRUB, but to leave XP as default choice, and not to place boot loader in the MBR (as per the help instructions to the side).

the install completed fine, but on reboot i don't get the choice to choose Linux at all, and don't see any boot choice menu or anything relating to Grub??

any help appreciated as don't want to go through a complete reinstall to no avail!!

PS - I have already searched through a olt of threads, but haven't seen thi problem yet (might it be because both Intalls are on a single HD?.

Dom

Single 120Gb Maxtor SATA (no raid), AOPEN mboard

You don't get the choice as you didn't write grub to your MBR. Did you make a boot floppy? Boot from that and then run:
# grub-install /dev/hda
That should do the trick.

If you didn't make a floppy (which should now be the first thing you do once you are back into linux!) then boot from the installation CD and choose "rescue" as a boot option. I am unfamiliar with Fedora, you may need to chroot....

thanks for the reply

the help notes during the install said to not place it on the MBR if dual booting with NTFS...

i didn't create a boot floppy during the install, but i do have another diferent version linux boot CD "Astrumi" which i use for NT cracking, so will try with that (not that i know what I'm doing with it realy :O) )

You can use that linux boot CD to fix your system. Check previous posts for how to restore your MBR. It happens all the time with dual boot systems when windoze is reinstalled as it wipes it automatically.

right, have tried a couple of things.

did a fdisk /mbr to recreatre the normal MBR, no difference (but probably shouldn't expect one as windows doesn't see linux).

then I used the first Linux Disk I used for the install to boot, and tried a repair option. the sata driver loaded so it knew there was a disk there, but the repair tool said I didn't have any linux partitions on the system ?!? Windows still shows them as areas with unknown file system.

I think Im just gonna delete the partitions from windows and try the install again...

two things that would useful to know for a linux noob tho:

what file system is best? i selected the default ext3 last time

do i choose to leave the grub on the MBR then, to allow me to see both OSs?

I'm off to have a more in-depth look through the how-to's as well i think

Before you go reinstalling, read through this thread:
http://www.computing.net/linux/wwwboard/forum/28108.html

Re your questions. Both ext3 and reiserfs are probably the most common, reiser can handles very small and large files quicker.

I would definitely choose to install to the MBR. Make sure that you already have windoze installed and your linux installation should see this and create all the relavent boot options for you. Make a boot floppy when done because if you reinstall windoze it will help you out no end in getting your boot loader back.

err...too late!

thanks for the links - all very useful and i'd not found those threads before.

to update:

I reinstalled again, this time I deleted any previously created Linux partitions, and chose to use the automatic disk configuration tool. I installed to the MBR, renamed the "other" boot OS to XP Pro, and let the system choose its' own install location. The only thing I changed was the default boot OS, to XP (I'm loathe to make Fedora the default OS until I know I can get the boot loader working).

no joy - straight into XP again...

now there's a couple of things that are confusing me - both the help section of the install, and also the following (from one of the above links) say to NOT use the MBR, whilst everyone here says i should!:

"When you come to the Lilo-Section, specify your Linux-root-partition as your boot device because the Master Boot Record (MBR) of your harddisk is owned by Windows NT. This means that the root-entry and the boot-entry in your /etc/lilo.conf have the same value. If you have a IDE-harddisk and your Linux-partition is the second partition, your boot-entry in /etc/lilo.conf looks like:

boot=/dev/h"

I'm assuming that the above will apply similarly to my single SATA disk with XP as the primary (read original) install.

so my next plan tonight is to try the 1st of those links's "grub-install /dev/hda" thing from the shell, not that I've ever used a Linux shell b4 :O) should be fun

BTW my current thought at the moment is that I may have some sort of incorrect disk config going on. Does anyone know of some sort of tool that can display both NTFS and linux partitions, and save that config info to floppy disk?

i could then post this up to check if anything blindingly obvious is wrong, as I don't currently feel 100% happy that i'm interpreting the Fedora disk management tool GUI correctly.

Thanks for the continued help everyone!

You can get a list of partitions and types with:
# fdisk -l

Post up the output....

You could install grub to a floppy so that if you want to boot fedora pop the disc in, to boot windoze remove the floppy.
# grub-install /dev/fd0

By default your MBR lives at the beginnning of your primary master IDE hard drive (/dev/hda). Perhaps your system is booting off your SATA drive which may not be /dev/hda....what is the boot order in your BIOS?

From Linux, copy the Linux boot sector from /boot to a file using the dd command.

In the below, replace /dev/hda3 with your boot partition's location
# dd if=/dev/hda3 of=/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1

Copy bootsect.lnx onto a floppy disk.

If mcopy is available, this is easy:

# mcopy /bootsect.lnx a:

If mcopy is not available (e.g. a minimal install of Linux) you'll need to mount the floppy drive and then copy:

# mount /dev/fd0 /mnt
# cp /bootsect.lnx /mnt
# umount /mnt

Boot XP, log in as Administrator and copy bootsect.lnx from your floppy disk onto the root of your C: drive

Edit C:\BOOT.INI and add the following line at the end:

C:\BOOTSECT.LNX="Linux"

reboot your computer and it should be in the list at startup

How do you mount a USB floppy in the linux shell

I think it is treated the same as any other USB mass storage device as in it will appear as the first unused SCSI device on your system, probably /dev/sda. To mount it would be something like:
# mount -t vfat /dev/sda /mnt/floppy