Fedora and Partition Magic

[David Liguori]

Gustavo Seabra wrote:
> Scott wrote:
> 
>> Gustavo Seabra wrote:
>>
>>> Gerhard Magnus wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'm trying to set up a dual booting system with Windows XP and Fedora 3
>>>> using Partition/Boot Magic 8. My system has two hard drives with
>>>> Windows XP installed on drive 1. Following the Partion Magic
>>>> instructions, I created a small FAT partition on drive 1 for the Boot
>>>> Magic files (which can't be installed on a NTFS partition). I used
>>>> Partition Magic to create Linux ext3 and swap partitions on drive 2. I
>>>> then installed Fedora 3 on drive 2, apparently successfully since I got
>>>> to the splash screen that said so and told me to reboot.
>>>>
>>>> When I installed Fedora 3 without GRUB, the reboot hung on the message
>>>> that the system was preparing to boot Fedora 3.
>>>>
>>>> When I installed Fedora 3 with GRUB (and including Windows XP as an
>>>> option on the GRUB menu) I was able to reboot into Fedora successfully
>>>> and complete the installation process. But then the Windows XP boot
>>>> hung.
>>>>
>>>> I used the Boot Magic rescue disc to boot back to Windows XP where I
>>>> reactivated Boot Magic and added Fedora as an OS to the Boot Magic
>>>> menu. Now I can boot into Windows XP but the Fedora boot fails.
>>>>
>>>> Any hints as to how to hack through this? Are there special problems
>>>> with having the bootable Fedora partition on the second drive? I'm not
>>>> committed to using Boot Magic but it's worked fine for me in the past.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for the help!
>>>> Jerry
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Why do you need Partition Magic? Fedora can do all the partitions 
>>> during the installation process. I actually suggests a scheme that, 
>>> as I learned too late, is pretty good. What we did and worked fine was:
>>> First partition: WinXP
>>> All the rest: done with the partition utility during the Fedora 
>>> installation, and all worked fine.
>>>
>> PM is still good if you want more than two OS' (say Win XP, Win2k, FC3 
>> or WinXP FC3, SuSE 9.2). Also you can use it's Boot Manager (Boot 
>> Magic) vs using GRUB.
>>
>> But in response to how you did it on yours, do you have Fedora 
>> partitions on a separate drive or on the same drive (as windows)?
>>
>> Scott
>>
> Same drive. It was olnly one HD.
> 
Boot magic can't load Linux directly: you need to "chain load" a Linux loader like Grub or Lilo.  With that setup, the Linux loader goes on the first sector of the boot partition (either /boot if you have one, or / otherwise).

I use System Commander 2000, which has the ability to load Windows 98 to a Dos prompt, or the same Windows partitions with different configuration files. I have PM8, but I haven't tried Boot Magic recently.  From my recollection, I would just as soon stick with Grub as Boot Magic, which doesn't have any special capabilities in dealing with either Windows or Linux afaik.

David Liguori