bootloader issues on install

Jim Cornette jim-cornette at insight.rr.com
Fri Jun 4 11:46:04 UTC 2004


Rory Gleeson wrote:

>1) When installing FC2 to my primary slave -- hdb -- it put the bootloader on 
>hda, where another OS resides.  
>  
>

If you leave the BIOS set to boot the primary drive,  on the primary 
controller, it should be able to install the boot loader onto hda and 
install selections to boot the Fedora and the OS that resides on hda.

>2) It overwrote the bootloader on hda rather than playing nice with it.  So, 
>when I changed my bios back to hda to boot to my other OS, it picked up the 
>FC2 bootloader, locking me out of my hda OS.
>  
>
I believe that the grub information and switching BIOS changes what 
drives  are called. Grub is probebly right for if the bios settings were 
set to the way that it was during the install.

>3) When installing FC2, it doesn't clearly state that it was going to put the 
>bootloader on my other drive.  You have to read the hda closely and know what 
>it means.
>
>  
>
It would be nice for the selection to where to install the bootloader 
stood out more. I have always installed the bot loader onto the mbr, as 
anaconda does without editing settings. This makes post-install changes 
needed to get different OSes to boot as desired. (my case, 3 fedora 
installations.)

>4) It didn't clearly give me the option to put the bootloader on hdb.
>  
>
You might be able to install it onto hdb by running the below command 
from a root shell.
grub-install /dev/hdb (for installing grub onto the mbr of the drive 
called hdb)
or
grub-install /dev/hdb1 (to install grub into your boot partition or hdb1 
anyway.

>5) When I chose "no bootloader" it indicated I'd have to boot from a 
>bootloader floppy, but then didn't clearly give me the option to create that 
>floppy.
>  
>
This is a bad situation! You cannot make boot floppies for the 2.6 
kernel. It should lead you to being able to at least install the early 
stages of the boot loader to a floppy.

>6) The FC2 rescue disc didn't provide a clear option to create a bootloader 
>floppy.
>  
>
This sounds like it should install the boot loader to a floppy. I have 
not tried this myself though.
grub-install /dev/fd0

I installed lilo to boot floppies before. I think that I tried grub to 
floppy once, but not positive.

>Are the above bugzilla worthy??
>  
>
Improvements could be made, as with all things. A request for 
enhancement might be worthwhile.

>Questions:
>1) How can I now create that bootloader floppy?  I don't mind re-installing 
>FC2 on hdb, if necessary.
>  
>
Try above, but you no warranties

>2) On install to hdb, how I can put the bootloader on hdb?
>  
>
"info grub-install" might help

>All I want to be able to do is change my bios to boot to a different drive and 
>then go in to the OS on that drive. I'm trying to keep the OS's completely 
>separate, using teh bios to flip between them.  I don't want to get in 
>relying on mutually-dependent bootloaders.
>
>  
>
This should be alright for linux and LABEL= drive designations. 
chainloaded OSes might need to be hand edited to correct (hd0,0) from 
(hd1,0) or whatever.

Good luck!

Jim

>Thanks,
>Rory
>
>
>  
>


-- 
Are you ever going to do the dishes?  Or will you change your major to biology?





More information about the fedora-list mailing list