Fedora Core 5 + WinXP Pro

Timothy Murphy tim at birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
Wed Apr 19 11:39:47 UTC 2006


Lyvim Xaphir wrote:

>> > What you should always do is give Fedora the first spot, no matter
>> > what.
>> 
>> I don't know what you mean by "first spot",
>> but your advice sounds like nonsense to me.
> 
> Not sure I can make it any clearer.  How many ways are there to
> say, /dev/hda?  or /dev/sda?  That's why I said /dev/hda or /dev/sda in
> the first place.  First spot is the first spot.  First drive, and also
> the first sectors of the hard drive, the prime real estate of the drive
> where the accesses are faster.

If you mean, "first partition of the first disk"
it would be simpler to say that.
I never heard anyone use the term "top spot" for that.

>> Assuming you want to dual-boot Windows and Linux,
>> it is wiser in my experience to give the first partition to Windows.
> 
> Wiser why?  Cause you can't make it work any other way?

If in fact I couldn't make it work any other way
that would indeed be a very good reason for doing it.

> That doesn't 
> sound like a situation where you're much wiser.  Your limitations are
> your limitations, not mine.  I've *never installed winblows first in a
> system, never had any trouble doing it, and I've not seen anything
> you've said that remotely convinces me your path is wiser.

Have you actually installed Windows on many machines?
You will find that it is quite picky about where you install it,
but first partition on the first disk is the safest choice.

Also, it is where 99% of people who dual boot have Windows,
since that is where it will be if you purchase a computer.

By contrast, Linux doesn't care where you install it.

>> > You also need to ensure that you have a boot record in place that is
>> > "factory".. or what I call factory anyway.  This will make it easier
>> > for Grub to rewrite it.
>> 
>> That also sounds like nonsense to me.
>> I don't think grub cares what is on the MBR.
> 
> Yes it does, especially if lilo was there before and you want grub to go
> there.  I've had to redo the boot sector as described many times in the
> past to get either lilo or grub to install correctly after other boot
> loaders had been there.

Show me in the code where grub looks to see if lilo (or any boot loader)
is already present on the MBR.
If you ask grub to install on the MBR that is what it will do.

-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland




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