Serious reservations about FC2 release on 5/18

[Lamar Owen]

On Monday 17 May 2004 16:34, Michael Hatzel wrote:
> As far as I know, XP has never been supported using GRUBs chainloader +1
> directive.  What I have always had to do is install grub on the first block
> of boot, use dd to pull the first block of my /boot partition to a file
> such as Linux.bin

You know, I've been watching this whole thread with a certain amusement.  I 
have dual-booted into various Windows flavors with impunity using GRUB in MBR 
for a long time now. 

I have three boxes running XP.  One is Home and two are Pro.  My grub.conf 
from this WinXP Pro notebook (Dell Inspiron 600m) (NOTE: The 600m 
installation was kindof funky, but FC2T2 installed fine in text mode 
(graphical was busted on the ATI M9 on this box), and was a scratch install: 
I reinstalled XP into a small partition, then installed FC2T2):
# 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 (hd0,2)
#          kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hda6
#          initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hda
default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,2)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Fedora Core (2.6.5-1.358)
        root (hd0,2)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.5-1.358 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
        initrd /initrd-2.6.5-1.358.img
title Fedora Core (2.6.5-1.332)
        root (hd0,2)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.5-1.332 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
        initrd /initrd-2.6.5-1.332.img
title Other
        rootnoverify (hd0,1)
        chainloader +1

It Just Works.  Partition info:
Disk /dev/hda: 60.0 GB, 60011642880 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7296 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1               1           5       40131   de  Dell Utility
/dev/hda2   *           6        1049     8385930    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda3            1050        1065      128520   83  Linux
/dev/hda4            1066        7296    50050507+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5            1066        2370    10482381   83  Linux
/dev/hda6            2371        3135     6144831   83  Linux
/dev/hda7            3136        3266     1052226   82  Linux swap
/dev/hda8            3267        5877    20972826    b  W95 FAT32


My home (not Home) box has Win2k and WinXP Pro both installed, as well as FC1 
and WBEL 3.  All four boot fine, with GRUB in MBR.  GRUB only shows three OS 
entries, though (I also have memtest there, but that's not an OS): FC, WBEL, 
and Windows.  The chainload goes to XP's boot loader, from which I choose 
WinXP or Win2k.  It's a Matsonic motherboard with an Athlon XP 1700 installed 
(this particular mb, for those interested, is kindof unusual in that it can 
have either SDR SDRAM _OR_ DDR SDRAM installed, just not at the same time.  
The mother of all jumper blocks selects between; there's 36 or 72 jumpers to 
be moved to do so.  I think it's an 8137+ mb.).  Oh, and it has a 200GB 
Maxtor drive.  Updating to FC2 at some point in the near future.

Oh, It Just Works.

The third machine is an older Sony notebook with XP Home.  It also has FC1 
loaded; GRUB in MBR, and It Just Works.
-- 
Lamar Owen
Director of Information Technology
Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute
1 PARI Drive
Rosman, NC  28772
(828)862-5554
www.pari.edu