Dual hdd boot options

[Guest]

I have a dual hdd dell dimension b 110. I have XP on both. I want to put Ubuntu on one of the hd, and I want to set up compy so I have the option of booting into either Ubuntu or xp. Any ideas?

Thanks.

gibsongirl

[markwolfe Veteran]

Well, if you install Ubuntu, it will install GRUB to your MBR, and it will detect your current Windows install, and set up dual-booting for you.

Alternatively, and this requires more work to switch between OSes, you can install Ubuntu, but install GRUB only to your Linux drive. Not the MBR of your normal boot (Windows) drive. Then, at this point, to switch OSes at boot time, you need to go into BIOS and select the other drive. Not all BIOS versions support this, but most modern ones do.

[Guest]

Ok. Just trying to be real clear on this, "if you install Ubuntu, it will install GRUB to your MBR, and it will detect your current Windows install, and set up dual-booting for you."

Won't it wipe what is on my master hdd?

[insanekiwi]

no, you can select the hd during install/setup. grub is a bootmanager which will let you chose from either XP or ubuntu upon a system start.

[markwolfe Veteran]

The installer will only take over data areas if you tell it to.

The MBR is just a small section of configuration data (partition tables) and executable code (just enough to pass boot control to the rest of the boot loader installed with your OS).

If you have lots of free space, you tell Ubuntu to use that. If you don't have free space, you are typically given a slider you can move to make free space on your drive.

If you will be using two separate drives for this, just make sure you know which one is which, and verify that it isn't telling you it will install on your Windows drive when you click "OK".

If you want, if you get to a point where you are stuck, I think it is easy to post a screenshot, since Ubuntu operates as a LiveCD during most of the install process.

[Guest]

Ok. I installed Ubuntu 7.04 on my sdb. I left xp intact on my sba:

I get grub loading stage 1.5

grub loading, please wait

error 21

I reinsert cd and get to start or install ubuntu and the computer sends me a black screen with [21.591485] <0> Kernel panic - not syncing: attempted to kill the idle task!

at which point compy freezes or I get bsod with the following:

Driver_IRQL_not_less_or_equal

***STOP: 0x000000D1 (0x3F3F3F43, 0x00000002, 0x00000000, 0xF85024D2)

*** ACPI.sys - address F85024D2 base at F84EF00, datestamp 41107d27

[markwolfe Veteran]

Ok, XP on sda. Ubuntu on sdb. And you let it put GRUB on your boot drive (sda), right?

Does it boot into GRUB from the hard drive, and show you your choices? Or is that the "error 21"? Do you have both of your drives SATA? Or both standard IDE? Or (I'm going to guess that this is what you have) one IDE and one SATA?

The BSOD with the ACPI.sys error is a Windows error. Are you running this as a virtual machine?

Sorry for all the questions, but I am really lost here. :unsure:

[Guest]

Ok, XP on sda. Ubuntu on sdb. And you let it put GRUB on your boot drive (sda), right? I believe so

Does it boot into GRUB from the hard drive, and show you your choices? It does give me choices. However, I absolutely cannot get into Ubuntu at all.

Or is that the "error 21"? Do you have both of your drives SATA? both are SATA

The BSOD with the ACPI.sys error is a Windows error. Are you running this as a virtual machine? How could I tell if I were running this as a virtual machine?

Questions I don't mind at all.

[markwolfe Veteran]

The grub selection screen will not boot Ubuntu, but it boots Windows ok? (If you don't know if you are running as a virtual machine then you aren't, so let's not worry about that - this appears to be a standard install for dual-boot).

I would throw the Ubuntu CD back in, boot from it, open a terminal and post the output of a

sudo fdisk -l

(that is a lowercase letter "L", not the number one)

Which will list out all partitions it sees on all drives.

Then we can look at the /boot/grub/menu.lst file, to see where it points.

I'm not an expert in GRUB, but this may be a matter of doing a grub-install to the right location so all the executable code needed to boot is present.

If at any point you need to remove GRUB and restore the Microsoft XP boot, there is a simple procedure to boot the XP CD into a recovery console and to a fixmbr. Doing that will just require that we re-install GRUB, not the full Ubuntu install, to try setting up dual-boot again.

[atlef]

When you get the "press any key to continue" and are thrown back to grubmenu you'll see the first choice to boot, press "E" twice and instead of (hd1,0) it should say (hd0,0). Now press enter followed by "B" to boot.

Once logged in, "Alt+F2" write gksudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst and provide your user password. Now edit the correct sections of this file to correspond with this:

## default grub root device

## e.g. groot=(hd0,0)

# groot=(hd0,0)

This one makes it sticky thru any dist -upgarde in the future,also when installing new kernels

## ## End Default Options ##

title Linux Mint, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic

root (hd0,0)

kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=/dev/sdb5 ro quiet

initrd /initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic

boot

title Linux Mint, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic (recovery mode)

root (hd0,0)

kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=/dev/sdb5 ro single

initrd /initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic

boot

title Linux Mint, kernel memtest86+

root (hd0,0)

kernel /memtest86+.bin

boot

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

Where it says Linux Mint you would have ubuntu gutsy some thing or other, and maybe it would say splash one of the entries. Just change (hd1,0) to (hd0,0) and Bob's your uncle, save and reboot to see the effects.

atlef.

[Guest]

These are the results of fdisk:

$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80000000000 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9726 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/sda1 * 6 9333 74927160 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/sdb1 * 1 9543 76654116 83 Linux

/dev/sdb2 9544 9729 1494045 5 Extended

/dev/sdb5 9544 9729 1494013+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

$

[Guest]

Thanks! it worked beautifully. :cool:

[markwolfe Veteran]

Thanks! it worked beautifully. :cool:

Hey, I almost forgot about this thread! :ermm:

Glad you got it working again (Y)

[virgo89]

Hey guys, Im in the same boat some Im going to join.

Screenshot of my problem

I made sdb2 my ext3 and the last 3gb partition my swap. Then I installed. When I booted, I was faced with Error 21.

I know all I have to do is "fixmbr" to get back into windows, but I would really love to setup ubuntu dual boot.

The three partitions (Windows (ntfs), Ubuntu (ext3), and Swap) are all installed on a IDE drive. There is also a SATA drive that had nothing to do with the installation.

[markwolfe Veteran]

^^^ I would try it by removing those partitions you created. Let the installer use the empty space to set itself up.

Then allow the installer to put GRUB into the MBR, and it will detect your Windows and set up dual booting.

[atlef]

What markjensen said, but I do suggest you make a separate /home partition so that your personal files are safe.

So when you install:

make a / partition, say 10-15GiB ext3.

one /home, the rest - swap ext3.

and swap, no need for more then 1GiB.

Welcome to the free world.

atlef.

[Julius Caro]

To do what atlef said, after you're done partitioning with gpart, when you are in the installer, select "manually" partition the discs or something like that. Double click (or right click> properties? can't remember) and set "use as" to "/"

Do the same with the other one, but with "/home" . You won't need to check the 'format' thing because they are new anyway. And do the same with swap one if you want, although that one has already the option "use as linux-swap".

mm I dont know how sata and IDE are suppost to coexist when it comes to master/slave etc. In my bios I change the hard drive order although all of the drives are sata anyway. Grub took care of detecting the windows bootloader of my windows (32bit/64bit dual boot) hard drive.

[virgo89]

After doing what you guys said, I got the same error again.

Screenshot of changes.

[spikey_richie]

Here's the easiest solution:

1 - Download the 8.04 ISO

2 - Burn it to CD

3 - Remove and re-insert the CD

4 - Click 'Install in Windows'

5 - Choose a partition/drive, amount of space for the virtual drive and a login

6 - Reboot

7 - Go make a coffee/tea whilst Ubuntu finishes installing

8 - Reboot again, and enjoy the fruits of your labour

That's exactly what I did on Wednesday night, and I'm posting here in Ubuntu with FF3 beta, listening to music from my iTunes library and editing my CV in Open Office (the document was created in Word 2002)

[virgo89]

^ thanks

But I heard bad things about wubi with the nvidia users trying to get updates and such

[atlef]

You need to tick in the format boxes for /home and /

atlef.

[virgo89]

You need to tick in the format boxes for /home and /

atlef.

I did. The screenshot just doesn't show it.

I think that GRUB is not installing to the right place because this happens every time. Might be a master/slave issue.

[markwolfe Veteran]

But I heard bad things about wubi with the nvidia users trying to get updates and such

wubi or non-wubi would have no bearing on whether an nVidia driver would work, or whether updates were available. wubi is just a file-system image difference (direct ext3 or an ext3 image on NTFS).

...

I think that GRUB is not installing to the right place because this happens every time. Might be a master/slave issue.

Could be something along those lines... When you get to the part where you install GRUB, what is it indicating?

[virgo89]

On a side note. Is anyone receiving updates on Hardy using the Wubi installer?

[Mickeyj4j]

Ok, XP on sda. Ubuntu on sdb. And you let it put GRUB on your boot drive (sda), right?

Does it boot into GRUB from the hard drive, and show you your choices? Or is that the "error 21"? Do you have both of your drives SATA? Or both standard IDE? Or (I'm going to guess that this is what you have) one IDE and one SATA?

Hey I have a 40gig IDE with WinXP and a 160gig SATA (thru pci card) with Linux Mint (my Main Distro)

Can I set them up so i can have the dual boot screen (having Mint first) without having to mess up both installs.

Whats the easiest way around this.