banthur Posted December 21, 2008 Share Posted December 21, 2008 Ok so I currently have the following setup: Intel DG33TL Motherboard 2 x WD 75gb raptors in raid on sata 300gb maxtor storage drive Month or two ago I wiped everything and put a clean install of Vista business 64 on it. I'd like to dual boot Ubuntu now, so naturally I burned a disc and fired up the installer. The installer saw my two 75gb drives separately so I figured it just didn't recognize the raid properly. No problem, I really don't need ubuntu on the raid. So I install Ubuntu onto a new partition of the 300gb drive (bootloader went into mbr, probably a mistake in hindsight). Reboot. System does not boot. Grub error 21, Super grub disk fixes this. ~1 hour later: Ubuntu boots, Windows doesn't. I attribute this to Ubuntu still not properly handling the raid. So I figure I'll try to use the windows bootloader instead. I pop in the Vista DVD and run the Vista tool to rewrite the MBR with Vista's bootloader. This works and I can now boot Vista but not Ubuntu (it's not even on the list). Not exactly what I wanted. A few googles later I find this: http://www.canerten.com/dual-boot-linux-an...s-boot-manager/ It looks rather promising and I try it out a few times.. no success. So then I recall reading on that site that Ubuntu should be installed with the bootloader on the installed partition not in the mbr. I reinstall Ubuntu with this change. Upon reboot, Vista boots Ubuntu doesn't (expected). So I go through the process of bcdediting and using dd for windows to recreate my linux.boot file and register it with Vista's bootloader. Unfortunately this also doesn't work. When I try to boot Ubuntu it hangs at: GRUB <cursor blinking> So I'm a bit at a loss. There are no linux raid drivers for my motherboard. Is this setup never going to work? Does anyone have advice on what I could try next? I'm new to linux, any help is appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TEX4S Posted December 21, 2008 Share Posted December 21, 2008 Welcome to neowin. I am new to linux as well - but have a somewhat similiar setup. I have a Velociraptor as my boot drive which has XP64, and Vista64. -- I partitioned off 40 Gb of my 1TB Spinpoint and threw kubuntu on it. When I reboot, or power up the computer I get the normal GRUB menu kubuntu 8.1 kubuntu 8.1 recovery memory test Vista Loader XP If I want to go into XP - I have to select Vista (Loader) Then I am presented with another menu: Older Version of Windows Windows Vista I know the order in which the OSes are installed makes a difference - and I had to go into the GRUB editor in kubuntu to make the OS menu work like they do... I dont know if the RAID is the issue or not... Can you boot into linux and run the GRUB editor ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
banthur Posted December 21, 2008 Author Share Posted December 21, 2008 Welcome to neowin.I am new to linux as well - but have a somewhat similiar setup. I have a Velociraptor as my boot drive which has XP64, and Vista64. -- I partitioned off 40 Gb of my 1TB Spinpoint and threw kubuntu on it. When I reboot, or power up the computer I get the normal GRUB menu kubuntu 8.1 kubuntu 8.1 recovery memory test Vista Loader XP If I want to go into XP - I have to select Vista (Loader) Then I am presented with another menu: Older Version of Windows Windows Vista I know the order in which the OSes are installed makes a difference - and I had to go into the GRUB editor in kubuntu to make the OS menu work like they do... I dont know if the RAID is the issue or not... Can you boot into linux and run the GRUB editor ? Kind of: I can boot livecd and edit the grub files. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markwolfe Veteran Posted December 21, 2008 Veteran Share Posted December 21, 2008 I am going to guess that RAID is your issue. http://linux-ata.org/faq-sata-raid.html If you don't have a dedicated RAID card, and you are relying on motherboard/Windows RAID support, Linux might not be able to read it. Can you set up a dedicated, non-RAID partition or drive for Linux? This might be the best solution. Here is a bit more info. Not sure how helpful it will be, but might be worth a read. http://bbossola.wordpress.com/2008/03/07/d...-sata-fakeraid/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
banthur Posted December 21, 2008 Author Share Posted December 21, 2008 (edited) Sorry if I wasn't clear, the Ubuntu install is on my 300gb drive (non-raided), Optimally I would like the windows bootloader to run and be able to either start Vista from Raid or Ubuntu from the partition on my 300gb drive. I'm not sure why it isn't working like this now. My guess is that the linux.boot file can't be read by grub properly (since it is on the raid). So does anyone know how to reference a boot file on a different drive from the Vista bootloader editer (bcdedit)? quick edit: I have an idea for this that I'm going to test shortly.. update: didn't work: I tried putting linux.boot on the NTFS portion of the 300gb drive and changed the reference in bcdedit appropriately. This did not seem to work (same problem GRUB with cursor hangs). Edited December 21, 2008 by banthur Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lechio Posted December 21, 2008 Share Posted December 21, 2008 Can't you do the opposite? Boot the OSes from the 300gb drive using GRUB? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
banthur Posted December 21, 2008 Author Share Posted December 21, 2008 Can't you do the opposite? Boot the OSes from the 300gb drive using GRUB? No, GRUB won't be able to read the raid properly. That was the first way I tried to set it up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
banthur Posted December 22, 2008 Author Share Posted December 22, 2008 I got it working the way I wanted, thanks to EasyBCD. http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/Easy...umentation+Home Highly recommend it if you plan on using the Vista bootloader. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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