[PLUG] Grub fails. Grrrr.

Carlos Konstanski ckonstanski at pippiandcarlos.com
Fri Nov 27 04:01:23 UTC 2009


On Thu, 26 Nov 2009, Scott Garman wrote:

> Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2009 19:49:00 -0800
> From: Scott Garman <sgarman at zenlinux.com>
> Reply-To: "General Linux/UNIX discussion and help;	civil and on-topic"
>     <plug at lists.pdxlinux.org>
> To: "General Linux/UNIX discussion and help;	civil and on-topic"
>     <plug at lists.pdxlinux.org>
> Subject: Re: [PLUG] Grub fails. Grrrr.
> 
> John Jason Jordan wrote:
>> My guess is that Grub 2 did install, but incompletely. Grub 1.5 failed
>> because it detected Grub 2.0 already installed. I installed LILO to
>> sda1, not sda, think that doing so would make it easier to install Grub
>> later. But LILO doesn't start if there is something in the MBR. That is
>> just my WAG.
>
> I believe the PC BIOS looks at the MBR of the first disk, not the first
> partition on the first disk. So you needed to install LILO or GRUB to
> /dev/sda, not /dev/sda1.
>
> Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the only time you
> should install a bootloader onto a partition is if you're already using
> a bootloader on the MBR that you want to preserve and that presumably
> will be told about the bootloader on your partition(s).
>
> Scott
>
> -- 
> Scott Garman

Yes, that's called a chainloader. Windows actually installs a
chainloader into the MBR, and the "real" windows bootloader in the
first partition. That's why you can dual boot windows and linux by
installing GRUB in the MBR, and configuring a chainloader entry in
grub.conf for booting Windows.


Carlos



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