Dual Boot on Two Drives

[peelie]

hi

so i have a dual boot system with win xp and ubuntu; i want to add a second older ide (pata) drive that has win xp (from my old computer).

the thing is my new computer has its sata drive on the secondary slave IDE channel.

so what is the best way to add my old drive? seems i would need to reinstall win xp and ubuntu on the sata drive connected as master not as slave?

most confusing any help appreciated

[caljohnsmith]

hi

so i have a dual boot system with win xp and ubuntu; i want to add a second older ide (pata) drive that has win xp (from my old computer).

the thing is my new computer has its sata drive on the secondary slave IDE channel.

so what is the best way to add my old drive? seems i would need to reinstall win xp and ubuntu on the sata drive connected as master not as slave?

most confusing any help appreciated

So is your XP and Ubuntu currently on the SATA drive? Are you able to boot from it? Then you want to add an older IDE drive with just XP on it? And if your SATA drive is on the secondary slave IDE channel, what is on the first channel?

[peelie]

So is your XP and Ubuntu currently on the SATA drive? Are you able to boot from it? Then you want to add an older IDE drive with just XP on it? And if your SATA drive is on the secondary slave IDE channel, what is on the first channel?

yes XP Pro and Ubuntu on SATA drive, able to boot from it.

CD is on primary slave channel, nothing on primary master channel.

after some thought i see that maybe it might be easier to put the old pata drive on the empty primary master?
thx

[HousieMousie2]

Okay, here's my Dual-Boot/GRUB questions.

It seems likely that when I installed Hardy (on IDE HDD-2) that the MBR was over written on my OLD XP HDD-1 (IDE) since both HDD's were in the machine when I installed Hardy and XP was already present... but...

How can I confirm the physical location of the GRUB?

I have a second computer that has a fresh install of XP on a SATA drive. I want to take the old installation of Hardy (on IDE HDD-2) and stab it into the new machine, and have GRUB on the Hardy HDD-2, so that the NEW XP-SATA's MBR is not altered.

I understand how to set the jumpers/channels, what I don't know is:

How to make sure that the GRUB/necessary changes is/are on the Hardy HDD before I move it to the new machine and if it is not, then how to put GRUB on it while it is in my OLD machine. (I can edit the GRUB later to include the new XP SATA HDD... or at least I think I can manage that! Might be a little optimistic of me, but hey, I successfully edited fstab before, how hard can it be? lol)

Any help would be great!

Thank you for reading this!

Cheers

PS, I know about sudo fdisk -l and cat /boot/grub/menu.lst... which imply that GRUB is on Hardy HDD, makes sense... don't understand what is done to the Windows MBR then.

PPS, Is it as simple as grub-install /dev/sdb1? And then editing it once it is in the new machine to add the XP SATA?

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 38536 309540388+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 38537 38913 3028252+ 5 Extended
/dev/sdb5 38537 38913 3028221 82 Linux swap / Solaris

[caljohnsmith]

HousieMousie2, first, you can install Grub to the MBR of your HDD-2 drive with the following:

sudo grub
grub> find /boot/grub/stage1

The above command should return your Ubuntu partition in the form of (hdX,Y), for example (hd1,4), but use whatever it returns as follows:

grub> root (hdX,Y)
grub> setup (hdX)
grub> quit

Your suspicions are probably correct that Grub is in the MBR of your old Windows HDD-1 drive. You could check with:

sudo dd if=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1 2>/dev/null | strings | grep -i grub

Where sda should be your "HDD-1" drive, so change it if it isn't. If the above command returns "GRUB", then it is almost certain you have Grub installed to the MBR of sda. If it doesn't return anything, you have some other boot loader in the MBR. If you need to reinstall the Windows MBR to the Windows HDD-1 drive, you can boot your Windows Install CD, press "r" at the first menu to get the "recovery console", and run:

fixmbr

Let me know how it goes or if you need more info/details.

[HousieMousie2]

If you need to reinstall the Windows MBR to the Windows HDD-1 drive, you can boot your Windows Install CD, press "r" at the first menu to get the "recovery console", and run:

fixmbr

Let me know how it goes or if you need more info/details.

Unfortunately, that Windows install was done by HP, with no CD provided (just a recovery partition) and the check of the Windows MBR did return "GRUB."

Correct me if I am wrong, please, but can't I use fixmbr from the DOS/Command prompt (Within Windows) and it will use the data in the partition to rewrite the MBR?

It is important to me that I salvage the old XP machine, since I am planning to donate it to charity, with a shiny new (vanilla) XP installation... from the partition.

The results of the grub> codes:

[ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported.   For
         the   first   word,  TAB  lists  possible  command
         completions.  Anywhere else TAB lists the possible
         completions of a device/filename. ]

grub> find /boot/grub/stage1
 (hd1,0)

grub> root (hd1,0)

grub> setup (hd1)
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes
 Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd1)"...  17 sectors are embedded.
succeeded
 Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd1) (hd1)1+17 p (hd1,0)/boot/grub/stage2
/boot/grub/menu.lst"... succeeded
Done.

That looks good to me, what do you think?

Thanks a million, caljohnsmith!

[caljohnsmith]

Unfortunately, that Windows install was done by HP, with no CD provided (just a recovery partition) and the check of the Windows MBR did return "GRUB."

Correct me if I am wrong, please, but can't I use fixmbr from the DOS/Command prompt (Within Windows) and it will use the data in the partition to rewrite the MBR?

Yes, if you have "fixmbr" in your Windows install you could run it from there; but I just searched mine (Home Edition) and it doesn't have it. Do you have a Windows Install CD where you can run that command from? If you don't, another easy alternative is to download the "Super Grub Disk", which can install a Windows-compatible MBR that should work just fine. I just checked right now and it looks like their server might be down at the moment. You could google super grub disk and probably find other mirror sites to download it from.

Your output from running the Grub commands looks great, so you should be able to boot from your Ubuntu drive now, assuming you set the BIOS to do so. You will most likely need to modify the Grub menu entries though to get the OSes to boot, since it looks like Grub was previously in the MBR of your Windows drive.

So try booting from your Ubuntu drive, select the Ubuntu entry in the Grub menu you want to boot, hit "e" to edit it, select the line that says "root (hd1,X)" where X is a number, press "e" to edit it, change it to "root (hd0,X)", press return to save the change, then press "b" to boot. Based on the info you gave, I think that should be all it takes. Also note that the above change is not permanent, so you'll need to modify your menu.lst to make it permanent if it works. Let me know if you get this far or if you run into problems.

[HousieMousie2]

lol Why does that not surprise me? I don't know if my XP will allow me to fixmbr or not, probably not since it is also Home, but perhaps it will, since it is a recovery partition version... I will have to check on that. If I do not have the option to fixmbr from within the Windows installation, I do have an XP Home installation disk. How certain are you that it will not create a problem?... using a non-HP XP disk to make the MBR for the HP XP?

As you can see, I don't know how it does what it does to restore/rewrite the MBR and want to be certain before I proceed.

To double check, are you instructing me to:

Restart, enter BIOS, switch the XP and Linux boot priorities, save & exit, at the Grub screen, select Hardy, edit the hd1,X/hd0,X, save, boot.

If happy with it, then:

kedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

Changing:

## ## End Default Options ##

title           Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-19-generic
root            (hd1,0)
kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-generic root=UUID=5d665106-a47a-44c7-9cd9-7315b25cbbd8 ro quiet splash
initrd          /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-19-generic
quiet

title           Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-19-generic (recovery mode)
root            (hd1,0)
kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-generic root=UUID=5d665106-a47a-44c7-9cd9-7315b25cbbd8 ro single
initrd          /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-19-generic

title           Ubuntu 8.04.1, memtest86+
root            (hd1,0)
kernel          /boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

# This is a divider, added to separate the menu items below from the Debian
# ones.
title           Other operating systems:
root


# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/hda1
title           Windows NT/2000/XP
root            (hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader     +1


# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/hda2
title           Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
root            (hd0,1)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader     +1

To this:

## ## End Default Options ##

title           Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-19-generic
root            (hd0,0)
kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-generic root=UUID=5d665106-a47a-44c7-9cd9-7315b25cbbd8 ro quiet splash
initrd          /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-19-generic
quiet

title           Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-19-generic (recovery mode)
root            (hd0,0)
kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-generic root=UUID=5d665106-a47a-44c7-9cd9-7315b25cbbd8 ro single
initrd          /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-19-generic

title           Ubuntu 8.04.1, memtest86+
root            (hd0,0)
kernel          /boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

# This is a divider, added to separate the menu items below from the Debian
# ones.
title           Other operating systems:
root


# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/hda1
title           Windows NT/2000/XP
root            (hd1,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader     +1


# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/hda2
title           Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
root            (hd1,1)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader     +1

If I recall correctly, the Linux HDD is set to Slave and the XP HDD is still set to the default Cable Select, via the jumpers... should I put them both to Cable Select?

[caljohnsmith]

lol Why does that not surprise me? I don't know if my XP will allow me to fixmbr or not, probably not since it is also Home, but perhaps it will, since it is a recovery partition version... I will have to check on that. If I do not have the option to fixmbr from within the Windows installation, I do have an XP Home installation disk. How certain are you that it will not create a problem?... using a non-HP XP disk to make the MBR for the HP XP?

As you can see, I don't know how it does what it does to restore/rewrite the MBR and want to be certain before I proceed.

Yes, from the your XP install CD, just run the "fixmbr" command, and it should be fine assuming your Windows drive is still the master drive. Also, all the Windows MBR does is "chain load" or boot the boot sector of whatever partition on your HDD is marked as active, i.e. has its boot flag set on. There are actually many boot loaders that can do this, so you don't even need a Windows MBR technically; therefore you shouldn't have anything to worry about with a non-HP Windows CD creating a MBR for your HP XP.

To double check, are you instructing me to:

Restart, enter BIOS, switch the XP and Linux boot priorities, save & exit, at the Grub screen, select Hardy, edit the hd1,X/hd0,X, save, boot.

Exactly--make the Linux drive boot first, and then edit the Ubuntu menu entry as give before so you can boot it. Once you are in Ubuntu, open your menu.lst with either of the following:

gksudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst
kdesu kedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

In other words, you have to make sure you run the text editor as root. Next edit your Ubuntu entries as you showed, but for Windows, use the following:

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/hda1
title           Windows NT/2000/XP
root            (hd1,0)
map        (hd0) (hd1)
map        (hd1) (hd0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader     +1


# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/hda2
title           Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
root            (hd1,1)
map        (hd0) (hd1)
map        (hd1) (hd0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader     +1

In other words, you got the drive right with (hd1,X), but you have to use Grub's mapping feature like above to fool Windows into thinking it is actually on the master drive when you boot it, otherwise Windows won't boot. Let me know how it goes or if you run into problems.

[HousieMousie2]

I got sick of fighting with it in the old machine, went ahead and moved Hardy to the new machine... the grub still isn't right, using the BIOS to switch between OS's. And honestly, I have bigger fish to fry right now... XP took a nose dive, can ONLY boot to Safe Mode/Command Prompt. It is probably a bad video driver. I am considering just dumping it and reinstalling (no personal data on that drive yet.)

I have borrowed a set of HP XP installation disks and am hoping it will work to do the fixmbr, since I could not do it from within Windows, or using the non-HP XP disks. Will try that tomorrow... it is late-thirty here, 4am.

I don't feel the day was totally wasted: walked my Mom through the upgrade from Dapper to Hardy, provided moral support for the recompile of her beloved calendar ICAL, and installed the driver for my GeForce 9600 GT video card in Hardy. Now if I can just get the X-Fi audio card to work Hardy will be totally set up... uh, except for the grub, of course.

More later... uh, sorry for the novel, I get even MORE verbose when tired.

Cheers