About to give up on Gentoo

[MonstaThrilla]

Hi,

Last night I made my second attempt at installing Gentoo. The first problem I have is that the LiveCD refuses to recognize my USB Logitech Elite keyboard. I have to plug it into the PS2 port and thus lose all its features in WinXP.

Secondly, I can't get the MBR/Grub setup right, and last night I ended up wiping out my WinXP partition trying to do fixmbr and fixboot from the WinXP install CD after Grub failed.

I'm still in the process of rebuilding my XP system.

Here's a little partition table:

WinXP (hd0,0)
Gentoo boot (hd0,4)
Gentoo swap (hd0,5)
Gentoo root (hd0,6)


I've followed the FAQs on these forums about setting up a dual boot on a single hard disk but there are so many diverging opinions and none of the solutions have worked.

I tried using the technique from a FAQ here of making a .bin and using NTLoader to choose between WinXP and GRUB. I got WinXP booting but not GRUB.

I tried using the install manual's suggestion of writing GRUB to the MBR to boot Gentoo or WinXP. That made Gentoo boot but not WinXP. When I tried to fix the MBR using the WinXP install CD's "fixboot" and "fixmbr" utils, those ended up destroying the WinXP partition.

The problem I have lies in the fact that WinXP is on (hd0,0) and so is the MBR. This corrupts the WinXP NTLoader somehow. During the Gentoo install, I ran the grub commands:

[incubator]

uhm, dunno if it may help you, but I´m using lilo, it´s easier to config, but that didnt really dual boot xp + gentoo either.
Instead, I´m using 2 seperate hdd´s and whenever I want to go to gentoo, I set in the BIOS standard CMOS options wich hdd is enabled
that way xp wont be confused anymore (because in my case xp isnt on the first hdd)

so, if all else fails, perhaps this might be an alternative

[jtp755]

you should use grub>root (hdo,4) and im not sure where you would want to install grub to since you dont want to use it to boot both gentoo and xp

[MonstaThrilla]

[warrenj1]

[MonstaThrilla]

[2k..]

hi there,

i used an older installation guide so i'm not familiar with the one you used, however the gentoo entry in my grub.conf file looks like this

[D. M. P. inc]

dnt give up. i did 5 reinstallation of xp and gentoo b4 i made both work

try lookin at this post

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=95850
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Live And Learn.

[slartibartfasz]

[MonstaThrilla]

[antisthenes]

Well, here's one solution:

Since WinXP got wiped anyway, put it on (hd0,1). Then put this in your grub.conf:

rootnoverify (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1

And put the /boot partition for Gentoo on (hd0,0). Works better that way.

This is mostly a problem with the Windows bootloader, which is horribly primitive (XP doesn't even install on an extended partition). When I installed XPPro to play around with it, it did funky things to my MBR as well.

[3lue9]

The first time I installed gentoo, I wiped out my windows partition too, so don't feel too bad. The usb/keyboard issue can be resolved post install, remember the CD is not as up to date as the tree.

Well, to get the dual boot you really have to make sure you alter the numbers corresponding to your own particular setup.

Here is my grub file:
default 0
timeout 10
splashimage=(hd0,1)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz

title=Gentoo Linux (genkernel)
root (hd0,1)
kernel (hd0,1)/boot/kernel-2.4.20-gentoo-r6
initrd (hd0,1)/boot/initrd-2.4.20-gentoo-r6

title=Windows 2000
root (hd0,0)
chainloader (hd0,0)+1


Notice, I have my /boot partition on hda2 and my windows partition on hda1. Now here are a couple of things I did the second time to make the install a little easier and then some of these are reminders for something you may have missed.
(1) Don't spend too much time configuring windows, just in case.
(2) Put grub into the MBR
(3) Make sure to make /boot the only bootable option
(4) Use genkernel for now (you can always go back to compile the kernel)
(5) Remember grub is 0 based while hdaX is 1
(6) Double check the numbers for hdaX and grub, in fact go through and write down all of <b>your</b> numbers so that you won't make a mistake.

If none of this works, please provide the fdisk table information.
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[MonstaThrilla]

Thanks for the help everyone.

I'm gonna try the suggestion of installing WinXP on (hd0,1) and making /boot (hd0,0). The install manual has Windows on (hd0,5), but I think that would be impossible since Windows can only be installed on primary partitions.

Unfortunately the box I'm trying to install this on critically needs to be in a working state, so I won't try to install Gentoo until next weekend or later.

Thanks again...

[NicholasDWolfwood]

There's no problems in my setup...


/dev/hdb1 - Windows NTFS (hd1,0)
/dev/hdb5 - Linux Swap
/dev/hdb6 - Linux Root (hd1,6)
/dev/hdb7 - Linux Boot


GRUB:

grub> root (hd1,6) #My Linux /boot partition
grub> setup (hd0) #The MBR of my first HD, 120GB Windows NTFS


grub.conf:

default 0
timeout 10
splashimage=(hd1,6)/grub/splash.xpm.gz

title=Gentoo Linux
root (hd1,5)
kernel (hd1,6)/bzImage-2.6 root=/dev/hdb6 hdc=ide-scsi

title=Windows XP Professional
root (hd1,0)
chainloader (hd1,0)+1


"Gentoo Linux" boots straight into my 2.6.0-test6-mm4 kernel, and "Windows XP Professional" boots straight into my XP Pro...works perfectly fine, once again...I don't know what your problem is
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[MonstaThrilla]

[NicholasDWolfwood]

Nope, it's not on hd0...the MBR is NOT supposed to be written to (hd0,0) because that's disc 0 partition 0...it should be written to disc0 (hd0)
_________________
AMD Athlon XP 1700+
Abit KG7-RAID
512MB PC2100 DDR266 Corsair/Kingston
40GB WD 7200RPM (37.1GB)
120GB WD 8MB 7200RPM (111GB)
160GB WD 8MB 7200RPM (149GB)
40GB WD 7200RPM (37.1GB)
Pioneer DVR-A06 4x DVD±RW
HP CD-RW 9500i (12x8x32x)

[ben_h]

Yep, getting Windows installed should be done first I think. It's so damn picky; in my experience,

-- It has to be on the first drive in the system (only during the install; easiest to just pull power on any drives before it for the install, and plug them back in afterwards)
-- It has to be a primary partition (as others have noted)
-- It has to be the first Win-compatible partition on the drive, or it'll spray its booting files all over the first partition it sees (partition flags can just be changed to Linux or something during the install, and it'll ignore them).

Conclusion: Bloody Microsoft.

In regards to booting with grub, both setups (your original and the new one you're trying) should work fine. When I still had Windows installed, iirc, it was hda3 (had a small DOS partition on hda1, and gentoo's / partition was hda2). Basically just get all the M$ os'es installed and working, then start on the proper ones.

Also, remember that it's fine to hose the MBR -- Windows puts its boot record both in the MBR, and in its partition's BR. then, assuming Win is on hde2 now, which should be (hd0,1), just boot it with

[MonstaThrilla]

[torque2k3]

[tony_t73]

There's a much, much easier way to do this using LILO...
I, too, HAD to keep my XP running at the same time as Gentoo. I found that little install guide for dual booting XP and Gentoo, and it was not worth the trouble at all... For my two cents, the LILO boot loader works many times better- and it makes sense. I know that it's the "old" way, but it really works. This is what you do: (BTW- I already had GRUB installed, and having the two bootloaders could have been problematic- as it says in the documentation. But it wasn't...)

emerge LILO

you can either do
emerge -p lilo
or just simply get it out there with
emerge -k lilo

Then you want to run

nano -w /etc/lilo.conf

Follow the instructions in the installation instructions exactly. You should get something like this: