[devlin]

ok no one seems to know the answer so i thought i would post here since people here are usually very helpful. ok i have windows xp installed on 2 serial raid drives and suse 9.2 pro on 40gig ata drive. both work fine independently. how can i make it so i can choose which OS to boot from without going into bios? keep in mind im a noob when it comes to linux but expert when it comes to windows. i tried editing grub but got no where. i know that linux recognizes my SATA drives as sda and sdb. anyone know how to figure this out? i messed around with xosl and hated it. could not get it to work for anything.

[Headrush]

Post your current /boot/grub/grub.conf file and we'll start from that.

GRUB doesn't use /dev style device names. It uses (hdx,y) where x is the number of hard disk and y is the partition on that disk. (Both start at 0 )

[devlin]

ok here it is: i found it in /etc/grub.conf

root (hd0,1)
install --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0) /boot/grub/stage2 0x8000 (hd0,1)/boot/grub/menu.1st
quit

[Headrush]

Originally Posted by devlin

ok here it is: i found it in /etc/grub.conf

root (hd0,1)
install --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0) /boot/grub/stage2 0x8000 (hd0,1)/boot/grub/menu.1st
quit

Can you also post results of

ls -l /boot
ls -l /boot/grub

Am I right in thinking that the partition containing the / directory for Linux is the second partition on that disk?

And any info on your raid setup: Level, hardware, software, Windows dynamic volumes.

[devlin]

yes i will check results of that code. to answer your other question, yes its on 2nd partition. thats the way linux wanted it installed. there are no other operating systems on that drive. i have 2 western digitial SATA drives on raid 0 that have winxp.

[devlin]

ls -1 /boot
backup_mbr
boot
config-2.6.8-24-default
grub
initrd
initrd-2.6.8-24-default
message
symvers-2.6.8-24-i386-default.gz
System.map-2.6.8-24-default
vmlinux-2.6.8-24-default.gz
vmlinuz
vmlinuz-2.6.8-24-default

ls -1 /boot/grub
device.map
e2fs_stage1_5
fat_stage1_5
ffs_stage1_5
iso9660_stage1_5
jfs_stage1_5
menu.lst
minix_stage1_5
reiserfs_stage1_5
stage1
stage2
ufs2_stage1_5
vstafs_stage1_5
xfs_stage1_5

[ShavedApe]

you need to edit /boot/grub/menu.lst (i'm sure headrush was getting there )
grub lists drives in the order provide by the bios (hd0) (hd1) ... etc
the trick that i find a lot of distros don't set up right is that windows won't boot if it's not the primary drive (c-drive in winspeak)
----
title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hdx,0)
map (hdx) (hd0)
map (hd0) (hdx)
makeactive
chainloader +1
------



where (hdx) is the drive with xp on it. (change x to drive number)
the map command tricks windows into thinking it's the first drive (you could use this to change drive letters in windows too, by giving them to windows in a different order)

make active, well.., tells windows is the active drive
chainloader +1, grub hands off the booting process to the windows bootloader.

[Headrush]

Yes ShavedApe that is where is where I was heading. :-)

Are you positive that GRUB will handle the chipset RAID he has Windows installed on? I wasn't positive and figured if it didn't work we would have to use the good old boot.ini method.

[ShavedApe]

i find that most are handled alright as long as they're not in raid mode... oh wait
are they in raid mode? i thought he said they were seperate, but i don't see that now

linux doesn't support a lot of the sata raid devices, simply because they aren't real harware raid, it's implimented in software. I haven't ever used one of these in raid mode so i don't know what to expect.

but, i think if the bios tells grub that it's one drive, and using the "root noverify" option grub won't even try to read them. would grub just say "hey, your active, go boot"

just a hunch, i'm not sure of the technical details of what goes on (probably learned and forgotten ), i just know how to make it work most of the time.

[devlin]

yeah i have 3 hard drives total: 2 raid (windows), 1 not raid (linux)

[devlin]

i found the menu.lst file and i was wondering how to edit it. when i double click on it it says i don't have enough permissions to read

edit**

nevermind i figured it out. ok just for testing purposes i typed in this:
title Windows XP and it came up as an option now ill go back and type in the rest.

quick question, for me would it look like this:
title Windows XP
rootnoverify (sda, 0)
map (sda) (hd0)
map (hd0) (sda)
makeactive
chainloader +1
sda is what linux calls my raid HDs. they list in the setup screen as sda and sdb

[ShavedApe]

grub lables the drives as (hdx) where x={0,1,2...}
try (hd1, 0) and (hd1)
i truthfully have no idea what will happen.

mabey google for your sata adapter with linux too.
www.linuxquestions.org is another good linux forum to hit (their search is a liitle slow though)

[devlin]

that won't work. linux DOES NOT list serial drives as hdx whatever. they list them by sd a,b,c etc...

[ShavedApe]

i know that's how linux lists drives.
but linux isn't running when you're at the bootloader! just grub, which lists them in that way. grub is what's responsible for loading the linux kernel for you at boot. (or lilo on some other systems)

[ShavedApe]

the menue.lst entry in post #7 was taken from my debian system, (replaced 1 with x obviously)
that system is running of off 2 different sata controllers, but low and behold, (hd0) (hd1)