Grub help needed

[Gab]

Hi

I am testing on Sun Virtual Box.
I have 2 IDE Hard Disks
Primary Master
Secondary Slave

I have Windows on Master. I am using NTLDR as the bootloader and have 2 options in boot.ini
1.'Windows'
2.'Linux'

'Linux' is a 512byte file dumped from the 1st sector of the secondary hard disk using dd.

QUESTION1- Should this work or does Grub take up more than the '512' bytes magic sector that MBR's should use?

My problem is when I click Linux I get the letters GRUB in the top left of the screen and than nothing, I have to reset.

I am all out of ideas as to why this is not working, by all reports I have heard Grub is supposed to be 'the best boot loader' and 'windows sucks etc' but I cant get Grub to load Linux.

I have re-installed about 10 times changing settings but nothing works. The only thing left to do is tick the box to write the boot loader to MBR, no!!

Any help?

[jayd512]

I am using NTLDR as the bootloader and have 2 options in boot.ini

I've never edited the Windows boot.ini file, so I can't help you there.
But if you want to actually use GRUB, you'll have to install it as the bootloader.
Installing GRUB natively - GNU GRUB Manual 0.97

[trutheality]

It looks like what you want is to have Grub be the bootloader on the linux disk, which should work, as long as you properly install Grub

Grub will "fit" into the 512 bytes because it's built in multiple stages where the first stage is what fits into the 512 bytes and tells the machine where to find the rest of the bootloader logic.

Of course, it would be easier to just use Grub instead of the windows bootloader.

[Schmidt]

:) grub was originally made to load unix-like systems, and still does it in easiest way :) NTLDR was made to load MS Windows systems only, as I know. Grub natively support standart linux loaders without any "dancing around it" :) and it can load any other systems, which are unsupported by grub, using a 'chainloader' option. Just read the manual ;)

[oz]

Welcome to the forums, Gab!

GRUB really does like to reside in the MBR and I'd suggest that you use it rather than the Windows bootloader. I've been installing GRUB to the MBR for about 8 years now, several of which were under a dual boot Linux/Windows system and have never had issues from doing so.

If you can try again and post your menu.lst file along with the out put of the fdisk -l command, someone will probably be able to help you get past this hurdle.

[Lostfarmer]

If you want the current setup to work , you will have to edit the "'Linux' file" and change the byte at offset 40 from FF to 81. Right now the 'Linux' file that contains grub stage1 does not know it has been moved and tries to read the next stage from your XP hdd. Changing the byte above will redirect it to the linux hdd. I am assumeing that grub was installed in MBR of the linux hdd, if I'm wrong then do not do above.

You can use any hex editor program, there is one on the MS XP cd 'dskprobe' under I think added value directory.

If you can, just change the boot order in bios to boot the linux hdd and add XP to menu.lst.