Grub kvestion...plz help.

[Entity]

This shouldn't be too difficult of a question for most of you out there...

I just installed Redhat 7.2 because I was sick of Mandrake's incompatibilities (Ximian, etc.) and wanted to give a different distro a try (debian @ work, Redhat 7.2 on my laptop).

Anyway, when I installed Redhat, I'm dual booting (HD0 -> WINXP, HD1 -> Redhat), and had Grub installed in the block partition of hdb, so that I wouldn't install over WINXP's boot. I did this so my g/f can easily get into WINXP, and when I need to boot into Redhat, I just change the boot order in the bios...simple enough for me.

So anyway, my laptop just boots (I think I installed it using Lilo, but I don't remember at this point and don't have it with me), while my computer, when booting from the secondary HD, boots to the Grub loader prompt.

Grub>

Where I can enter a number of commands. I'm guessing (though am not sure) that in order for me to be able to boot, I'll have to establish some sort of config file...however, for the meantime, I can't even get to any sort of prompt.

So will this series of commands that I enter get me started, and from there, what will I have to do to not have to deal with the boot loader screen in the future, unless I want to (i.e. by hitting something during bootup, etc.).

root (hd1,0) [or wherever /boot/grub/stage1 is found...for me should be hd1,0 I think]
setup (hd1)

Will that work? Or is there a better way for me to approach the dual-booting of XP + Linux? Please LMK - I am open to reinstalling redhat entirely, as I don't have anything up yet anyway.

Rob

 

[DeeK]

You'll want to setup grub in the MBR of the first hard drive for it to boot, so use "setup (hd0)" instead. If boot/grub/stage1 is on /dev/hdb1 (which is hd1,0 in Grub's terms), then yes, "root (hd1,0)" is the right command. I have /dev/hda5 setup as a dedicated /boot partition, so I use "root (hd0,4)".

The first thing you should do is load your Linux system from the grub console. run "find /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.7-10" to locate the kernel. (vmlinux-2.4.7-10 should be the default kernel for RH7.2). It should return the partition it's on, and if you're right, it should say (hd1,0). If it finds the kernel there, run the command "kernel (hd1,0)/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.7-10". That should boot you into Red Hat. If you get an error like "init not found", you need to tell the kernel what the root partition is. If your guess is right that will be /dev/hdb1. In that case run "kernel (hd1,0)/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.7-10 root=/dev/hdb1".

Once you've successfully booted into Red Hat, check for the /boot/grub/menu.lst file. That's the bootloader configuration file. If it isn't there then post back and I'll help create one (not difficult).

Please reply with your results.