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Fedora Core Doesn't Like to Dual Boot?
schwatoo writes "It seems Fedora Core doesn't like to boot alongside Windows 2K or XP. According to a bug first reported in February on Fedora's bugzilla site it has a tendency to chew up partition maps making it impossible to dual boot into Windows. No one seems to know quite what is causing the problem and a lot of people are ending up with unbootable machines."
if this was a Microsoft problem the amount of bitching and conspiracy theories would never end. Lets see how it plays out.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Well who would?
Works fine here with Windows Server 2003.
This guy is way out there
I'm running 2K on the first partition, and FC2 has the rest of the space. I did manual partitioning. I have no problem booting into 2K, or FC2 - works fine for me.
--
+1 for low userid and love for SCO
I tried FC 1 three different times and was unhappy every time. I had considered trying FC 2, but now I'm glad I haven't...I think I'll stick with MDK 10.0 Official...it doesn't have any problems with my win2k partition.
Chris
I've installed FC2 on 4 machines: 2 were XP dual boot and still are with no problems whatsoever.
...this isn't the first time I've seen this. I've had the same problem with a few different Linux distros. I'm not sure myself exactly what the problem is, but until it gets sorted out, I just have to keep my Linux and my Windows on separate machines, just to avoid the headaches...
Of course, I've always had headaches installing and configuring Linux. Maybe it's just me.
By the way, if anyone knows how to get Linux to support my Logitech "Cordless Click! Plus" cordless USB 6 button mouse, PLEASE let me know...
[SQL Error ID 10-T: This sig. is above your current threshold.]
I had this happen to me twice. One machine, the Athlon XP, it corrupted the partition table so bad I had to low-level format the disk... and I lost a ton of data!
I am nearly 100% sure that the Redhat people are going to straighten this out, if it was a windows problem you know who'd straighten it out? The people on the GRUB or LILO team.
I have Windows XP and I've used FC 1 and just upgraded to FC 2....I've never had any trouble booting into either....
Hah! It doesn't even boot at all on quite a few machines. I was trying to install it on my Via Epia M board and all I got "Uncompressing kernel Image....OK" and an instant rebbot. I searched around a bit and it seems that I am not the only one with this issue. On my other box it booted into the textmode installer but didn't detect the Installation-CD wich seemed to be ok.
There are known incompatibilities with some ASUS boards but it seems there are more boards affected. I am really disappointed since I wanted to review Core2 for a german Linux magazine and I am in trouble now. It looks like I will have to test it on another box but I will also have to tell my audience about the installation trouble.
Very sad since Core1 looked pretty promising and I had high hopes for Core2.
*fx* Dons troll outfit */fx*
;)
http://www.debian.org/
We've been doing it longer, too.
Martin Brooks / Slayer99 #linux / UIN 2178117
I wonder if this could be another bug caused by a vendor forking their own kernel, like Mandrake's recent problem adding a CD-ROM packet driver that caused LG CD-ROM drives to fail. And no, this is not a troll. It's a serious question of quality control. Who should decide what ships in a so-called Linux kernel, a vendor, or Linus and his team?
The bug is specific to FC2. I just did a FC1 install on a Win XP Pro system at the last KPLUG meeting and booting into WinXP worked just fine from Grub.
The only problem was that NTFS support doesn't seem to be included by default in FC1, but that's a topic for another day.
bcl
I'm dual-booting with XP, but I just left the partitions as they were from when I set it up while installing RH9. If you have an old, working version you might be ok to upgrade if you just don't mess with the partitions?
I dont think thats the case at all. I am running FC2 right now with my XP partition quite intact. I have upgraded from FC1 through all the betas to FC2 with no problems with my dual boot.
1. Partition in an older, safe system. E.g. knoppix.
2. Install grub in an older, safe system. You should have grub installed already, if you have been using Linux on the machine previously. I never install bootloader anymore, I've been using the same one forever. Just edit the grub config to point to new kernel & root system.
3. Grub should be on the beginning of small boot partition. Never on MBR, if you can avoid it. Always create a 80MB or so partition on the start of every disk, even if you don't plan on using it (yet). This also applies to secondary disks. Kernels should always go to these partitions.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
I'm sorry to hear of their trouble. I offer prayers for Fedora users.
I have my windows XP installed on a 10 GB partition on my 120 GB drive and Fedora Core 1 on another 15 GB harddrive. Having them on seperate drives could be the reason I haven't had any problems though.
http://seanism.com/
it works completely fine here with win2k on hda1 and linux on hda3.
Copy and paste from here
It turns out that the bug (#115980) is a result of a few subtle but key changes within the 2.6 kernel. A certain functionality with regards to hard disk geometry has been pulled out, as the kernel developers thought it would be better if userspace utilities took care of this instead. The Bugzilla bug is related to CHS geometry problems, which most likely stems from an error within the parted utility, addressing the BIOS incorrectly. It turns out that BIOS updates tend to fix problems for many users that have been bitten by this "bug". On newer machines, this is basically non-reproducible.
I just upgraded two boxen, one via search+replace 1 by 2 in my /etc/apt/sources.list and an "apt0get update; apt-get dist-upgrade", the other via booting from the DVD and picking 'enter'. Both updates were very smooth, even tho I expected troubles with my proprietary NVIDIA drivers and Xorg. However, both boxes had FC1 installed before.
Cheers.
KdenLive/PIAVE - non-linear video editing
All your partition are belong to us!
I don't run fedora so i cant speak from experience, but what about using one of those 3rd party boot loaders like GAG or XOSL?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Who says that Linux isn't ready for the desktop? I say, "of course it is!". I mean really... what's the big deal about a tiny little boot problem? I'm a better person just for having a machine, powered off, with Linux installed than I would be if I had W2K on a working computer.
We already had this some days ago.
can you honestly think of a better way to stop people from using windows, than by killing the windows partition?
Works fine here with Windows XP installed on hda1 (primary) and redhat on hda7 (extended). Used GRUB with the predefined settings.
So much for fast turn around on bug fixes for linux suddenly Windows doesn't seem so slow, I'd consider this a serious bug, one that could lead to the loss of a lot of important data and should have been addressed by now. The fact that they don't know what causes it is just plain worrying. Although I have to admit you've gotta be pretty brave to install linux on the same disk as Windows, most distros make it all too easy to format the disk and re-create the partition tables.
I spent ages trying to think of sig, but never did
Grub has that bug, not Fedora. Well ok - looks like only Fedora has this bug, but its GRUB's fault and not Fedora.
Anyways, it worked fine with me (altho it was: / in hdb5 and winXP in hda3).
"...a generation of kids has grown up thinking Trance is the shittiest music since country and western." - Paul van Dyk
Get rid of the Windows partition. That will fix the problem permanently.
HA-HAH! (nelson).
Who said the many eye's of open source
was any better huh?
Eat that, Bitch!
Mandrake 10.0 Official also suffers from this problem. This is leading many to believe that it is an issue with the 2.6 kernel, rather than a specific distro.
Does this problem affect Windows '98 as well?
I dual boot with 98, and I don't want it to wipe out my info.
Thanks
Beny
"I'm a humble person really,
I'm actually much greater than I think I am"
Fedora Core 2 doesn't like to boot at all, never mind just dual boot systems. So far I have tried installing FC2 on two systems (PII laptop and VIA C3 machine) and both of them fail. The laptop insists that there is not enough disk space and then borks out and the C3 machine just reboots in an endless cycle.
For those who follow Bugzilla the numbers you need are 121819 if you have an ASUS motherboard and 120685 if you have a VIA C3 system. The second link for the C3 is much more involved and a number of the posters are deep into the kernel architecture at the moment.
This is not good, I thought that the test releases were supposed to pick things like this up ?
Ed Almos
Budapest, Hungary
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. - Tacitus, 56-120 A.D.
If a bug that serious has been known since February, it was totally irresponsible to go ahead with the release. It isn't just some nuisance you can work around - people have lost a lot of data from this.
--This is a self-referential sig--
I was wondering why I couldnt boot into windows after I installed FC2. I figured I was just a n00b ( I AM using Redhat after all) and messed it up myself. Anyone know how to fix my NTFS partition?
While I'm here, anyone have any guides to install slackware-current?
It says it "most likely stems from an error within the parted utility, addressing the BIOS incorrectly"... i.e., the utility!
I can't believe how fucking retarded the whole x86 world is.
http://www.apple.com/powermac/
Stop buying overpriced x86 hardware.
its intentional and says so in the manual and alerts you during the install. This is supposed to work but fails randomly.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
This sounds more like a feature than a bug. Kudos to Fedora for helping rid the world of those damn Windows viruses that are filling up my inbox. Also, since when is a computer considered unbootable just because it won't boot into Windows. Sounds like Ferodra is just makes computers a bit more discriminating.
Red Hat is now going to pay for hosting a version of their OS that they don't put full debugging resources into. Problems with Fedora will be associated (wrongly, but hell, most people think Bill Gates invented the PC) with Red Hat's commercial distributions.
http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/pipermail/linux
Here's a quick executive summary for those who don't want to read the thread:
Linux 2.6 kernels started to report bogus disk geometries thus some unadjusted partitioning tools create bad partition table resulting unbootable Windows.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Use a distro that cares about their users!!!!!
We wondered if this bug would affect us - and went with rolling out FC1 instead - the kernel 2.6.x + Nvidia driver issue (which I gather will be fixed soon), as well as this seemed too scary.
No sig for you.
I've spent several hours trying to recover my HD. It won't let me install anything BUT Linux on it now....and yes my business requires it. So here I sit, deeply annoyed.
My 40gig drive shows up in the bios as 41111 and in the format utilities as 38000. How is this happening? Before I install kore, it was showing 41111. How can I get this back? I've tried using another HD with OS on it to reformat, I've tried resinstalling Linux and aborting after using the install to repartition. AHAHAHAH
Huh?
Who wants to dual boot into windows anyways? I recently got my laptop back from the manufacturer only to find out that Gentoo works fine on it but Windows [XP SP1 + all new patches] has troubles working with PowerNOW! clock throttling [repeated hangs]
;-)
/dev/psaux to get the keyboard to respond....]. Though after some hacking [I had to "break" cpufreq a little to get it to detect a working PST] I've managed to get Gentoo working happily with all my hardware on the laptop.
I'm glad I made the devision 10GB/50GB [winxp/gentoo] cuz I'd hate to think about wasting any more resources on WinXP. If my job didn't require access to a WinXP box I'd just fdisk it out
BTW: If anyone owns a Compaq 2180CA and wants to get gentoo going on it... um good luck. APIC doesn't work and ACPI causes interesting bugs [like you have to read from
Anyways... ya windows sucks. Boo windows!
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Network install and hard disk install no longer work the old way with Fedora Core 2 (via bootdisk.img and netdrv.img), for the simple reason that the kernel no longer fits on a floppy disk. But there are workarounds. I made some notes on this issue.
its a feature!
-solrules
"it has a tendency to chew up partition maps making it impossible to dual boot into Windows."
you call that a BUG!?
Installing Knoppix 3.4 on a HD along with Win2K and XP made my XP installation disappear instantly, so I doubt its Fedora only.
You got to know someone at M$ is pissed they never thought of it before.
It's not just Windows. FC2 managed to make my previous Linux partitions unbootable.
There's no excuse for anaconda changing a working partition, especially when you are asking FC2 to use existing partitions.
I have FC2 installed on two machines, an Athlon XP 2500+ with a WDC WD800JB, and a K62 500 with an older Hitachi. Both worked great dual booting, one with WinXP/FC2 the other with FreeBSD 5.2.1/FC2
...but ATIs proprietary ones fixed that.
The only problem I had has been mentioned before, and that is with the X drivers for the Radeon 9600SE
"Sed Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?" -Juvenal
I don't see why people are upset either. Fedora has provided its users with a wonderful feature: in addition to a bootable Linux system, Fedora will remove Windows the only way a real hacker would: by destroying it, in a way that leaves no doubt in the mind of that Windows install that it is unwanted, that it has been defeated, and the Fedora has vanquished it to the depths of /dev/null.
Fedora, I salute you.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction...
.... is it any wonder that consumer training by MS has lead to such bad habits as to result in the stated problem?
While MS has set out to intentionally make using competitors software difficult to install and use along side windows, if not in digital reality then certainly in mental reality....
live by the s-word/code....and die by it....
I had a similar booting problem when installing Gentoo. As Gentoo is very hands-on, and has quite a community, it was easy to find the fix.
First, the fault is Microsoft's. (Seriously, did you expect anything else?). The point is that Windows XP is a hog which believes that it is the one and only system on the computer. Therefore, if it is not on hda, it will put its hands on its ears and start singing aloud "La-la-la-la I can't hear you!". I have Linux on my hda, and WXP getting dustier and dustier on hdb. It would not start until I added the following lines in grub.conf:
title=Windows Xp
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
map (hd1,0) (hd0,0)
map (hd0,0) (hd1,0)
chainloader (hd1,0)+1
I'm not aware of how much Fedora lets the user write their grub.conf, but if they have a GUI tool, it might just not be programmed for this. After all, on my office machine, where Windows has been left on hda1, things works well out-of-the-box. Maybe they assumed everybody would use this configuration.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Have you tried 2 primary partitions? one for ntfs ant the other for linux
The difference between "it will by the deadline" and "it will be released when its ready".
There goes my karma, but ...
...), but I'm wondering how I should set it up.
I have a box running FC1. I want to install FC2 on a second HD (don't ask
Optimally, I'd leave the drive with FC1 as my primary master, and FC2 as primary slave or secondary master. Will there be a performance hit if I put it on primary slave? I just don't want to fsck up my fstab, or I'd make it the master.
And can I leave my CD burner on the same channel my primary HD is on, or will that cause a performance hit? (Again, I hate editing fstab).
Basically, I see two options:
HD1(FC1) primary master, HD2(FC2) primary slave, CD-RW secondary master
HD1(FC1) primary master, CD-RW primary slave, HD2(FC2) secondary master
Any advice?
Or is this some sort of Windows "special feature?"
This problem existed in FC2 Test 1 as well. I
installed it on my computer, and it messed up the
MBR. After installing FC2, I would get an error
at boot informing me that none of my drives were
bootable. I could use the WinXP Recovery mode,
and see the contents of the drive, and I ran
utilities to fix the MBR, but no dice.
I eventually used Knoppix to fdisk the drive.
I deleted all of the partitions, and recreated
them (with the same values) and then booted and
it worked fine.
Not going to install it now, since this bug is still there.
Don't count your messages before they ACK.
Ive installed core 2 on fours PC's - all dual boot situations, some previously with linux some not. Machines ranging from athlon 64 based systems to my p4 2.8 with hyperthreading and including win2k, winxp home and pro. If it is a windows issue its specific to certain releases. It would be more sensical to think it was a partition table setup problem.
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
Dual booting on a single drive makes as much sense as partitioning a floppy...
I use seperate drives in swap racks. Dirt cheap, works great, and playing with a new Linux install can't trash anything else! WTF is the fetish for dual booting on anything except a laptop?
When they charged real money for hard disks in 1999 this mattered.
This bug manifests even if you don't install GRUB in the MBR. It is caused by Anaconda re-writing the CHS values in the partition table.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I thought I would install FC2 because it had the latest kernel, GNOME and KDE. I already have XP installed and don't want to erase it. After seeing the previous posts with FC2/XP dual-booting problems, I have postponed my installation. Could any of you super-greeks out there tell me if there is a simple fix to sort this problem. I would hate to install any other distro, not because I love Fedora or anything, but because I want the latest GUI and kernel. Thanks!
akeru is wrong. Fedora isn't 'fixing' the partition table... Fedora is /hosing/ it.
It works OK for me, though my Windows 2k parition is on a seperate hard drive from my FC2 one, and I only had it install GRUB to the first part of the FC2 partition. I'm using Acronis OS Selector as my bootloader.
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
It's still at 0.9 something, in beta test?
Yeah, not Fedora's fault at all...
That everyone I have talked to tried to REPARTITION their windows partition and then install FC2 on the freespace. It has never worked with any distro to my knowledge. Use partition magic and you should be fine.
I have WinXP and FC2 running on the same laptop, and everything seems to be booting just great. One tip I saw online somewhere was to install everything on primary partitions. Granted, you only get four, but that's enough for XP, swap, /boot, and root.
For home users, isn't that enough?
World domination!
Sometimes all you here is the bad and none of the good when releasing software. You know how it goes. You here from all the people having problems but not from the ones that didn't. Any way FC2 worked great for me on my system with winxp and gentoo. Was also real lazy, installed apt-get, and sucked down all my favorite apps from freshrpms.net, atrpms.net, and dag.wieers.com. thx to those who have already compile the software for me!
FC2 is running fine on my IBM T40, but I had to tell the BIOS to show the hidden partition. With it hidden Anaconda wanted to format the disk. Unfortunately, once I un-hid the recovery partition, installed FC2, both OS's ran fine (XP + FC2), but now the BIOS claims the recover partition is trashed. I'm not 100% convince that I can't do a recover since the recover GUI comes up fine, but I'm not running anything from it. The machine is running fine and the only FC2 problem for me is I'll need a custom kernel to get my suspend on cover close back.
This would have been a good post BEFORE I had installed Fedora on Friday. Now I'm stuck reinstalling my entire system. Looks like it's back to Win2K and Gentoo for me.
On a side note, my partition tables got completely screwed installing Fedora with everything on a single drive.
Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach him to fish and he'll wipe out the species.
I hate to rain on people's parades, but if you're making a system dual-boot with Windows, the conservative/safe thing to do is NOT install a bootloader.
Just use the one that comes with NT/XP. Of course it is limited in features (esp. compared to GRUB) but it works.
It's not a ton of work either:
Write a LILO bootloader to a partition, use 'dd' to copy that to a file (floppy helps), copy the "file" to Windows, and edit boot.ini to point to it.
Sure, it's not automated, but we're talking just a few steps, and then your're 100% confident that the next upgrade of Windows will not choke.
It would be nice if the PC industry could get "all OS vendors" to agree to universal bootloader, and maybe even get it in the BIOS, but the situation is what it is. You've got to be very careful when dual booting, especially with BETA software.
Sounds like the GRUB and kernel people need to work closer together. I don't know about GRUB, but the kernel has some pretty good testsuites so I am surprised this was not caught by the Linux Test Project (LTP). I'm hearing it's actually a 2.6 kernel problem, and since not a lot of people have upgraded to 2.6 we're hearing about it now.
FC2 refuses to accept the partition table created with previous versions of Red Hat. Anaconda is coming up with CHS values that NO other partitioning or boot loader reports.
Note that one of my drives works, and the other doesn't. There may be a bug in the drive or BIOS, but it only shows up with FC2. When something that used to work no longer works, I consider it broken.
I don't have, nor want, XP. I do want to install FC2 side by side with my existing Linux configuration for testing, so that I can decide whether to try an upgrade.
It is a feature!
The last time I fiddled with my partition table, I had trouble booting into Windows. I think the reason was that the fdisk program I was using didn't bother to provide the specific cylinder/head/track combo where the windows partition began, only the sector# (which ought to suffice if only different programs could agree on hard disk geometry). As a result, some crummy BIOS-dependent routine in Windows just packed up, leaving me with the purty Windows title screen but not much else. As for grub, I've tried it on a linux extended partition and I almost got it working but have since given up and am considering alternatives.
This seems to be a recurring theme for f1r57 P05T3R5:
1. Non-MS company X has a problem.
2. write: if it "were MS that had a problem, Slashdot would be bitching with conspiracy theories."
3. usually followed by actual analysis by other posters -- either: the first poster was remotely correct somehow, or they were totally off.
Suse 9.1 corrupted my partition table, changed the geometry of my harddisk and BOOM! No more bootable windows.
;) )
I repartitioned it with RH9 and installed it back. (Ghost restore of course
After 2 download attempts, I started to install Fedora Core 2 for x86_64. It gave me a warning that something was amiss with the partition table, so I cancelled the installation and wiped the DVD-rw. Suse 9.1 for x86_64 works just fine for me. Never knew there was a problem.
It isn't GRUB that is changing a working partition table without asking, it's anaconda.
FC2 just plain doesn't work right with certain drive/BIOS combinations.
I fail to see the problem.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
I understand that this distro is not meant to be bug free and is not geared towards newbies, but I'd like to try it anyway.
I am an inexperienced Linux user and I'd like to upgrade my FC1 to FC2, but I'd like to avoid some of the bigger bugs. I'd like to wait for something like FC2.1 in order to avoid some of these big bugs. Will there be an FC2.1? I don't remember there ever being a FC1.1 - just lots of patches. Patches are good, but not sufficient for the WinXP bug since the bug will come into play before the patches can be installed.
Perhaps someone else will create an FC2 compatible distro that includes the major bug fixes and adds a few usability items (like mp3).
I recently installed Fedora Core 2 on a computer alongside Windows 2000 and had no trouble dual booting. That particular bug has been seen more often with the Test releases of Fedora Core, as should be expected. If it does happen to you, the problem can be easily fixed by running fixmbr in Recovery Console for 2000/XP.
A different problem, but a warning:
I used Fedora Core 2 to upgrade my Red Hat 9 machine yesterday. The machine still booted into my existing Linux 2.4 kernel after the install. Which, of course, doesn't work with many of the newly installed application libraries. After much messing with the rescue disc and attempting to rerun the upgrade, I finally got my machine to boot properly. Then I had to load all the hardware driver modules I need manually.
Applications seem a little more responsive, but that doesn't really make up for the hours I lost. Also, DDD no longer seems to come with the Python debugger, so I had to downgrade that package.
Computers are just too damned hard to use.
Your design to a real part online: Big Blue Saw
Suse 9.1 has the same problem. :) I guess not as many people are using Suse 9.1, since Fedora Core 2 problem arrived to Slashdot sooner. :))
I'm running into partition table problems sual booting Linux/Linux.
No. While you (and some others) may have been ok, the problem has been mainfesting itself even after an install which doesn't "mess with the partitions".
Please, if you're thinking of installing/upgrading FC2, track the bug before you make any decision. It's looking like it might not be a show-stopper, just as long as you know what to do. I won't post the fix here, as i do not yet know for certain that it is bullet-proof. Check the bugzilla link - this is ongoing and people are trying to resolve it.
In any case, not "mess[ing] with the partitions" will not guarantee your system will be ok.
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
Works like a charm here. I think the problem comes from inexperienced people using the installer- Anaconda offered to destroy the partition map at least twice during (FC1 Upgrade) setup, three times if you count my NTFS RAID.
The workaround here is don't let FC2 touch, read, or otherwise fold, spindle, or mutilate your non-ext3 partitions. I know that's not much of a solution, but it works for me.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
While I haven't dual-booted XP and FC2, I have done it with RHL9 and Slackware 8.1, 9.0, and 9.1. While RHL's grub config may be different than FC2, it worked out-of-the-box for me (with little manual input when setting up grub during the install).
/boot (with LILO on it), and it works just fine. I believe you need ntoskrnl.exe and ntldr on the Windows partition in order to boot. I've corrupted a Windows partition by installing Linux on it, but the fault lies with the re-allocation of space, not Linux itself.
LILO plays along nicely with a Windows partition. All I did was set the active/bootable partition to
How many aliengoods items have you sold to soldiers working in prisons in Iraq ?
Just wondering.
Some people were guessing the problem is due to the 2.6 kernel reporting a different geometry from 2.4 and the tools not being updated to correct for this. I know that even though I didn't repartition, after installing FC2 over my FC1 installation the start and end cylinders reported by fdisk -l are completely different.
Right, I was hit by this. I'm a linux newbie. But I solved it.
/dev/hda | sfdisk --no-reread -H255 /dev/hda"
./sfdisk to make it work. In my case, i had to add the -force flag to the right hand side of the pipe.
:)
To fix it:
-If you don't already have it, get and install sfdisk (there are RPMs out there, no deps)
Run (presuming your hdd is hda) as root "sfdisk -d
You may have to cd to sbin and replace sfdisk with
That command ran, and then i could run WinXP from Grub just fine
However, FC2 has many other major bugs that I and others have found:
- Nvidia drivers don't work (i know it's nvidia's fault, but it's a stumbling block)
- As Xorg is in use, ATI drivers are a bitch to install (although if you use google there is a very good howto out there).
- The kludge i had to use to get software mixing working (dmix under alsa) was inexcusable. With alsa in 2.6, you'd think by default you'd have software mixing. An OS where I can't listen to XMMS and hear GAIM alerts at the same time is just ludicrous. Even sillier is the fact that GAIM alerts are queued, so when i close XMMS i get a minute solid of notification noises playing. Simultaneous sounds SHOULD work out of the box. Esound and arts are not in the equation any more, as alsa mixing is a much better solution - so why isn't it implemented?
- Totem just won't work. G-Streamer broke totally shortly afterwards.
- There's no easy way to edit your applications menu, without either SUing, or logging in as root. This seems daft for a multiuser OS like linux.
I know these bugs aren't Fedora only, but they need addressing if Fedora wants to remain OS of choice for many.
Gamers Europe - Gaming News. Reviews.
Mandrake 10 CE suffered from this problem. One of the updates after CE came out fixed this problem so Official doesn't have it anymore.
My setup is a dual-boot XP/RH8 setup. I got the laptop new with two partitions, a 10G XP FAT32, and a 20G NTFS. I deleted the NTFS partition, and recreated it with 10G free. After that, I did a stock RH8 install, with GRUB handling the dual-boot after writing stuff to the MBR. I was somewhat relieved that Fedora 2 recognized the RH partition and was going to let me upgrade instead of wiping out things. Early in the install I got a 'partition alignment' warning, which said that it may be nothing. But after starting the install it always stopped early, claiming 'partition alignment problems'. I even tried it without updates to the bootloader, and the same prob happened during install. I want the latest bits, but not at the risk of losing 20G of my XP partitions. I was hoping that this being a RH product assured a higher level of backwards compatibility.
It is interesting that BIOS updates fix that problem for most people. I recently installed FC2 and had exactly the same problem booting between it and XP. I was finally able to fix it by changing the drive geometry setting in my BIOS from Auto (which was using CHS) to LBA. As soon as I did that it started to boot XP again.
Fedora Core 2: DOA
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
computergate.com has frames and racks for swapping drives for less than 10 bucks each for ata100. I have 12 of them, and swap out drives to try out every os i want to. good bargain.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
I've been hesitant to install Fedora Core 2 on my system because of a few posts here on /. about this bug on the day of its release. As far as I can tell, though, it seems to be a problem with Win 2K and Win XP, but I don't want to take that chance unless I'm sure. I have 2 hard drives, one with Windows 98 and the other with Fedora Core 1, where I plan to install Core 2. Could someone tell me for sure if Core 2 could cause this problem with the Windows 98 install?
How would something like this get fixed? And when it is fixed, would it require a totally new download of the installation CDs?
Despite what you said, if you look at bug 7959 in the mandrake bug database, you'll see that official still has the problem. Mandrake's fix is apparently setting the bios mode to lba before installation. However some people have reported the problem is still around with this workaround in effect.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
Mandrake too. I think most people dismissed it as the usual Mandrake quality-control issue and didn't pay much attention to the underlying causes.
There isn't firewire support compiled into the kernel. If you want to connect an iPod or use any other firewire devices you have to recompile the kernel. That is a really stupid omission especially when it was reported in bugzilla during test 2!
It wouldn't be the first time...
I've been fighting with Win2k to boot again for the past 2 or 3 days now, ever since I did my (full install) upgrade to FC2. I finally wiped my poor drive of everything and now have Win2k only running on the box at the moment. So much for my FC2 (x86_64), Mandrake 10, SuSE 9.1 (x86_64), and Knoppix partitions. <sigh>
In all fairness though, FC1 seemed to upgrade to FC2 quite well when I chose that option initially. I was just having a problem getting the nVidia drivers loaded afterwards so I thought, "Let's just nuke the FC1 partition and do a full install and see how that goes." Little did I know that even with my old grub.conf ready to go it would wreck my Win2K booting. Oh everything else booted just fine, but Win2K would just sit there. I tried all the usual Win2K fixes, booting to console from the Win2k CD, doing FIXMBR (it complained of a non-standard/messed up partition table) & FIXBOOT but that did not solve the issue (I guess it might have helped if I'd had an ERD for the box but I didn't... I will this time around!). Those "fixes" just got me to the "Error loading operating system" message at boot.
Thank goodness for Knoppix 3.4!!! I was able to pull off all my user files from the NTFS partition with it. Oh yes, the NTFS partition was still there in all it's glory. But would it let me boot? NOOOOoooo....
Ack! How I loathe Windows OS, but once I get the wife used to another accounting package maybe I can rid myself of it. Until then, I guess it is "mission critical" to my household? (Aye! What a frightening thought!) Well, I guess that begs the question then, is it the love of money or micro$oft that is the "root of all evil"? Maybe the two are synonomous? Hmmm...
So here I am sitting with only one troublesome OS thinking to myself what should I dare install next... Maybe SuSE 9.1 again. SuSE seems to always "just work" for me...
I wonder what changed? I mean it all booted under grub from FC1. This is a brand new machine--AMD64 w/ nForce3 chipset, would the BIOS really need upgrading? Ah well, I will grab an image of the NTFS partition this time around and avoid the heartache again if possible...
I was somehow always suspicious of letting Linux boot Windows - seen Windows messing up, Linux messing up and so on.
/dev/hda5 (or whatever it is), then boot to Windows (since NTFS is not writable from Linux), and since I don'h have a floppy drive, I also need a Knoppix in the middle...
So I finally settled on using the Windows boot loader to boot Linux. This way, it's a bit of pain in the a$$, as I have to manually get the boot sector from
Now, it's not easy. And it takes some time and practice and trial-and-error. But the point is, the whole setup is quite benign - Windows doesn't interfere with Linux bootloader, and neither Linux with Windows one.
I did manage to kill Linux installation to the point that I had to run lilo again... and yes, installing a new kernel means doing it all over again.
But I never had any conflicts, and unless Microsoft stops supporting this feature, never will be.
P.S. That is, of course, until Skype has a Linux version and I'll be able to throw away the Windows installation completely...
I had recently bought a new disk and put Gentoo on it, swapping out Windows to hdb and ... well, now I have dual-boot. It even worked on the first try :)
Of course, now I have to patch it...
Again, my thanks.
Agreed. Fedora is free, but it doesn't mean that it is free of responsibility.
There's even less excuse for SuSE and Mandrake since *they* also have the bug in their *commercial* products which should be held to at least as high a standard.
Mandrake Bug
SuSe Bug
Read This Page for more details.
I've just spent 2.5 days trying to recover my system from installing Fedora Core 2 over a previously working dual-boot WinXP and Redhat 7.3 installation.
God I'm angry, because I also discovered that my 'Drive Image 7' backup software wouldn't properly restore the safety backup I did before this upgrade.
Fixmbr didn't work, all kinds of things didn't work, so I'm now back to the drawing board reinstalling everything from scrath.
Its a special feature that removes security threats.
If that is all the problem is, then this is not really new. But I doubt that is the case, you were likely encountering a different problem, because the ability to re-map with grub has existed for quite some time. What is relatively new, is the auto-geometry resizing logic in the kernel. The other factor these days is more people trying to dual-boot for the first time so they *can* try Linux out. It's possible that the problem only shows up with large drives (say over 40GB) installed into a computer with an old bios. For example, I have one box with a 170MB drive as hda (hd0 in grub terms), and a 40GB drive as hdb (hd1 in grub terms). The small drive is just to appease the bios, as it will not boot (pass bios checks) with the large drive as hda.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
I have a separate drive (SCSI) for Win2k and I can't get lilo to boot it. It boots fine on its own (eg, I pull the power on its other drive), but chained from lilo I can't get it to work (can't use grub since the linux side is RAID 1).
I know when I first installed Mandrake it added it to the lilo.conf and It Just Worked but somewhere in between the 6 months of booting into it I broke it switching drives around.
Anyone have any ideas? Either here or an email to sd at pointyears dot net would be appreciated.
Anyone who wants to play 99% of new games, unfortunately.
or will he leave a anti-redhat FUD story on the frontpage of slashdot uncorrected... care to take a guess?
I have FC2 and W2K dual-booting without any problems, on both a dual-drive desktop and a single-drive laptop. No extraordinary measures were required to make both systems work.
The laptop uses GRUB, while the desktop requires a boot CDROM.
So what's all the fuss about?
I used to be a Redhat user but I wiped it off my computers because of people like you. I refuse to associate with zealots of any kind.
I use technology, I don't let it use me. You tools will realize that there are better ways to spend your time.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
I have been having this same problem after installing FC1. GRUB wouldn't boot into Win2k, and installing Win2k or WinXP over it would report "Unable to Load Operating System" upon boot.
I hate grammar Nazi's.
The recent problems are making dual booting more of a dicey proposition than it was back in the day - but the problems can be mitigated to a certain extent if you at least use a separate physical disk for each OS.
But in all fairness, I would never dual boot any production server, for a number of reasons, so that's really a non-issue in the most serious case.
I used to dual boot linux and windows at home, but I eventually got my wife her own computer, and since then I have not used windows, nor dual booted, at home.
I did just install SUSE 9.1 on my company issued windows 2k laptop, and it's dual booting nicely, but that's because the company mandates the use of a certain windows-only application. I was curious about FC2, but after the reports I've been hearing, I think I'll just put FC2 on a dedicated test box for now, rather than risking the laptop data.
Works fine for me, but I have Fedora on a different hard drive than Win2k
as for myself, i had XP on hda1, RH9 on hda5 and FC2 on hda6. while i had no trouble booting windows, i did have to change grub.conf manually to be able to boot RH.
It's a FEATURE.
It happens with Windows 2000 also. It would be nice if Microsoft were to easily allow other operating systems to dual boot with Windows, but they dont. Fedora offers a way to dual boot, so one might assume it might work correctly. Windows doesn't make any claims that it can play nice with other non-microsoft OSes.
/* heres a workaround for this bug... */
It really doesn't look good for Fedora if it can't dual boot with another OS and if it is making some drives unuseable. It looks particularly bad if the bug has been around since February and has not been fixed. Hardware makers and software writers make many mistakes and other software sometimes has to work around those mistakes to make their stuff work. I've seen countless comments in source code that say
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
In my case, no problem. I repartitioned according to the existing scheme and did a clean install of FC2, which worked fine, and had no problems booting WinXP.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
I think the actual culprit is GRUB. I've had trouble with that little lowlife boot loader ever since redhat decided to drop LILO for this superiour piece of crap! After 7 years of linux, I still use what works best on all my machines and servers. LILO
I just installed FC1 and W2K last week. I haven't had a problem at all, everything works great. Specs: Compaq Armada M300 P2-333 20GB IBM Travelstar HD 256MB Kingston RAM I installed 2K first, then FC1.
Its not a bug, its a feature
"It's not a ton of work either: Write a LILO bootloader to a partition, use 'dd' to copy that to a file (floppy helps), copy the "file" to Windows, and edit boot.ini to point to it." You don't consider that much work?
At least part of the problem is that the Anaconda installer under a 2.6 kernel sometimes will write out an incorrect MBR even if you've made no change to the MBR at all. For example, when you've told it to put the boot block on your Linux partition and not to touch the MBR. This didn't cause problems with 2.4, but was still a stupid thing for the installer to be doing, and now it's bit 'em.
So the problem can happen even if you do no repartitioning at all.
After screwing around with it for quite some time, I took the suggestion of someone who replied to me in fedoraforum.org and set the harddrive to LBA mode from auto. Windows began to boot :-), only problem is it had to finish a repair install of windows, and now the screen goes blank after the windows startup logo. I'm not sure how related it is to the initial problem, but for anyone having problems, try forcing LBA. It may save you a lot of time.
I had this very same problem. According to the bugzilla thread, you can go into your bios and change the hard drive to run in LBA mode (rather than auto). Worked instantly after that.
So, what stops you from installing the bootloader (Lilo,Grub,etc) to another source like a floppy or even creating a small partition at the beginning of the hard drive? As far as i can understand this has to do with overwritting the MBR of the disk, so by having the bootloader installed somewhere else (i.e. a bootable partition/floppy/cd) you leave the MBR "safe&sound" . Ok, you obviously have the hassle of using the media to boot, but i don't think that the average /.er uses the floppy that much...
Roses are red, violets are blue, most poems rhyme, but this one doesn't...
I use SUSE 9.0 with my own 2.6.6, and I don't have any problem with the dual boot, I believe the problem isn't the kernel.
Actually, that's precisely what it is. 2.6 reports a different layout (typically 16 cylinders instead of, say 255 in the logical one) and grub sets itself up this way. Next, it appears that even when the BIOS was explicitly instructed to use LBA access, this is somehow overriden by GRUB, with the result that trying to launch the NT bootloader fails.
The sfdisk solution on Fedora's bugzilla fails when sfdisk figures a partition does not start at the right cylinder boundary. Apparently, one can try to change the head count only for the windows boot partition, with the hope that it fixes the boot-through-grub problem (I am yet to try this). I guess the biggest problem is for people who don't have an LBA option in BIOS.
As a proof that it's not Fedora-related, I have the same problem with mdk10.
Finally, there seems to be no problem if one sets up the installer's kernel to use LBA access for the hd (no switching to CHS occurs).
yeah i mean seriously, it's about time windows had this kind of treatment.
Hmm... So you're one of those anti-zealot zealots.
I'm trying to figure out what zealot-free system you'll be able to run...
Linux? right out.
Windows? Nope: OSS is "a cancer", DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!
Sun? No, they were head ABM cheerleaders until a couple of weeks ago.
Apple? Obviously not.
Amiga? Nope: the OS was perfect in every way, only a conspiracy kept it down.
VMS? Ditto
OS/2? Ditto
BeOS? Ditto
*BSD? Maybe, but then again there's more than a few anti-viral license zealots
Netware? Possibly, but now they're in bed with SuSE.
Tandy TRS-80: That's the ticket. Nobody will admit to having used it, much less spew zealotry about it. What's more, you can pick up spare machines on ebay for a couple of bucks.
How come Anaconda takes charge of partition handling? I mean, I dont get why C/H/S should be of any importance for Anaconda - why dont it just copy the files (the actual install process), then calls another program (grub? lilo?) to write the actual data (CHS) in the table?
Like I said, I didn't encountered the bug; i managed my partitions in Ranish partition manager before booting on installation.
"...a generation of kids has grown up thinking Trance is the shittiest music since country and western." - Paul van Dyk
What's the matter?...Is just a beta version of a linux distro.
I installed Fedora on a second disk and it worked. The only thing was XP was on the primary in FAT32 instead of NTFS. The fisrt time I booted to XP it wanted to do a scan, but I haven't had any problems since. The only other thing is I have grub default to XP.
I learned a long time ago that if you want to boot multiple OSes, NEVER install a boot loader in the MBR - always use the boot sector of a primary partition.
I installed FC2-test2 in March, and it turned my MBR into oatmeal. I had no choice but to reinstall Windows from scratch, and I was *royally* annoyed.
Sure, it may be a 2.6 kernel bug, but still, how is it that this stuff isn't noticed earlier?
I'm gonna stay away from grub completely for the time being, and use XP's bootloader to boot Fedora.
Fedora Core 2 ships an almost stock 2.6 kernel. Which it would have taken you a whole minute to confirm before opening your piehole.
Democrat delenda est
The point is that it doesn't matter whether Fedora is technically at fault. What matters is whether Fedora can or cannot install cleanly with XP. If it can't then it fails as useful for some people.
I know it's sad that Fedora needs to be broken like XP, but that's the price of being compatible.
I read about the bug at the www.linuxquestions.org when Fedora Core2 came out. The discussion there seemed quite confusing, with only 6 posts and some people who never suffered from this problem. So I tried my best to ignore it and installed FC2 on my 2 machines at home... both dual-booting into XP/Linux. No problems, although the hardware used is totally different. So even if it is a bug, it doesn't automatically strike every single install. And then, there is always a golden rule.. backup your system before you start doing anything that can possibly leave it in an unbootable state =)
http://www.automatiq.se
Fedora Core 2 works for me; while Fedora did complain about an invalid partition table during install (RH9 was perfectly happy with this partition table; it was generated by Win98SE Fdisk), the installed system dual boots fine.
I used Disk Druid and did not change the partition table at all, though. I only reformatted my Linux partitions during the install and had FC2 update Grub.
- Sam
I actually have this problem in a way. I used to have Slackware and Windows 2000. Everything worked fine. Then I upgraded to XP Pro which ruined my GRUB install for whatever reason. So I put Fedora Core on there. Now randomly I won't be able to boot into anything. It will just say "GRUB" on the screen and nothing will happen. The only way I found to fix it was to change the boot order of my hds in the BIOS. To something random/different. Its really wierd. This happened on both my old PC (Athlon 2700, AOpen mobo, 200gig SATA drive) and my new PC (P4 3.2GHz, Itel mobo, 200gig SATA drive and 80gig IDE drive). However I never had the problem with Slackware. Fortunatly, I like Fedora enough to stick with it, espically now that I know how to quickly fix the problem...
I don't know if this is related, but oh well... Just thought someone might find it interesting.
Matt
You have 1 Moderator Point! Use it or lose it! Is that a threat? -vapid
> a lot of people are ending up with unbootable machines.
Nice!
Must-not-watch TV!
i experienced this problem with two of the test releases of fedora core 2, and now finally with the final version. i solved it by changing the BIOS settings for my hard disk from "auto" to "lba". i haven't had any problems since then. this bug has been well known for quite some time, but for some reason it has not been classified as a showstopper. hopefully now that it's getting the front page treatment on slashdot, the problem will be found and fixed pronto.
This happened to me. I have an 80-gig WinXP drive as my hda, and a 40-gig FC2 drive as hdb.
/. are saying that data is bein lost left and right, that's true if you just assume your entire partition is gone and you re-install Windows. But for those who have been holding out hope. burn yourself a knoppix cd and fire it up.
While the Windows drive won't boot anymore the file system was not scrambled. I was able to mount the ntfs volume from a knoppix session (will someone tell me why the hell Fedora decided *NOT* to include the ntfs read driver in their kernel?) and copied all my my important stuff to another drive I had laying around.
Some here on
on a side note (and rather off-topic, so feel free to stop reading) has anyone noticed how Linux is actually *better* at reading ntfs than Windows is? I fix computers for a living, it's not the most glorious job, but it pays the bills. Sometimes I get XP boxen in that are so loaded with viruses and spyware that ntfs chokes and therefore Windows does. I had one box that was so bad, Windows would blue screen whenever the ntfs driver would try to read the file system, even when I plugged the drive into a perfectly working system (yes, yes, about as "perfectly" working as Windows gets) ntfs.dll would BSOD the system. When stuff like this happens, I just fire up my trusty knoppix CD and mount the ntfs partition. Bingo, 95% of the time I am able to pull the owner's data off the drive before I do the re-install. It's just funny to me that Linux does better than Windows at it's own game. Ok, ok, long winded blab over with now. Back to your regularly scheduled program.
Take off every 'Zin(dozs) !
My first computer was a Tandy TRS-80 Coco 2 you insensitive clod! COCO 2! Oh the indignity, I won't even go in to how I used to print out book reports on thermal paper back in elementry. Nor will I explain the look on my Professors face after I printed a 30 page summary report.
I won't even go in to how I balance my checkbook with it. Sufice to say it's a multimedia dream come true. Not only can I play my cassette tapes, but rip a whole song in several days on to a stack of 5.25" floppies with my toaster sized 360K floppy drive!
Atleast I upgraded to a 21 inch color TV.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
"Tandy TRS-80"
As long as you avoid the m100 model. And BTW, wasn't the OS written by Microsoft?
I have installed Fedora Core 1 and 2 dual booting with Windows XP Home and Windows 2000 Professional without any problems. In both instances Windows was installed first on the Master HDD and then Fedora Cores on the Slave HDD.
I'm running a Fedora Core 1 and a WXP in this laptop and have no problem about that.
DON'T PANIC
Well XP won't respect an existing Linux install, if you install it after Linux then you can guarantee there won't be a Linux entry in your boot menu ;)
That's why I dual-boot with Win98.
Plus, since it seems like all the new viruses are focusing on XP, not the older versions - MS security is like wine: Better with age...
Hint: They're jokes, people. laugh.
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
but I've never had the desire to have a dual-boot machine. It just seems all the rebooting and so forth is too much trouble. Why not just use two machines and a KVM switch?
It's easier to wear the spandex than to do the crunches. --David Lee Roth
Win2K introduced "dynamic" disks, which changed how the partition table worked. Partition type 0x42 means the disk is dynamic and the real information is contained at the end of the disk. 0x42 is supposed to be a container partition meant to span the disk and say "don't mess with me". An exception are boot and/or system partitions, as those have to be read early during boot before the dynamic disk stuff is loaded. Thus, boot/system partitions can be type 0x42 but not span the disk.
Anyway, as a wild-assed guess I'd check that out. Perhaps lilo/grub doesn't play well with dynamic disks.
I've got Fedora Core 1 and Win2k dual booting. I installed FC1+Lilo on HD0 and Win2k on HD1 (installed win2k first), then modded the lilo conf to include win2k. It worked fine. Perhaps these are just for same-drive partitions?
Mike
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
>>I refuse to associate with zealots of any kind.
So if I use an OS or anything else, and don't really like it that much, then I'm ok in your book, right? But if I like that OS, and maybe even make comments about how much I like it, then you wouldnt associate with me?
How about if I REALLY liked peanut butter? I couldnt hang around you?
How much am I allowed to like something for it to be ok?
Hey sexy mama, wanna kill all humans?
Just a thought.
I have sucessfully installed Suse 9.1 (both x86 & x86_64) and Mandrake 10 in a dual boot configuration with Linux & Windows XP on the same hard drive on different partitions.
However, whenever possible, I use LILO. I had no problems whatsoever.
Is it possible the problems are associated with use of GRUB?
I have a Dell Inspiron 5100 with XP and I set up FC2 last night on it. No problems at all. I'm not a Linux Power User or Linux Ubergeek (unfortunately, but I am trying to get there). I just did the default install and everything works.
Good Luck to those that are having issues.
Abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit.
Fedora Core 2 ships an almost stock 2.6 kernel. Which it would have taken you a whole minute to confirm before opening your piehole.
Gee, then what's that 2MB large bzip2ed patch in the SRPM? I see 25 patches in all, some trivial, some very large.
This is not what I call "almost stock".
This is FUD or Newbie issue.. Been using Fedora since beginning and never a problem related to dual boot. Just make sure you keep your bootloader away from the MBR and you will be fine.
Right you are, but who the hell outside a mod or a masochist browses at 0?
Why mod down a 0?
Shouldn't we be modding up, anyway?
Delpart.exe is a little know utility, and I have even had to use it in conjuction with a low level format to fix drives.
As a side benifit, I have gotten a few free drives this way as well, so I am not complaining too much !
KEEP YOUR XP !! .. I dual boot Mandrake 10 and win98SE (although windows gets little use these days)
regards
dbcad7
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
and i recall there being some talk that with the realy big disks came a new way to sort partitions, win2k/xp dont support this way but linux do and use it whenever it runs into big disks or disks useing the big disks way of talking about itself. this it was connected to LBA or something...
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Twenty-one inch monitor, huh? You could play DVDs on that thing if you could just find enough memory to load the drivers ...
I had this problem and searched google since my XP wouldn't boot. So i went into my bios and changed the access mode on my hard drive from auto to LBA. After that, both XP and FC2 booted, but my partition table was still borked, but at least it booted.
From what I heard Debian Sarge won't be stable 'til 2005. So you're telling me that a distro which only releases once every 3 years is better than one backed by a major vendor, releasing several times a year, with IBM as a backer, contributing freely to the community? Did I miss something?
I setup a PC with 98 on it so I could play ZDoom (actually I have two setup) and dual booted with FC1 just fine. When I tried to upgrade to FC2 it failed after I selected install type (ie destop, server, etc.) It could not read the partiton info. I deleted the partitions and tried to reinstall but then Grub failed. I had reinstall Win98 to get it to boot back to Windows. Luckily nothing was lost nor anything needed to be setup again.
Amiga? Nope: the OS was perfect in every way, only a conspiracy kept it down.
People don't like to admit it, but piracy kept the Amiga down.
Nobody bought software for the Amiga, nobody.
Well, one person maybe to crack it, but then it was open to anyone. So game/application developers/publishers deemed it unprofitable to continue developing for the Amiga, thus it died.
All that's left now is the demo scene, which has its roots in showing off game crackers.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Yeah! Partitons are for wusses. "mkfs.ext3 /dev/hda" all the way, man. I just boot off of CD, and keep my data on the HD.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
I see people still don't get it in a lot of cases.
Fedora is not Redhat, Redhat is not Fedora. They are cousins, but not the same distro.
I don't code or work in IT but at least I fully understand the differences here.
Fedora is the unsupported beta community distro for hobbyists and developers. They decided on a more or less close to carved in stone release schedule, and it gets released whether every single thing is fixed or not. That's just the decision they made. It's gonna have bugs, some whoppers, some picayune, *all the time*. It's the place they *want* the bugs to show up, so that they get found out and worked on there, not in the Redhat supported version, which is older, and more refined. that's the one they don't want any bugs in, as much as possible.
Red Hat holds back, releases much more stable stuff,less often, and it's supported. that's the new paradigm, how they significantly changed their company, and I think it's a darn good idea.
I don't think there's a problem dual booting redhat and xp, as far as I know anyway.
They use Fedora to test NEW stuff, that's why they have TWO different deals there with DIFFERENT names and why fedora is 100% free. It's the decision they made last year, for _*exactly*_ these sorts of reasons as this dual boot MBR partition whammy. Stuff happens. It is not designed to run critical business applications, nor should it be used to run critical personal applications where you have zero backup or way to recover from running a beta ware pretty much bleeding edge free product.
Now, if I have that wrong, excuse me, but that's what I have gathered since last year. I don't have a dual boot machine, but I have a machine with windows on it, it boots just fine. So I can boot anything I want to boot. hardware used is so cheap now it's almost free, and in a lot of cases it is free for the hauling off, so there's little excuse to lose data. My windows machine costed me less than 10$, I bought a skid load of pentiums and a couple of pentium 2's for that amount. It's a 333 running 98se, I use it mostly for my cheap digital camera, some place to store my pictures I want to save. That's really all the important data I have. I don't store them on my fedora box, because I know "stuff can happen" when you are upgrading and trying testing and beta ware all the time. And for that matter, used hard drives are practically free, it's just not that hard to have a completely separate hard drive where you stash your stuff you don't want to lose. And you can have the separate hard drive in most towers, and physically unplug the drive you want to be sure of, for that matter, when trying out new stuff. Ya, I know it's fun to have a huge harddrive and stick all sorts things on there,but then again, when something happens, you are screwed. It's the "all the eggs in one basket" thing you are taught as a kid to watch out for, because it's a *bad idea* to do that.
And I'm glad, too. I put FC2 on yesterday, and it wouldn't upgrade, but it would and did do a clean install with custom package selection, it runs really really well here. If I had had stuff on there I wanted to keep, whether it was data or another partition with another OS, well, tough noogies, I woulda been SOL, and it would have been MY fault for being a lamer, not fedoras fault.
I don't know about anyone else, but that's how I keep them separate. I wouldn't put beta stuff on a critical machine, personal or business, and I'm certainly not going to get angry with such an amount of free work given to me when you are told in advance there is likely to be "gotchas" and then you get one.
I installed Fedora core2 test 1 and now I realize that is what trashed my Win98se partition. I told Fedora not to install a bootloader ( I was already using one from mandrake9.2 ) and it couldn't even make a grub boot disc because it wanted to put a kernel on the floppy. I have windows on hda1 and Fedora was on sda10. I couldn't even test it because it kept claiming that I removed the network card and that I had better replace it, ( Core 1 said the same thing) SuSE9.0 on the other hand made a grub boot disk and I boot from that. I guess I don't want to upgrade to the 2.6 kernel soon or maybe never with my hardware.
Star Trek, there maybe hope.
OS? There is an OS on my system? I'll trade you a couple of Corona Light brewskies to get this OS thingy off of my hard drive square beige box looking
thingamabob. Thx.
I can't afford a sig!
I installed FC2-i386 on my PC with WinXP already there, installed GRUB, rebooted and... ended up with a dead system. GRUB was stuck at "GRUB loading stage 2...".
When grub reinstalls or fdisk or mbrfix or whatever tricks don't work (and it seems like they never do) a lot of people end up reformatting their whole drive and losing all their data.
One other solution that worked for me was finding a Linux distro THAT WORKS, and install it, bootloader included without touching your winXP partition. In my case, that Linux distro was FC2-x64_64.
S.
I dunno, all the video toasters I saw didn't seem to be white boxes running cracked code. I think the problem was poor marketing, and being too far ahead of their time. I mean, you could EDIT VIDEO on the damn thing in 1992.
Abusing that position is. But if netscape was so great, you ignorant fuck, why was Mosaic leading the way until the project retired, and why was Netscape giving it's crap away better than microsoft giving it's crap away?
Netscape died because Andresson was, and is, a moron. With venture capital and full time employees, he was unable to capitalize not only on a huge lead on microsoft, but even keep pace with the other poor researchers who took over Mosaic. No coincidence that he now specializes in outsourcing jobs to india.
If you want Microsoft to fail, just because it's a winner. Fine. Really, people love underdogs. But be at least a little honest about it. Hell, you ass-clowns are of the opinion that Microsoft should give everything away for free, EXCEPT when it wants to. What kind of shit is that?
Have XP and Core 2 on a home brew AMD64. All windows partitions are fat32, so maybe my retro windows formatting has saved me?
I also dont cross mount Dos to Linux partitions very often, so maybe thats part of the cure as well?
Today is a gift. Save the receipt.
Read the Fine Manual. :)
I can't afford a sig!
Yes, the point. hth.
Martin Brooks / Slayer99 #linux / UIN 2178117
That's not true with the version I used, which boots nicely alongside Win2K and WinXP for me
Oh yeah, and when we get our asses dragged into court, let's tell them that if we allow Windows to boot by itself, without typing the machine code, that would cause the computer to run more slowly, just as removing Internet Explorer would do for Windows 98.
This is Linux kernel 2.6 - Mandrake 10, Suse 9.1 and Fedora Core 2 all suffer from this problem.
Switching to Debian won't help if you want Linux kernel 2.6. Your paritition table will be fubared.
Furthermore, people do know what's causing the problem. The Linux kernel now doesn't show the same disk geometry as the BIOS does. The fix is to use sfdisk to recreate the partition table.
A year or so ago, I tried to install Mandrake 9, Red Hat 8 and Red Hat 7.3 on my old Compaq Deskpro 4000 machine. None of them would install. All of them would either fail to read the partition table - after creating and partitioning and formatting it using the utilities supplied with those distros - or would completely trash the partition table.
Red Hat 7.0, however, would blow on the system with absolutely no problem or complaint whatsoever.
After doing some partition work on my latest system with parted, Partition Magic 5 and Partition Magic 8 cannot in any way read my partition table. Windows (98 first, now 2000 and XP) loads fine, Linux (RH 7.3, Knoppix, other Live CD distros) loads fine, all other partition managers (BootItNG, Ranish) see and handle the partition table. ONLY Partition Magic cannot do anything with the partition table - and it is supposed to be the "premier" partition table manager on the market!
So now we have THIS crap with Fedora Core 2!
Guys, the partition table is NOT rocket science. It's a few bytes on a disk with a few variations in what each byte means. It's been around for decades.
So why in hell can't people who write this stuff GET IT RIGHT? What is the goddamn problem with you programmers?
I realize that hard disk manufacturers are constantly screwing around with their geometry reporting to the BIOS, and of course not writing any Linux drivers, but still a bug of this sort should not exist in any modern OS.
Get it together.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Though I had a problem booting my Winders partition on FC2 test 1, final worked a treat.
The fix is here.
The VIA C3 problem didn't get caught because it worked in the betas. The bug involved is in all the 2.6.x kernels but depends on the alignment and size of the kernel. While the beta kernel worked the final kernel didnt get lucky.
Ingo and others are currently working through this one to try and find the cause. At the moment nobody is sure if it is a Linux bug or a CPU errata being tripped.
Anaconda doesn't write CHS values to hard drive by itself, it uses parted to do it.
Parted, on the other hand, is confused by the new 2.6 kernel reporting values differently than before, so depending on which way you look at it, the real bug is in either kernel or gnu parted.
It would be very interesting to repost this story in a few weeks, but replacing Fedora with Windows XP. That's right, Windows killing Fedora.
The resulting comments could no doubt be sold to Oxford University Press, as filler for the entry on hypocrisy.
P.S. An excellent tutorial of this can be found here. Kudos to plate for making it. However, it is for Gentoo install and is slightly different.
First I defragged my WinXP HDD. Then I used System Rescue Cd which has QtParted and resized my ntfs partition and created my linux partitions. I reboot and XP comes back up (it did a dskchk but was fine after that) so my XP install was still in tact.
Then I started FC2 install, when it comes time to setup the boot loader, I chose GRUB and checked the advanced configuration checkbox (Be sure to check that box!) On the next screen, you have it install grub onto your
Finish installation, I reboot and I enter WinXP. So everything there is still good there. Now I boot up with a LiveCD (I just grabed my Knoppix cd from the shelf). I open up a root terminal and type: where
That was it, dual boot FC2 and XP on same disk.
'boohoo fedora screwed my windows partition'
'im never installing/using fedora again'
'redhat/fedora sucks'
Why dont you all get STDs and I hope all your children get STDs too (Yes, figure that one out). And then I hope you all die, painfully.
The race will be FAR better off without morons like you.
you install linux, and window breaks. why are you hammering on linux developers' doors? go bitch at microsoft to fix the problem: you now have a genuine reason to waste that money that they forced out of computer manufacturers.
OS/400
It's not Anaconda, it's parted which Anaconda uses to manipulate the partition table IIRC.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
What is with bootloaders recently. 9 years of using Linux I never had a problem with bootloaders and now this weekend I haven't been able to get any to work. Why did Linux distros move to Grub from Lilo anyways?
i just dl'd the latest FC2 and installed it on my dad's computer that dual boots win2k/fc2. works perfectly and i didn't nothing to it. in fact the FC2 install was smooth as silk.
nature loves variety::society hates it get your variety at http://www.monkeypantz.net
Windows never knows what happend and you still have one bootable os if something goes wrong.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
Suse 9.1 is fucking awesome. Everything works! Fuck you Fedora and fuck you overpriced RHEL for AMD64.
I have had no problem with my Dual Boot WinXP / FC2 machine. Boots by default to Linux, I only have windows on there for games, but since Doom3 will come out on Linux, I guess I will have 1 less reason to boot into windows.
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
Wish I would have read this article, instead of downloading 3 iso cd's of Fedora core 2 and spending countless hours installing it into VMware! It couldn't boot with Grub, no matter what I did. I DID solve the problem:
1. Cursed
2. Downloaded Redhat 9 iso's
3. Installed in Vmware: worked like a charm.
Curse curse curse.
"You can talk about Cha Cha
Tango, Waltz, or de Rumba
Fedora's dance has more title
You jump in the saddle
Hold on to de bridle!"
Right - never let Anaconda use parted to do partitioning - it's not reliable.
Partition using an external partition manager like BootItNG or Ranish or even fdisk, then install into pre-existing partitions.
However, supposedly Anaconda will have parted rewrite partition tables even if they aren't changed. If true, this is bad news. The only apparent solution to that is force the BIOS into LBA mode, instead of Auto or CHS before installing. Apparently this allows parted to not screw up at least in some cases.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Because even though Windows overwrites the MBR and destroys whatever else was there, simply calling it a "feature" makes it all okay.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Windows 2k has tendency to screw linux partitions by forcing dynamic discs on certain conditions, such as hardware change. Windows can render your linux unbootable just by adding another ide controller.
/boot partition for any linux(es) at the beginning of your disc. Put Windows partion behind it and all others systems partitions behind windows.
/home on separate drive, which allows to change distros, format, upgrade, reorganize system partions and so on, also keeps your home safe from windows, if you disable that drive in them.
Sometimes, forcing lba solves the problem when bios geometry and reported native ide geometry differs. People with this problem should try bios autodetection feature before forcing LBA.
Grub is much less technologically advanced than lilo, because it does not care about many different bios bugs. For example, it is not possible to place grub on the zip drive media or flash card, becuase grub does not "recognise" bios drive number. I guess grub can have geometry problem on very large disks too, which may be symptomatic to article author.
Lilo is much friendly to windows than grub, at least it is tweakable to be friendly.
There are several board bios/controllers bios hard drive limits, by the age of technology: 2.4G, 8G, 32G, 128G, 1000G.
Often, flashing new bios will help, but I would not recommend that to lamers.
If your bios shall boot from bigger drive then limit is, WHOLE boot partition must reside in the limited area of the disk. So make sure you have a little
I would not recommend to have both linux and windows 2k/XP on the same drive, because of dynamic discs partition change may emerge from windows at any time. This is insidious from Microsoft. I would also recommend to keep
If machine becomes unbootable to linux, it's easy to boot a linux CD (I have a pocket-size lnx-bbc 2.1/i386 cd within my portfeille), then mount a partition, then remount existing dev tree under it, then chroot to it, then rerun lilo. Last week I did that repair in just 40 seconds, and it was very impressive to bystanders.
Just for case, I keep lilo on beginning of every hard drive (6 hard drives on my desktop+2 other ide devices), with complete menu available to boot almost anything from any drive), so it is possible to swap my drives at will on their interfaces. It is also possible to boot from bios on another drive (bios C, D, E, F) if something goes wrong, then select correct system in lilo menu.
And last, but not least: keep your machine well cooling if you have lot of hard drives.
There you are, staring at me again.
Have you seen this?
Wikileaks, no DNS
I installed fc2 on an Gateway Solo (PIII-500 model, not exactly new hardware) and it dual boots without any problems...
this is getting old and so are you
blog
(I hate coming in so late to the discussion, but...)
One solution to this is to use something other than the Linux installer to handle the dual boot capability. I've been running Fedora Core 1 on an HP notebook PC for months with no problems (at least as far as the PC goes; the weeds in the front lawn are killing me).
The trick seems to be to install GRUB in the Linux partition without a chain in the MBR and use an "XP friendly" boot-time selector to choose which to boot into.
I used Partition Manager to handle the drive repartition and the included Boot Manager to handle the boot menu.
Works great. Not too expensive.
I think it can also direct-boot into Fedora (bypassing GRUB) but I haven't fooled with that capabilty, on the "if it ain't broke" principle.
Trusted by cats.
Over at: http://www.overclockedcafe.coml oad&name=News&file=article&sid=2554
...)
...) are best [not required] ... why confuse BIOS when it never looks at OS anyway [IDE, EIDE, SCSI, ... available]. One cheap PC can be many things for learning, doing, spoofing, .... When I had money for one good all-around computer this was the way to go. Now with the prices and performance you can have more than one computer; So, why not dual removable HDD racks on all your computers, mirror the drives, possible problems with MS-WXP, but .... Today, I just run a couple old computers (favorite old one with Linux, the other has WinXP for my Q&A and others' FAQ. Mix and match OS and computers on WiFi SOHO for Technology Experience and Knowledge (TEK) and be an non-degreed "Technology Information Advisor" (TIA) with out being a real poindexter. Extra, sometimes (I think) MS-Win makes a user or other software look like the problem, because MS-Win* never wants competitive problems. Like the 'you have shut down improperly' when it was because MS-Win* locked-up or blue-screened and forced the "AC-Power reboot"
e w.php?num =205&page=1t orcase.com/removable/removable_overvi ew.asp
On Page: http://www.overclockedcafe.com/modules.php?op=mod
JT3 Said, back in 2002; (and I agree, been doing it with Linux and MS, because of LILO and dual boot problems going back for me to 1995, I am just a user not a hacker, admin,
"I mean, why in the world would you want a removable hard drive?
Well, that's a pretty good question. Think about this for a moment. What if you want two operating systems? Sure, you can dual-boot off of one drive, but that's just another level of complexity that can cause problems, especially if they're totally unrelated operating systems such as Linux and WinXP. Or, what if you have two uses for a single system? Maybe your kids (or younger siblings, for our younger readers) want a tricked out gaming box, but you don't want those inherently unstable games thrashing the hard drive that contains your critical financial data (or maybe you just don't want those same kids/siblings having access to that sensitive data). Or, here's a good reason you may not have thought of... what if you want to backup your system? Huh? Wha? I know what you're thinking... that's what tape drives are for... but just how long do you think it takes to backup 40-60GB or so of data to tape? What's more, how long to restore it? Or even better, how long does it take to find and restore one file from such a backup? Even assuming you don't have to swap tapes six or seven times, it can still take forever. If, however, you backed it up to a removable hard drive, it would literally take seconds."
Matched drives (size, part, speed, brand/model,
OTHER information places:
http://www.monkeyreview.com/reviews/revi
http://www.pimprig.com
http://www.s
Anyone ever visit/review http://www.socialimpactgames.com ?
Anyway have fun - OldHawk777
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
but I have installed FC2 on one machine so far and had no such problems. It is dual booting W2K and FC2 just fine. My system is dual PIII 800MHz CPUs, 512M of RAM and Adaptec 2940UW SCSI controller. Linux on /dev/sdb (9G drive) W2K on /dev/sda (4.5G drive).
I heard of the dual boot problem before I installed about a week ago. I will be testing it on other systems also.
Currently I am running FC1 on all my workstations and laptops (about 20 systems). FC1 has been the best Red Hat ever in my experience. I have been using Red Hat since version 4.0. FC2, so far, looks to be every bit as good. My servers are running RH7.3 and RH9 (they tend to lag my workstations).
My thanks to those that have posted workarounds and explanations. Fortunately I have not needed them yet. Guess I will find out soon though.
-DU-...etc...
"Don't sweat the technique."
I dual boot all my machines and have no issues.
My notebook at work, my test machine...never had a problem...strange to here this.
Sorry for the caps. This bug does not cause people to lose data. This does not wipe your partition table. It creates a correct partition table that Windows can't read, on some machines, where partitioning was done while running a 2.6 kernel.
Debian doesn't show the problem cause most Debian users aren't partitioning their system while running on 2.6.
gpart is a little dangerous. Your current partition table is correct, its just in the wrong format. Use sfdisk (see above) to fix the prolem.
i installed fedora core 2 today and the same thing happend. I have a hd with 1 ntfs partition(hda1) and a swap, and a added title Windows root (hd0,0) makeactive chainloader +1 to /boot/grub/grub.conf and that didnt help so i tryed lilo and that didnt work eather. I tryed wiping my mbr and changing the number of heads to 255 and that seemed to help.
IBM has basically dumped RH in favor of Novell/Suse
can be found in the previous fedora thread. If the moder fuckers would have done their job properly maybe the post would have achieved a higher "informative" score, and more people would have seen it and maybe benefit from it. But I guess it did not, so start doing some digging.
I haven't had this issue dual booting Fedora Core 2 test 2 with Win2k SP4. Currently dual booting with each OS on seperate physical drives - NOT partitions. I'm also using a Promise ATA-100 IDE controller card (no raid) installed in a PCI slot with both drives connected to seperate channels.
Since it's only when you try to run Windows that this becomes a problem, I would argue that the real problem lies in trying to run Windows.
... Windows has never even tried to dual-boot with Linux so I can't get too excited if a distro clobbers Windows. ALL versions of Windows clobber ALL versions of Linux and no sign of let-up in sight.
Sorry guys
This will get fixed and kernel 2.6 will install alongside an existing Redmond OS. But hey, what's your hurry?
I can't beleive the parent modded up 'Informative'. *sigh*
There was a patch in 2.6.6 that reverted to the old behaviour. Unfortunately FC2 uses a 2.6.5 kernel.
This problem is most certainly NOT caused by merely running Kernel 2.6.x.
I never said it was. Its from partitioning while Linux kernel 2.6.
Its informative because most of the posters have been assuming that the bug affects Fedora exclusively - it affects Mandrake and Suse, and if Debian installed using kernel 2.6, it'd affect Debian too.
As you'll have seen from various other comments; Mandrake 10 has the same problem therefore if you're using M10 without problems then FC2 will work just as well.
Actually, the problem was only present in Mandrake 10.0 Community, it was fixed for the official release. See the bug report
I'd also like to add I think you're a dickhead.
Cheers.
Mike.
1. Partition in an older, safe system. E.g. knoppix.
...
Actually, I don't see how you equate "knoppix" to "older".
Partitionining with any distro (or live cd or distro installer) that has a 2.4 kernel would probably do the trick.
Of course, Knoppix isn't guaranteed to default to a 2.4 kernel for much longer
Great, Microsoft has a page on it. Linux only has dozens of HOWTO files explaining how to go the other way...
ummm, so some distro wipes your precious windows boot? the data is still there, just fix your MBR.
this sort of thing happends countless times no matter what distro you use (by the way, I've got a Laptop with FC 1/2 and Win2k on it. no problems with MBR!)
oh wait! you think Linux is just click-and-play?
What if.. ...it could take some collaboration (Sharp intake of breath) between Linux developers and MS?
someone wake me up.. I must be dreaming
a
When a passenger of the foot, hooves in sight, tootel the horn trumpet melodiously
I overclocked it once, but the hamster ran off the treadwheel.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
One of my old cow-orkers used to rave about how good the TRS-80 was, and how us "young folks" missed out on a great experience.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
... if BootIt NG (Next Gen.) had been used as the boot manager.
I recently installed Fedora in a dual boot setup without problems. However, I have two separate hard drives. One with Windows XP and another with Fedora.
My experience with dual boot setups is that most distros are generally a pain working from one hard drive. Best bet is to go with just two separate hard drives and be done with it.
All distributions that use the 2.6 Linux kernel and parted or another library that relies on the kernel informing the disk geometry as the bootloader will see it, has this problem.
Conectiva had this problem until the RC1 for Conectiva Linux 10, but since the RC2, it is already fixed our libparted (that uses libparted) to preferably uses the geometry that can be deduced from the partition table. Just like util-linux's fdisk does.
You can easily get the Windows XP bootloader to boot Linux if you so desire. I've done it before, complete with that nice text menu at the beginning. So even though XP writes the MBR, you can easily make it boot Linux.
Meanwhile, Fedora is completely fucking things up.
It's hilarious when people use that phrase. Nobody gets "convicted" of being a monopolist. It's not even illegal to be one.
Anyway, Red Hat has their little immoral qualms as well--for instance, anyone remember the removal of the Taiwanese flag?
This is a four-month-old "accidental" bug. It should be fixed by now.
Completely false.
And what exactly does "almost stock" mean? Nice vague explanation there.
YHBT.
YHL.
HAND.
FC1 (with a 2.4 kernel) did this to my work system. It retrieved drive geometry differently from Windows, and rewrote the CHS start and end entries for each partition on the drive, rendering Windows unbootable. The problem was most likely compounded by the fact that the system has a 160GB drive, of which only the first 128GB were recognized when Windows was first installed, the rest becoming visible after installing XP SP1.
The more I read slashdot the more I realize that most post are from FUD spreading losers. It used to be fun to read this site since it had interesting articles, and intelligent discussions.
I'm tired of reading the crap posted here....I won't be back...
If you must!