[sllug-members]: Re: sllug-members Digest, Vol 27, Issue 15

[Erik Falor]

>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 07:29:55 -0700
> From: "Jason Porter" <Jason.Porter at octanner.com>
> Subject: [sllug-members]: Dell Precision 690 w/ XP and Linux
> To: <sllug-members at sllug.org>
> Message-ID:
>         <A99FD2C730146046942C96C9D743971706C6FB38 at OCTEXCH1.octanner.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain;       charset="us-ascii"
>
> I have a Dell Precision 690 here that I would like to dual boot XP and
> Linux.  It has the Dell SAS 5/iR controller with two Serial SCSI drives
> (I think, the SAS controller says they're SATA, but when I try a linux
> install they come up as sda and sdb both 146GB).  They are not setup in
> any sort of raid.  I have tried to install a couple of distros on the
> box and the install goes fine, but when I try to boot them GRUB says
> there isn't a valid boot partition (I've been trying to install on drive
> w/o XP).  I believe this is because the first drive is set as the boot
> drive.  My idea is to install the main portion of linux on the second
> drive and /boot on the first drive with XP.  I need to keep XP running
> (I'd love to blow it away and just go linux, but it's not an option).
> What does the list think about this idea, or is there a better one that
> I haven't thought of?  Thanks!
>
> Jason Porter
> O.C. Tanner
> Information Services
> Technical Specialist


Is your /boot partition ext2 or ext3?  If not, it could be that the
bootloader doesn't know how to read it.  ext2 is usually a safe bet, because
you don't do a lot of writes to the /boot partition which would want to be
journaled, and it doesn't need to be a very big partition.
Also, make sure that the references to files in your menu.lst file follow
the GRUB file location conventions.  What I mean by this is that if your
boot partition shows up as /dev/sda1 in fdisk, Grub will refer to it as
hd(0,0).  /dev/sdb1 would then be hd(1,0).
If this doesn't help you out, would you mind posting your menu.lst file so
that we can take a look for anything fishy?
Good Luck.

Erik Falor
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