[Nottingham] Dual boot GRUB woes on RAID

[Jason Irwin]

> A friend of mine (it really is - not a way of saying me haha)  has got fed
up with viruses/update
> trouble on his XP box, so decided to get into Linux at my suggestion. He's
an ex Sys-Admin from 
> years ago at Rolls Royce, so has some experience of the benefits of a real
OS, but like most 
> Windows users wants to keep Windows to run some programs.

> His original XP drive has two partitions, that are in a RAID array, (not
sure whether 1 or 0).
> Anyway, he has bought an extra drive, managed to install Natty on it, at
the moment has GRUB 
> on that second drive's MBR, so changes the boot order in the BIOS to
switch between OS's. 

I’m an idiot, so my advice may be crap.

He is probably using fake-raid (some Intel trickery on the HDD controller, I
have it and it is pretty common on home/low-end devices).  From when I did
my research for my RAID0 set-up, I found out that GRUB *does not* like this.

I set-up the drives as if they were going to be normal, but got the
installer to RAID0 them (you need the alternate install for this).  The
first partition on the first drive was a bog-standard one to keep GRUB happy
(which means that I did "lose" a similar chunk on the second drive).  And I
think that is the key, the MBR (or whatever the hell it’s called) must be
non-raided or GRUB dies on its arse (details...I’m not long on details).

One trick might be to look at Plop.  That can just ask if you want to boot
to Linux or to Windows I guess.  Easier than dicking around with the BIOS.
Or run XP under VBox.

Would LILO or something else play nice with the RAID?

J.