[sclug] Grub and Windows XP

[John Stumbles]

Alex Butcher wrote:

> Make the /boot or / partition the only active (aka bootable) partition

Can you do that if it's a logical (in an extended) partition?

I've been firkling around with my new to^H^Hpc which has XP preinstalled 
on the first (now shrunken) partition, a couple of other primary 
partitions (XP backup etc), and a stack of logical partitions with 
various linuces etc in them. I allowed ubuntu to write grub to the MBR, 
but I had also done the trick with the NT bootloader to multiboot with 
the first Linux I installed[1] (and may do do so again when I get around 
to it for the full setup). AIUI if you reinstall XP it'll widdle all 
over anyone elses MBR, so a
	dd if=/dev/mydisk of=somewheresafe bs=512 count=1
is wise.


[1] gentoo, which after days of labour I got running with kdebase in vga 
mode. Been there done that trying to configure X (gaah!) .... I didn't 
want to throw away all the work I'd done so far but wanted to get 
something up & running so in went ubuntu. Actually in went 3 different 
versions[2] in less time than it took with Gentoo :-|

[2] first: dapper, from a disk that happened to be lying around. OK but 
realised it was an i386 and this is an amd64. Next edgy for amd64, but 
seemed a bit too bleeding-edgy as I couldn't install stuff like 
realplayer. Now have dapper/amd64 and realised _why_ I wasn't able to 
install realplayer (there ain't a 64-bit version - d'oh!). However 
automatix[3] to the rescue: I don't know what it did (I did see it 
installing a lot of ia32-this-and-that) but it Just Worked.

[3] I found that if you turn off page style on Automatix' web site you 
can actually read it :-)


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John Stumbles                                      mobile 0780 866 8204
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