Re: [gentoo-amd64] Late in the game Windows dual-boot question

[Mark Knecht]

On 4/30/06, Christian Limberg <barneyman@×××.de> wrote:
> Mark Knecht schrieb:
> > Hi,
> >   My Gentoo AMD64 machine is the only machine in the house with a
> > video card capable of running a Windows game my teenage kid got for
> > his birthday. I checked Cedega and unfortunately they don't support it
> > yet. This has raised the spectre of possibly adding Windows to this
> > machine so that he can play the game.
> >
> >   The machine has some disk space but it's at the end of the hard
> > drive. I've not done a Windows install after running Gentoo ever. I
> > used to add Gentoo to Windows boxes but haven't done it in a long
> > time. What are the issues?
> >
> >   I assume that the Windows install would wipe out grub. Would I just
> > reinstall grub from a Gentoo install CD to get it back and then modify
> > my grub config file to set up the dual boot?
>
> Hi,
> yes, thats the way of doing it. After your Windows is installed, the
> Windows boot loader will have replaced your grub - so you have to boot
> gentoo boot cd, do a chroot to your linux system and reinstall grub into
> your MBR as it is described at Chapter 10 Gentoo Handbook. (Of course
> you don't have to reemerge it!).
>
> > Any grub/Windows issues
> > having Windows at the end of the drive sitting in an extended
> > partition?
> >
>
> That is still a serious problem - Windows XP SP2 still needs at least a
> very small primary partition for its boot loader. The other stuff can be
> installed at an extended partition. If you have no prim. partition left,
> you have to free at least one of it, otherwise it is not possible to
> install or run Windows. I have tried a workaround for this - installing
> Windows at a primary partition and then moving it to an extended
> partition, but that doesn't work too. So I had to give up my 32MB
> boot-partition and moved this partition into an extended partition.
> After that the Windows installer grabed this partition for its boot
> loader, but Windows itself is now laying at the end of the disk.
>
> >   What other problems am I likely to have, assuming Windows doesn't
> > completely wipe the drive and leave me in a world of pain?
> >
>
> Hmm, I don't know any further problems. After your GRUB is back, Windows
> won't touch your MBR - and because Windows can't see your Ext/Reiser/XFS
> partitions it won't create a Recycle Bin either. ;)
>
> > Thanks,
> > Mark
> >
>
> Regards Christian

Peter, Nuitari, Jan & Christian,
   Thanks to all of you for answering. Everyone's info has been helpful.

   After looking at the machine configuration and thinking about your
responses here is the plan I'm trying to execute. If anyone sees
anything incorrect about this I hope you'll have time to point it out.
Thanks in advance.

1) Current /boot and swap partitions are /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2. They
account for about 1.1GB of disk space at the start of the drive. I
would like to use this space for the Windows XP installation, but it
will not be large enough to hold the game which requires about 5GB so
I'll create another VFAT partition elsewhere to do that. MY reason to
use VFAT is that possibly the game could be run from that partition
under Cedega if they ever get support for it. /dev/sda3 is / and
/dev/sda8 is home. I don't want to touch either of those if possible.

2) When I built the machine I had 512MB in the machine so a 1GB swap
seemed fine. I have since updated to 1GB so the swap seemed a bit
small anyway.

3) I will create two partitions early on the drive:

c:\ -> approximately 1GB
d:\ -> approximately 100MB

The only reason to create the d:\ partition would be to ensure that
the /dev/sda# numbers do not change and thus cause any problems for my
existing Linux installation.

4) I have already created /dev/sda9 and copied everything on
/dev/sda1, my boot partition, there. I have not modified that
grub.conf file yet. I'm not sure what changes should be made. Here's a
typical entry:

title  2.6.16-gentoo-r2
root (hd0,0)
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/bzImage-2.6.16-gentoo-r2 root=/dev/sda3

Since I am not changing the root partition it should remain /dev/sda3.
Since grub will eventually go back on (hd0,0) after Windows is
installed I assume that doesn't change either. However since the new
/boot will be /dev/sda9 I'm thinking that grub.conf should change to
point there. I'm guessing this is what it might need to look like:

title  2.6.16-gentoo-r2
root (hd0,0)
kernel (hd0,8)/boot/bzImage-2.6.16-gentoo-r2 root=/dev/sda3

I will change fstab to understand the changes when I'm reinstalling
grub, I think. I am really not clear about how to point grub on
/dev/sda1 to a /boot/grub directory sitting on /dev/sda9. That part
isn't clear to me. Is it (hd0,8) and I do need to change more stuff in
the grub config file? Or is it part of the grub installation to tell
it where to find the grub config file?

After Windows is up and running, and then after I have Linux booting
again in a dual boot using grub, I will create /dev/sda11 as a VFAT
partition and let Windows put the game there as drive e:\.

Does all that make sense? It doesn't to me which worries me a bit, but
hopefully I'll sort it out.

QUESTION: I am also unclear about marking partitions as 'bootable' in
this configuration. Is a partition marked bootable because it has grub
on it (my guess) or because it has the kernel residing on it? (Not my
guess)

Again, thanks in advance for any info you can provide on this.
Fortunately I have many other machines here to work from while I go
through this change over.

Cheers,
Mark

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