linux boot menu?

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hello! i installed linux in the dos (my pc have the windows xp ) & my xp is in hda1(c:/)and i installed linux in the hda7(/ if in windows to see it's after the e: )when installed ,reboot .there is not the bootmenu for linux ,just into xp,,what will i should do ,how to get linux boot menu?

 

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I dont know how to setup the boot menu for linux, but from installing it in the past there is an option that says if you would like to install the boot menu when you are installing linux.

I am assuming that maybe by booting from the linux cd again there is an option in that allows you to install the boot menu.

 

Well, you installed Windows first and then Linux which is good but usually in Windows/Linux dual boot computers, you also have to configure the Linux boot loader (which is most likely GRUB) to offer the boot options. There are many excellent tutorials on how to do this on the web so I won't add another one. Here are some very helpful links. The first link can present the information in a variety of languages if English is not your first language. Cheers.

http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux/grub-w2k-HOWTO.html

http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2006/05/08/dual-boot-laptop.html

 

If you're still seeing the Windows bootloader menu then you installed the Linux bootloader (GRUB or LiLo) to the partition's boot sector rather than the drive's MBR. In general, it's easier to boot Windows with Linux than vice versa, so I'd suggest reinstalling this time picking the MBR. Also sounds like you're using an old version of Linux since hda is no longer used. All boot drives, whether IDE or SCSI, should now appear as sda. So pick a newer distro too. Any mainstream distro will detect your Windows installation and automatically create the appropriate menu entries for you.

 

Ummm.... You are correct about why the linux install is not showing up in the boot menu, but incorrect on your assertions about how drives show up in modern distro's. All bootable drives do not show up as sda. Here is the output from df on a Debian Sid machine. /dev/hda1 is my boot partition. The drives also show up that way in /etc/fstab.

Code:

Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1             39382088   8017696  31364392  21% /
tmpfs                   258384         0    258384   0% /lib/init/rw
udev                     10240       120     10120   2% /dev
tmpfs                   258384         0    258384   0% /dev/shm
/dev/hdc2             10080488   2052416   7516004  22% /mnt/music

BTW, you're also correct on how old that distro most likely is that the op is using. It certainly isn't a modern distro.

 

Perhaps reading this will help clarify:
http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?t=149316

 

I hadn't read that before so that was pretty interesting. However, it looks like Debian still hasn't implemented the libata bit in Debian kernels:

Code:

Linux Job 2.6.21-2-486 #1 Wed Jul 11 03:17:09 UTC 2007 i686 GNU/Linux

The above is the output from uname -a on one of my Sid boxes. I wonder how many of the Debian descendants have followed Debian's lead in this matter. I'm not too surprised that Fedora would jump on it because RedHat would probably like to test these changes very thoroughly before they implement it in RHEL.

 

I guess I should also point out (since the other guys at JustLinux didn't) that due to this change it's recommended that you don't use device names in fstab anymore. Instead you should use volume labels or UUIDs.

First line from my Fedora 7 install, which loads my primary master IDE drive as sda, for example:

Code:

LABEL=/              /                 ext3    defaults        1 1

It's also recommended that you use volume labels or UUIDs for the root= and resume= kernel parms in grub.conf BTW. I assume lilo.conf can be configured similarly but haven't used it myself since dumping Mandriva.

 

That's good to know but, well, I guess I should point out that this is a fresh rebuild of this box--first in 3 or 4 years and several in-place dist-upgrades--and my /etc/fstab was generated by the Debian installer, as were my grub files, and neither grub nor /etc/fstab uses the sda designation for PATA drives. Neither does the brand new Etch server install I just finished last week, and I upgraded the kernel in that build to 2.6.22 due to a bug with Etch's stock kernel with the SATA RAID card we were using to serve the database and webserver files(the OS went onto a IDE drive).

My point being, that not all distro's are implementing this yet so assuming that all distro's are and replacing hda with sda before finding out if it's true for whatever distro is being used can cause just as many problems as not knowing about this and the distro in question has implemented it.

 

Totally off topic but nice to see you around again Freddy

 

Thanks, Tyler D.

 

Oops. Didn't see this. Thanks Sparky.

 

This topics helped me out, thanks guys!

 

Greetings, mikemike. You have a talent for digging up old threads.