We have a 4-gigabyte hard drive with two Windows NT 4 partitions
which we wish to boot with GRUB. I know the NT Bootloader will handle
this, but we need to do it with GRUB (we’re working on some GRUB
modifications that will auto-boot one of the partitions based on some hardware
parameters).
Our procedure is this:
1) Install the first WinNT partition on the first 2 gigs
2) Boot with a GRUB boot floppy, hide the partition with “hide
(hd0,0)” (We want the second WinNT not to see the first one so it
will install its own bootloader)
3) Install the second WinNT partition on the last 2 gigs
(leaving a few megabytes free at the end)
At this point, everything works great, and we’re able
to boot either partition through the GRUB boot disk with the following commands
(assuming X = partition to boot and Y = other WinNT partition):
hide (hd0,Y)
unhide (hd0,X)
rootnoverify
(hd0,X)
chainloader +1
makeactive
boot
Now we’d like make a third partition for GRUB (out of
the last few megs on the disk) and boot from that instead of booting from the
floppy. So we do the following steps:
4) Create a FAT partition out of those last few megs on the
disk, copy the contents of the GRUB floppy into it.
5) Boot with the GRUB floppy, install GRUB to the MBR using “root
(hd0,2)” and “setup (hd0)”
From this point on, neither OS will boot. GRUB loads
from the third partition, but trying to boot either WinNT partition (with the
above commands) we get an NT error about INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE. Even
if we try to go back and use the GRUB boot floppy, we still get the same error.
However, if we boot with a DOS floppy and rewrite the MBR with “fdisk
/mbr”, we’re once again able to boot either partition using the
GRUB floppy.
I understand this may be a WinNT error and not a GRUB error,
but there is something being written to the MBR during the “setup (hd0)”
that prevents either partition from loading, whether GRUB is run from the third
partition or the floppy…
Any suggestions as to what is going on here?
Thanks,
Joshua Foster
Defense Technologies, Inc.
|
|
Joshua Foster |
