Linux as 2nd OS???

T4i

Merry Crimbo all,

Got XP running on my system, I want to try installing Linux as a 2nd OS. I'm gonna have a go at making a image for a piece of Hardware I own.

My system:-

IDE1 - ATA - Music/Pictures - E:
IDE2 - ATA - Backup Files - F:

SATA1 - XP OS - C:
SATA2 - Empty -

I wanted to install Debian onto the SATA2 drive as its sitting there empty, Debian can't see my SATA drives, only my ATA drives. Tried Ubuntu on the Live CD, then choose the install to HDD option, this can see my ATA and SATA drives but when I choose to install it on SATA2 - it does the partition walkthrough with me, then looks to install ubuntu, tells me to reboot but the system can only see XP as the OS.

Once I'm in XP and I goto Disk Manamgment and look at SATA2 - it has split up into partitions as I've asked but the filesystem on the newely created partition is marked as unknown and its empty.

Is this cos I'm trying to use SATA drives with Linux?

Any help much appreciated.
Thx....

Dennis99

I have XP on one sata drive and Kubuntu on another sata drive and when the Grub bootloader starts up I get the choice of OS so I know it works but not why it does not on yours.

toasterman

T4i wrote:

Once I'm in XP and I goto Disk Manamgment and look at SATA2 - it has split up into partitions as I've asked but the filesystem on the newely created partition is marked as unknown and its empty.

Is this cos I'm trying to use SATA drives with Linux?

If the partition is marked as "Unknown" in Windows, it won't be able to read it I doubt - hence it will show as empty no matter what is on it.

If you have installed Linux onto the other drive though - try this:
Reboot the pc and go into the bios - see if you can change the boot order to boot to the second sata drive first...and see what happens.
I think I had a dual booting pc with Apple OS X, and Windows XP.. running the same way...you just had to switch the order in the bios to select which one you wanted.

bat999

T4i
Merry Crimbo to you too.:beer:

You won't be able to see Ubuntu from XP anyhow, whether it's installed correctly or not...
this is because Ubuntu uses ext3 file system.
XP uses NTFS system and can't handle ext3 so it will tell you 'unknown' or whatever.

If you're unsure whether Ubuntu got installed properly then it might be easiest just to wipe that SATA2 drive and do the Ubuntu install again.

When Ubuntu is installed it generates a GRUB. This is a menu that appears each time you boot and asks you to choose which OS you want to use this time.
(I think GRUB is acronym for GReat Universal Bootloader):cool:

wolfman

I've had similar problems with a previous motherboard of mine, where various Linux distro's had problems seeing both. It's usually related to the motherboard and/or the controllers used for ATA/SATA.

As others have mentioned, you'll need a bootloader to pick which OS you want to boot into. Grub is pretty much the standard (or LILO) these days and comes bundled with Ubuntu.

You'll need to make sure when installing Ubuntu that Grub is installed too. I use the alternative installer, and it asks you at the end if you want to install Grub. I'd imagine the live cd installer is similar. It'll setup Grub with Ubuntu as the default OS (annoyingly doesn't give you any options), but once in Ubuntu this can easily be fixed by opening up a terminal window and entering "sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst" and changing the order there.

If you do want to read EXT2/3 partitions in Windows. Have a look at:
http://www.fs-driver.org/
It's what I currently use. My storage drive is an EXT3 partition but I can read it in Windows too using the above (as an EXT2 partition). Just means I can easily switch between operating systems and I find it preferable to using FAT32 (as I at least get journaling in Linux rather than neither).

Ah, just had a thought. Grub may have been installed on the 2nd SATA drive. Hence as toasterman mentions, maybe set the 2nd SATA drive as the default boot option in the BIOS.

acc

Hi T4i

I used the live cd to install ubuntu on a windows xp pc a few days before Christmas, and as the posters above say, the ubuntu installer sets up dual booting automatically, so try un-install and re-install.

My pc has two physical drives, where the second drive is shared between XP and ubuntu.

drive 1 has one NTFS partition with the XP operating system,
drive 2 is split into two NTFS partitions for XP,
a FAT32 partition for sharing between XP and ubuntu,
with an unused partition for ubuntu.

When I installed ubuntu, the installer automatically set up the unused space as an EXT3 partition and a swap partition. It also set up dual booting, so that when you start up the pc, the following menu appears:

ubuntu, kernel 2.6
ubuntu, kernel 2.6 recovery mode
ubuntu, memtest86
Other operating systems:
Windows XP

Within ubuntu, the Disk & Filesystems - System Settings shows the XP partitions as well as its own.

Within XP, Disk Management shows the ubuntu partition as 'Partition Basic - Healthy (Unknown Partition) - 100% free'

GreenNotM

Hi T4i

Did you get the warning about installing LILO/GRUB on your windows system (boot) partition ? If not...

What I think has happened is that Linux installed itself and LILO/GRUB ( the boot loader ) sololy on the drive. As your pc is set to boot from the C: drive - you don't get the option to boot to linux.

Try installing to the C:Drive but use the partitions on the drive (SATA)

As above XP can not read EXT3 file systems - so they are "unknown". To transfer files between the 2 OS's XP & Linux - create a FAT32 partition which both can read and write to, Linux can read and write to NTFS but in a limited fashion, it is not recommended - except in emergencies...

GreenNotM

GreenNotM wrote:

Hi T4i

As above XP can not read EXT3 file systems - so they are "unknown". To transfer files between the 2 OS's XP & Linux - create a FAT32 partition which both can read and write to, Linux can read and write to NTFS but in a limited fashion, it is not recommended - except in emergencies...

I gotta learn to type faster :rotfl: ...... As standard XP cannot read EXT3 but as Wolfman says you can load drivers and forgot to add - try to make your SATA the boot drive in the BIOS to see if your Linux is all there.

T4i

Ok,

Thanks for all the replies so far.

I'm still having no luck with Ubuntu. Tried doing the partitions manually as the 'guided' partition didn't seem to be actualy creating any new partitions.

So I did it the manual way, my SATA2 -

40GB NTFS
38GB EXT3
1.5GB Linux Swap

All was looking good, and it seem'd to be going well, asked me where I wanted to install Ubuntu to and I selected the empty 38GB. Walked me through all the location/keyboard setup, asked me to take cd back out and reboot.

Still no dual boot options.......nothing.....If I select my SATA2 drive to boot from BIOS all what happens is POST, Hardware Check and then it displays 'Verifiying DMI Pool Data' and doesnt do anything more.....

I'm slightly puzzled now as to why I can't boot Linux.......The only other thing I can think of at this time is the SATA2 drives 1st partition is the NTFS partition. Does the booting partition need to be first?

The Linux live cd's seem to work great, just a tad slooooooow (even compaired with Windows) I'd love to get one setup from the HDD and see the real speed.

Thx again....

T4i

Pants.....

Forgot something, quite afew have asked me about this LILO/GRUB. I've seen no mention of these two when trying to install Ubuntu.

GreenNotM

Try installing to the C drive - didn't mean that as a smiley last time.. but select the partitions on the D drive to actually place the files on -

Grub needs to replace the Windows Boot Loader - but the linux installer will not find the boot partition unless you tell it ..

Alt -have a google for the manual version of editing boot.ini to give an option to boot to linux