dual boot from the dark side

[socalgail]

I have been at this for a while. What I want to do is to be able to use ntldr to boot into an hd poorman's install of Knoppix. It seems doable and I would like to understand what is going on - i.e. why it doesn't work!

Here is what I did. I booted KNOPPIX from the CD and used mkfloppy.bat to create a bootable floppy.

Then I logged off, booted in Win2K, made an 8 GB fat32 partition, made a KNOPPIX directory there, copied to this directory in this order: vmlinuz, miniboot.gz, and KNOPPIX image. (Got these ideas from previous contributions to this forum.)

Then I popped in the floppy, configured bios to use the floppy drive as the first boot device, and allowed the system to boot. It came up using the HD "install". I then used the following command to copy the first 512 bytes of the fat32 partition as follows:
dd if=/dev/hdb3 bs=512 count=1 of=/mnt/floppy/linux.bin

I then logged out, rebooted in Win2K, copied the linux.bin file to my C drive, edited the boot.ini file to add the following line:
c:\linux.bin="KNOPPIX"

Then I restarted, and when given the choice, selected the KNOPPIX boot option. The moment of truth had arrived and sadly, all I had for my effort was a flashing cursor in a gray screen.

A quick peek at the linux.bin file just to see if there was anything to be learned showed that the last lines said:

NTLDR is missingÿ
Disk errorÿ
Press any key to restart

What I thought would happen is that the NTLDR would use the linux.bin to find the vmlinuz file in the fat32 partition and that booting would proceed from there.

I realize that others have tried this and not succeeded. If it cannot work, at least I would like to understand why. Any answers from the wise ones in this forum will be most appreciated.

Eventually, I plan to really install Knoppix. I am just taking my time, and trying to learn along the way.

Thanks.

[garyng]

when you format a partition under NT, it install its boot sector there which of course cannot boot linux.

search 'w32grub' on this forum.

[socalgail]

when you format a partition under NT, it install its boot sector there which of course cannot boot linux.

Actually, I think that Linux (Knoppix) doesn't require that it format the MBR in order to be booted. ntldr can boot a regularly installed Linux system. The problem has to do with the way the CD version gets booted. This is the part that I would like to understand better.

[garyng]

when you format a partition under NT, it install its boot sector there which of course cannot boot linux.

Actually, I think that Linux (Knoppix) doesn't require that it format the MBR in order to be booted. ntldr can boot a regularly installed Linux system. The problem has to do with the way the CD version gets booted. This is the part that I would like to understand better.

NTLDR can boot a regularly installed linux system ? That I don't know. My limited knowledge for it is that it can boot multiple version of NT/XP/W2K residing on various partition under various directories. In addition, it can chain load a 512 byte file on the C:\(I believe designed for backward compatibility of DOS/9x/ME). I am curious to know how it can boot load other OS.

[socalgail]

Yes, it is the chain loading feature that I wish to use. But I think I may have found the problem. I have 2 drives and I need to set the boot order correctly in the BIOS for any of this to work. I will try that later today. Thanks so much for the help.

[garyng]

Yes, it is the chain loading feature that I wish to use. But I think I may have found the problem. I have 2 drives and I need to set the boot order correctly in the BIOS for any of this to work. I will try that later today. Thanks so much for the help.

As far as I know, you don't need to touch the BIOS. You just need to install a linux boot loader(lilo or GRUB) to the partition(or MBR of the drive containing it). Then you can use the procedure you described to grab the 512 byte sector from there.

The message you saw in "linux.bin" is really a standard boot sector by NT which is useless. Just install lilo/grub the the place you grab and redo it. It should be fine. alternatively, you may try w32grub.

[socalgail]

Please correct me if I am wrong but I have formed the impression from reading in these forums that in order to use lilo or grub you have to have an actual Linux installation, not just the CD Knoppix image copied to the hard drive. What I want to be able to do if possible is to boot from the hard drive the way I can boot from the floppy. I think I need to do more research and reading to understand what is really going on during the floppy boot or the CD boot for that matter that makes the Knoppix image load. This will sadly have to wait till next weekend. Thanks again.

[garyng]

Please correct me if I am wrong but I have formed the impression from reading in these forums that in order to use lilo or grub you have to have an actual Linux installation, not just the CD Knoppix image copied to the hard drive. What I want to be able to do if possible is to boot from the hard drive the way I can boot from the floppy. I think I need to do more research and reading to understand what is really going on during the floppy boot or the CD boot for that matter that makes the Knoppix image load. This will sadly have to wait till next weekend. Thanks again.

Noop. lilo only needs to know the existence of 2 files, vmlinuz and miniroot.gz which is all is needed for it to install itself and boot to linux. GRUB is simpler even. It only needs to know the location of its own file (stage1/stage2). These file can be put onto your FAT paritition and you can run lilo/grub with the proper syntax to tell them where those things are.

I am doing what you want to do on my notebook with at least 4 variants of linux all stored as big files on FAT/NTFS, selecting from GRUB