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From: Slip Kid <"G-2"@att.net>
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Subject: Re: My ubuntu experience
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Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2007 22:07:37 GMT
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Richard Steven Hack wrote:
> On Wed, 24 Jan 2007 22:37:17 +0000, Slip Kid wrote:
>
>> My 2 concerns:
>> 1. I've never been a big fan of 3rd party bootloaders.
>> boot.ini has been fine... I believe Ubuntu relies on GRUB?
>
> GRUB is excellent and will give you no problems. If you install it to the
> MBR of the primary drive, it will pick up your other partitions
> and bootloaders and add them to its boot menu, no problem.
>
>> Related, I also may have a non-standard MBR on the FAT partition (C:\).
>> It 'is' FAT...but I 'replaced' the "Dell" MBR on the 'rescue' partition
>> & copied one from MBRWiz.
>
> Oops, you're using Dell. All bets are off. Dell is CRAP. As far as I know,
> the Dell MBR is nonstandard, but since you've already messed with it,
> probably there will be no affect on GRUB. I wouldn't worry about it. I
> wouldn't be surprised if GRUB even picks up the Dell utilities partition
> and adds it to its boot menu.
I learned that the hard way...
Dell (in '05 anyway) had a tiny partition for 'their stuff'. It was
hidden & 'ignored' when I wiped-out C:/ and added my FAT (and then FAT32
partitions).
Upon re-booting in PM I noticed the hidden partition, it was 'stuck'
there and since I saw the MBR had a Dell signature I gave a shot at
wiping it out with MBRWiz - - it worked and allowed me to put the FAT at
the 'front' of the drive.
So, I used a 'generic' MBR (from MBRWiz) & non-standard is not the
correct term.
But the Utilities partition is gone along with the original MBR.
But the other (FAT32) partitions were created with PM & have been sized
and resized since with no problems.
>> 2. If I isolate the Ubuntu to 20Gig on disc2?
>> Are my other partitions (partition tables etc.) unaffected? I have run
>> into 'disc geometry' problems when resizing partitions...
>
> By definition, a partition table is limited to the hard drive it is on.
> Therefore, if you install Ubuntu to that drive, the only partition table
> that will be affected - barring some bizarre bug (which is not impossible,
> but unlikely) - will be that drive's table.
So, on disc2 (the third drive) I will affect more than the partition in
which Ubuntu resides? I thought I was only changing the 20Gig of the
60Gig drive.
> Your resizing problems could be real or imaginary on the part of the
> partition application you used to do it with. Partition Magic, for
> example, is crap that only works with Windows and even then used to crap
> out on my system with a "I don't know what your partition table is" stupid
> error message a couple years ago whereas Windows and Linux both ran fine.
...as I testified.
>> Other than the loader on C:/, what else is written/changed on
>> 'that' (my boot) partition?
>
> If you don't change the partition table, nothing should be written to it
> except the boot loader, AFAIK. However, anything is possible, since nobody
> documents this stuff worth a damn.
Since I have the 200meg of C:\ (FAT) on a CD? All the Win sys files can
be copied back to C:\.
So I'm less concerned with any files but would be in more of a jam if
that partition was changed by the install so I'd not be able to
'replace' C:\ if I did run into a serious problem.
> The only problem that has occurred in recent years was back with Fedora
> Core 2 when the new Linux 2.6 kernel came in. The new kernel changed the
> way it reported disk geometry, and nobody at Fedora bothered to test
> parted with the new kernel apparently. Their excuse was that nobody had a
> dual-boot system to test (yeah, right, brilliant testing.) The result was
> that Windows wouldn't boot after Fedora was installed. The Windows
> partition was fine, it was just that Windows expected a couple bytes in
> the partition table to be thus-and-so and parted didn't write them that
> way. The fix was a one-line statement replacing those bytes with the
> correct values.
Yep, that's exactly the sort of 'change' (a couple of bytes one can't
'see'?) I don't wish be surprised with.
> So anything is possible, but I haven't heard of any boot issues lately
> with any of the main distros or Linux boot loaders.
After the install of 'any' bootloader, am I unable to 'bypass' it or
directly access boot.ini? Or is boot.ini done away with?
I should still be able to boot to the XP installs by using the Win sys
files, from floppy...
But after POST, is there is no way to 'trigger' the Win boot routine as
'any' Linux bootloader writes the instruction back to the BIOS?
>> I'm not concerned with 'catching on' and after 20 years with M$ made the
>> transition to a Mac G4 in a few days.
>
> Linux can be harder than a Mac, but having learned to use another system
> probably means you won't have any serious problems with Linux. Just
> remember - it's NOT Windows OR a Mac.
If the install doesn't wreck anything...I'll be OK!
>> I do not want to put my 300Gig of data on 3 discs and 2 XP installs at
>> risk. As it's 'more than another OS' I'm adding, will there be a ripple
>> effect beyond the partition it is installed in?
>
> Nope. Nonetheless, prudence dictates always backing up everything before
> messing with a system. Nonetheless, none of us does it, as everybody knows.
"Everything" means a few hundred gig.
SiI have the apps and save vital data.
I have to weigh the odds of a total system failure (3 discs?) against
the 'how practical/how often' to back up a few hundred gig.
>> I'm stuck w/giving up boot.ini - - - What else (besides the 20Gig
>> Ubuntu partition) will 'change' after the install?
>
> Nothing. GRUB will detect your other OS installs (if you choose to install
> to the MBR of the primary drive instead of the boot sector of the Ubuntu
> drive) and build a boot menu with all of them on it. Both GRUB and LILO
> are very good at that - I've never had a problem. Windows Vista is the
> only OS that makes it hard, apparently. (In fact, the recommendation for
> Vista is not to try to even upgrade XP, but do a clean install. Wow -
> really advanced OS from Microsoft...doesn't want to dual boot with
> ANYTHING including Microsoft products.)
OK, 'only' the partition table on the boot partition & the 20Gig on
disk2 will be altered.
The first part poses the greatest chance of a prob as the 200Mg FAT
'runs' both XP installs...
> You can, by the way, daisy chain boots using the Windows boot loader.
> So you can use boot.ini to boot Linux. Just Google for the method. But
> it's a lot easier to trust GRUB's ability to do it. GRUB isn't called the
> GRand Unified Boot loader for nothing. It will boot any OS from any
> location on any device it can find.
My only concern was the first link to GRUB gave me the sense it was
'outdated'. OTOH, as it's part of the Ubuntu install I'd prefer to let
Ubuntu run the whole install rather than pick and choose ways to modify
an OS I'm not familiar with.
Thanks!
Michael
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