I have solved my original problem, and have new ones. I apologize for
the length, but as far as I can tell from searching I have gotten
further than anyone has published before, so I assume that this will be
interesting. I DO have a system with 2 Linux and 7 Windows 2000
systems bootable. They are not QUITE independent though, and I need
help breaking them apart. Please read on and send any wild ideas you have!
First a correction: My partition layout should have been:
Partition layout:
(hd0,0) 128MB FAT32 for Grub
(hd0,1) 12GB FAT32 for Win2K
(hd0,2) 12GB FAT32 for Win2K
(hd0,3) ... Partitions for Linux
I discovered on www.geocities.com/thestarman3 and Microsoft NT
Workstation Resource Kit Chapter 17 "Disk and File System Basics" that
the 32 bit word starting at offset 0x1C of the partition boot record
(LSB first) contains the number of "Hidden Sectors" before the
filesystem holding ntldr, boot.ini, and ntdetect.com. Starman notes
this in two places, in one he seems to be saying it is relative to the
physical drive, in another the enclosed volume. For a Primary partition
this would be the same, but for a logical partition the "Enclosing
Volume" is an extended partition, and this number would always be 63
sectors. It appears to be relative to the physical volume, so it is
unique and increasing for every partition. To be clear, for a logical
partition it is relative to the physical drive, NOT the enclosing
extended partition.
I solved my problem by setting this word to 63 in every Win2K partition,
and putting a copy of boot.ini, ntldr, and ntdetect.com on my boot
partition ( Grub (hd0,0), Linux hda1, etc.). I changed this word in
(hd0,1) which is my master working partition with the following Linux
command (booted gentoo live):
echo baaa | tr 'ab' '\0\077 | dd of=/dev/hda2 bs=1 seek=28 count=4
I made a bunch of logical partitions for Win2K and DD'ed the working
image in ( Grub: (hd0,2) ) on to each of them. The logical partitions
had to be made 1 cylinder bigger that the original primary since logical
partitions are a nesting of extended's, each with a pseudo-primary (if
you will) inside resulting in loss of a track. Specifically, my (hd0,1)
is 1567 cylinders, my logicals or extended's or whatever are 1568.
I added sections to menu.lst for each of them. They all boot fine (two
primaries and a bunch of logicals).
It then occurred to me that as long as I had to have the NT boot loader
stuff in (hd0,0) that there was no sense in using grub to boot them. So
I ripped the entries out of menu.lst and added entries in boot.ini.
They still boot fine. The resulting menu.lst and boot.ini are below.
Note that these still depend on (hd0,1)'s partition boot record, which
is dumb. I believe (but have not tried) that I could simply chainload
from a file in (hd0,1) created by dd'ing the Win2K partition boot record
to a file in (hd0,1), and not have any booting dependence on (hd0,1).
SO MUCH FOR THE HAPPY PART! I have two Linux and 7 Win2K systems
bootable on one system.
BUT:
Win2K ignores "hiddenness". Further, no matter which Win2K system I
boot, it puts its paging file on the earliest Primary partition, calling
it "C:".
I can move the paging file to the boot partition (e, f, g, etc.), but:
[1] I cannot remove the drive letter from the first primary (C:)
because it says it is using it. For what, I don't know. This bothers
me, since this is NOT the system I want to run!
[2] I cannot rename the boot partition from E, F, etc. to "C:" or
anything else - it cannot be changed from its place in the long
ennumeration of ALL partitions.
I also cannot eliminate the paging file. What Windows needs a paging
file for with 512MB of memory I don't know.
www.boot-us.com has a boot loader that hides partitions from Win2K by
changing the partition type "and other partition boot record changes",
but I have already been through a large pile of boot managers... I want
something sane and understandable, not "magic, and I like grub (Except
for the poorly-defined "install" command :-) ).
I suppose that I could break down and dedicate the first Primary 2K
partition to just being the residual slave of whatever one I boot, but I
don't like things I don't understand, and I don't understand what the
other 6 systems are doing with this partition. Further the idea was to
make independent systems, immune from one child goofing up another's
system (or mine - unfortunately I have stuff I have to run on an MS system).
If only the grub "parttype" command worked in menu.lst perhaps I could
fiddle the partition types to hide and unhide at boot time. But it
doesn't, and boot-us suggests that other fiddling to the partition boot
record is needed.
I don't know anything about Grub2, but it might be nice to have:
[1] Partition hiding that works with Win2K/XP partitions
[2] UNIX dd to copy stuff around with if, of, skip, seek, count, and
bs. I spend alot of time booting a Linux CD just so I can DD
something. Source to be the grub root file system or a device,
destination to be at least a device, grub root FS would be gravy but I
realize much much more comples (to write). One option would be to be
able to write, but only to an existing file, up to its existing size.
Or even one block (for an mbr or parition boot record). This would give
a building block for elaborate schemes to get around MS. Of course a
mini-Linux system under Grub would be nice too, oh, and be sure it runs
KDE! ;-).
Any and all comments, thoughts, or suggestions are eagerly welcomed. I
seem to be at an impass.
--Ray
------
My menu.lst:
default 1
timeout 10
title Win2K Systems
# password --md5 $1$4zCJO1$NIEcy2xPROh5DlxtHtBR90
hide (hd0,0)
hide (hd0,1)
hide (hd0,2)
root (hd0,0)
chainloader (hd0,1)+1
makeactive
pause Ready to boot! Press any key to proceed...
boot
# Experimental Linux on hda5 (hd0,4)
# Assumes:
# Second logical partition (hda6 or (hd0,5) is swap
#
title Experimental Linux on hda5 (hd0,4)
password --md5 $1$4zCJO1$NIEcy2xPROh5DlxtHtBR90
root (hd0,4)
pause Ready to boot! Press any key to proceed...
kernel (hd0,4)/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda5
boot
# Experimental Linux on hda7 (hd0,6)
# Assumes:
# Second logical partition (hda6 or (hd0,5) is swap
#
title Experimental Linux on hda7 (hd0,6)
password --md5 $1$4zCJO1$NIEcy2xPROh5DlxtHtBR90
root (hd0,6)
pause Ready to boot! Press any key to proceed...
kernel (hd0,6)/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda7
boot
My boot.ini:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="MS Win2K Pro MS-ARCPart 2 /
(hda2) Dad-2" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINNT="MS Win2K Pro MS-ARCPart 3 /
(hda3) Dad-3" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(7)\WINNT="MS Win2K Pro MS-ARCPart 7 /
(hda8) Child1" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(8)\WINNT="MS Win2K Pro MS-ARCPart 8 /
(hda9) Child2" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(9)\WINNT="MS Win2K Pro MS-ARCPart 9 /
(hda10) Child3" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(10)\WINNT="MS Win2K Pro MS-ARCPart 10 /
(hda10) Child4" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(11)\WINNT="MS Win2K Pro MS-ARCPart 11 /
(hda11) Chile5" /fastdetect
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