I give up on x86-64, its too busted.

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 16 April 2006 15:02, Gene Heskett wrote:
>On Sunday 16 April 2006 14:52, Gene Heskett wrote:
>>On Sunday 16 April 2006 13:47, Matthew Saltzman wrote:
>>>On Sun, 16 Apr 2006, Gene Heskett wrote:
>>>> Humm, I now have installed the 386 version of FC5, but I told it
>>>> to put grub in the 1st sector of /dev/hda2, the partition named
>>>> /boot.
>>>>
>>>> But there's no choice of booting anything but XP.  I guess this
>>>> means I have to install it in the mbr of /dev/hda?
>>>>
>>>> In which case how do I install it, and whats the magic spell to
>>>> put into grub.conf so I have a choice of what to boot?
>>>>
>>>> Running the rescue cd, and cd'd to /mnt/sysimage, with a shell, a
>>>> "usr/local/sbin/grub-install /dev/hda"  gets me a message that it
>>>> can't find grub in sbin.  Of course its not there, if booted
>>>> normally it would be in /usr/sbin.
>>>>
>>>> Obviously there's something I'm doing wrong in trying to protect
>>>> the XP install, but how can I fix it and boot the just installed
>>>> i386 version of FC5?  I'd druther not have to go all the way thru
>>>> another install just to move the grub stuff into the MBR.
>>>
>>>You are fine with GRUB in /dev/hda2.  Now boot with a rescue disk
>>> and run 'fdisk /dev/hda'  Then enter 'a' to toggle the boot flag
>>> and then '2' to make /dev/hda2 bootable, then 'w' to write the
>>> partition table, then reboot.
>>>
>>>Do *NOT* use the Windows disk manager to toggle the bootable flag!
>>> Every time I tried that with Win2K, it would blow away my entire
>>> partition table.
>>>
>>>I always thought it would be nice if when you selected /boot's
>>> partition for GRUB, the installer would make it bootable, but when
>>> I bugzilla'd the request it was shot down.
>>
>>I just did that, checked it with a p, then w rote it.  Got this
>> message: Warning: re-reading the partition table failed with error
>> 16: Device or resource busy.  Then I ctl-d'd the shell and let it
>> reboot.  It booted to windows, I rebooted, hit esc, that screen
>> looked like the normal bios screen for selection, with neither hda1
>> nor hda2, just hda being the choices.  I rebooted to the rescue cd,
>> and re-ran fdisk & found that flag was off again.  I've set it
>> again, but when I w the changes, the above error is output.
>>
>>Do I need to skip the search?  Ahh, that time no error when I wrote
>> it, but the * survived adjacent to /dev/hda2.  But no boot choice
>> either on the reboot.
>>
>>So I power cycled it, and booted back to the rescue cd.  And no boot
>>flag for /dev/hda2 when I rerun fdisk /dev/hda after the power cycle.
>>
>>Next suggestion reinstall/what?  If I reinstall, and let it put grub
>> in the mbr this time, whats the magic spell for grub.conf to make XP
>> Home edition usable again?
>>
>>Thats based on if I'm to hate winderz as bad as I have over the
>> years, never having owned a winderz machine before, I'd at least
>> like to get to know my enemy.
>
>And I just found GAG on the gparted disk, maybe this will work, or
>should I figure on reinstalling and letting it put grub in the mbr
> this time?
>
Traceing it with google, I found a thread that told me howto put grub 
into the mbr.  So now its booted and updateing via yum.  I haven't 
tried to reboot to XP yet.

On the boot, I saw it make 2 or 3 passes at starting X, and when it 
finally did, the screen resolution wasn't very good, so I've added a 
"1200x768" in front of that choice in the xorg.conf, and reset inittab 
to 3 so I can play with it.

Ahh, the update is done, now to see if it all works.  That faint 
knocking sound, thats me, beating on my wooden head.

>>>--
>>>   Matthew Saltzman
>>>
>>>Clemson University Math Sciences
>>>mjs AT clemson DOT edu
>>>http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs
>
>--
>Cheers, Gene
>People having trouble with vz bouncing email to me should add the word
>'online' between the 'verizon', and the dot which bypasses vz's
>stupid bounce rules.  I do use spamassassin too. :-)
>Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above
>message by Gene Heskett are:
>Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
People having trouble with vz bouncing email to me should add the word
'online' between the 'verizon', and the dot which bypasses vz's
stupid bounce rules.  I do use spamassassin too. :-)
Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above
message by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.