Dual Booting with Windows XP

[June Tate]

On Tue, Aug 16, 2005 at 10:47:56AM -0700, Eric Shubes wrote:
> Nice write-up, June. I'd like to add an observation and a point of 
> correction.
> 
> June Tate wrote:
> 
> <snip>
> >
> >  GRUB DEPENDS ON FILES ON YOUR FILESYSTEM TO BOOT
> >
> >So if you delete (or reinstall) your Linux partition later, Grub will
> >be rendered useless because the files it uses to boot with are
> >gone. Also, if you ever decide to change your filesystem after you've
> >installed Grub, you will have to reinstall it, since it won't know how
> >to read it. For most people this isn't an issue, since they don't play
> >roulette with their operating systems (like I do... =op), but it's
> >important that you know about it in case a situation arises where you
> >end up having to make such a change. So with that said, let's move on,
> >shall we? =o)
> 
> Observation: I think this is a good reason why you might want to make 
> /boot a separate partition.

Agreed -- in fact, on my systems, I nearly always dedicate at least
100MB to a /boot partition and ALWAYS make it ext2, mounted
read-only. This is done so that it can always be read (crazy
filesystems like JFS and such aren't supported sometimes), and is
always safe.

Of course, if you're a crazy OS-hopper like me it might be a better
idea to make /boot a VFAT partition instead, that way you can use grub
to boot _everything_. >=o)

> >After you've told Grub what to call your menu item with the title
> >command, you have to tell it where it resides. The format for
> >this is (hdx,y), where x is the number of the physical drive on the
> >chain (master on first IDE chain is 1, slave is 2, master on second
> >IDE chain is 3, and so on), and y is the partition number. Note that
> >both of these numbers start from 0 instead of Linux's customary 1.
> >
> 
> Correction: (master on first IDE chain is 0, slave is 1, master on 
> second IDE chain is 2, and so on)
> 
> I nearly always have to think twice about this!

Hehehe -- I re-read that email at least three times before sending it
and I only caught that _after_ it was sent out. Go fig, huh? =op

The cool thing about recent iterations of GRUB is that if you type
part of the harddrive designator (the "(hd" part) and then press
[TAB], it will give you autocompletion like Bash does.

But yeah, you're right, and yes, it's very confusing coming from a
Linux perspective. Interestingly enough, though, most other OSes
(Windows (kernel level), Oberon, *BSD, Vista, AROS, etc.) start with 0
instead of 1. Even more intriguing is that Linux starts storage
devices at 1, while ethernet and other communications devices start at
0.

All I can say is that I guess that's part of the inconsistencies
introduced in such a chaotic development model that Linus has
chosen. Reminds me of the O_CREAT misspelling in the ANSI stdlib. =op

-- 
June Tate * http://www.theonelab.com * june at theonelab.com
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