[Adrenalin]

Um, hi kids

I think i went over my XP partition, is there anyway of checking if i did or not? I doubt i did because it asked me to set a size of free space i'd like to use and i clicked on the free space on my drive and set it to use 10gb of my 80gb hdd. any ideas if windows will still boot?

Edited by Adrenalin, 09 December 2007 - 02:34 PM.

[Advertisements]

Most Distros have a partition manager like gParted. Launch the partition manager and see what partitions are there. NTFS partitions are likely to be Windows.

I'm not sure what Fedora uses to boot but most distros these days use GRUB. You open /boot/grub/menu.lst and add something like:

title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

Note the rootnoverify line. Make sure you have the right drive and partition. (hd0,0) is likely to be your windows partition if this is the only hard drive.

Edited by silverbeard, 09 December 2007 - 06:17 PM.

[silverbeard]

Most Distros have a partition manager like gParted. Launch the partition manager and see what partitions are there. NTFS partitions are likely to be Windows.

I'm not sure what Fedora uses to boot but most distros these days use GRUB. You open /boot/grub/menu.lst and add something like:

title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

Note the rootnoverify line. Make sure you have the right drive and partition. (hd0,0) is likely to be your windows partition if this is the only hard drive.

Edited by silverbeard, 09 December 2007 - 06:17 PM.

[Adrenalin]

Hi,

I'm a complete newbie to Linux so please can you tell me why it says "You do not have the permissions necessary to view the contents of root"

I just went into My Computer > File system > Root

Thanks

[Gravity Gripp]

You'll have to use "sudo" or "su" to gain access to the root account to view that file. root is like Administrator on Windows, except Linux handles permissions much more aggressively that Windows. So, open up a terminal (should be a link to one in one of the menus), then type "sudo cat /boot/grub/menu.lst".


sudo is telling Fedora, that we want to use the root account to do the next command we say.
cat is a program used for viewing files, much like "type" in windows
/boot/grub/menu.lst is the boot list with pointers of where to boot OS's from.

[Adrenalin]

Sounds good,

Tried it, got to the end of the sudo cat /boot/grub/menu.lst and then it asked me for a password, which i put in, then it told me "Adrenalin is not in the sudoers file, This incident will be reported"

Eh? Speaking gibberish to me this thing!

[Gravity Gripp]

hrm, i forget that ubuntu is much different than fedora

what happened there was that you have to be in a list of users to be able to use the sudo command. That's another jar of peanut butter all together.

Ok so, you could also try "su root" which tells the terminal that you want to become that user. Becareful with the root account because if you don't know what your doing it could be dangerous.

So, in the terminal, type "su root", you'll be prompted for the root password. Enter it then type "cat /boot/grub/menu.lst". Look for the entry that silverbeard had said and then type "exit" to exit out of root's account.

Edited by Gravity Gripp, 10 December 2007 - 09:47 AM.

[silverbeard]

In terminal try
su root gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

You should be prompted for a password and gedit should launch with the file. I assume you are using GNOME. If KDE substitute kwrite or kate for gedit.

[Adrenalin]

Hmmm, ok

Password worked, i am in the menu.lst file. Now, it says :

Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file.
NOTICE : You do not have a /boot partition. This means that all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, e.g.
root (hd0,5)
Kernel /boot/vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sda6
initrd /boot/initrd-version.img
boot=/dev/sda

And then it gives me the two boot options namely : Fedora and 'other'

Thanks guys for the patience, i feel like a total idiot in linux but I want to get a nice feel of it and maybe even work with it most of the time like i do in windows.

Edited by Adrenalin, 10 December 2007 - 11:03 AM.

[Gravity Gripp]

What does the "other" entry give you when you try to boot? It looks like from the grub entry for Fedora that you have several partitions before your linux partition.

[Adrenalin]

Well, I installed XP, created a 20GB partition for that. Then I left the empty space for when i was going to install linux, which is now. I made a 10GB partition for linux, in the unparrtitioned space obviously and then it didn't give me th option to dual boot. Silly me i should've used partition magic or something to create a linux partition but i didnt.

Anyway the 'other' option gives me :

rootnoverify (hd0,4)
chainloader +1

[Gravity Gripp]

That should be your Windows partition. A lot of the Linux distributions will automatically detect and configure your boot loader to dual boot. I think this one has.

[silverbeard]

Learning to use Linux like learning Windows. The differences are many but you are trying to get the same result, useful data. Like anything new to you it can look confusing It's just a matter of getting use to the way things are done and that comes with experience. The more you do the more you learn.

Helpful GRUB links:

The GRUB Manual
The GRUB Page

[Adrenalin]

Thanks!

I will try tonight when I get home from work... although it's not letting me edit the writing but I'll read those help pages and see what to do.

[Adrenalin]

Ok so i used the repair method in XP, fixed the MBR and Boot and it boots into XP again, but not fedora, lol. anyway just thought i'd let you know. i will put on fedora the good 'ol partition magix way :/

i had to get into windows to put stuff onto a dvd for work

[jacktro]

oop