Bug 126113

Summary:	Bad: grub screen doesnot appear upon reboot, boots directly into Windows XP
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Amit Partani <amitpartani>
Component:	grub	Assignee:	Jeremy Katz <katzj>
Status:	CLOSED NOTABUG	QA Contact:
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	2	CC:	amitpartani
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	athlon
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2004-06-16 20:51:57 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Amit Partani 2004-06-16 08:02:25 UTC

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)

Description of problem:
I partitioned harddisk to get 15GB ext3 primary partition and 500 MB 
SWAP and installed(graphical) fedora 2 on it. I want a dual boot 
cofiguration and my comp already has Windows XP on it. I got a 
warning "partition alignment not proper, some boot loaders might have 
problems(fixable), safe to ignore". Secondly, what option should i 
use for boot loader MBR or first section. I tried both. MBR was 
working first day, but later on I could not see a grub screen to 
choose between linux and XP and comp was straight booting into XP. 
First section is not working at all and comp is booting directly in 
XP.
Third problem: I tried to upgrade the linux after installing it and 
was trying to change boot loader settings, but in the very end of 
upgrading process, I got a warning "Kernel is not installed, boot 
loader configurations will not be changed ".
I am relatively new to linux.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):


How reproducible:
Didn't try


Additional info:

Comment 1 Jeremy Katz 2004-06-16 17:34:25 UTC

Installing to the boot partition will only work if the partition is
then active or you are using a secondary boot loader such as Boot
Magic.  If installing into the MBR worked at first but then stopped
working, it sounds like XP overwrote it when you booted into it.

Comment 2 Amit Partani 2004-06-16 20:23:03 UTC

I reinstalled FC2 again yesterday and used MBR. It is working good so 
far and I think you are right, XP overwrote MBR when I tried system 
restore feature in XP. Can you suggest something to prevent this.
I couldnot get your first line (am relatively new to linux). I 
created the partition using Windows XP tools, but deleted it and 
formated with Disk Druid. Is that causing the problem. And what can I 
do about the error I get when I try to upgrade the boot loader.
Thx

Comment 3 Jeremy Katz 2004-06-16 20:51:57 UTC

Unfortunately, that's one of the points that XP's "system restore"
does -- there's not much of a way around it other than "don't use it".  

And the upgrade thing is due to the fact that we can only generate a
boot loader config if we install the kernel and thus can figure out
what kernels should be in the boot loader config.