Dual boot Arch and Fedora

Hi, I just bought a new laptop and I want to install Arch + Fedora + Windows (the lap comes with BIOS)
The laptop comes with 120 GB SSD + 750 GB HDD.
How I plan to do the partitions are:
In the SSD:
- Some gigs for Windows.
- /boot
- / for Arch
- / for Fedora
- SWAP (shared for both)
In the HDD:
- Some gigs in ntfs for windows
- A partition in ext4 for all my data.
The question I have is: how can I manage grub to detect both linux distros? Should I make two separate /boot partitions (one for each distro)? Or can I install grub just in one /boot and let both distros to modify it? or what is the best recommendation on doing this?
thanks a lot!

Thanks all for replying (:
shulamy wrote:
i do it from fedora because it's kernel name changes
evry update and arch's doesn't.
ezik
So what you did was first installing arch with /boot in a separate partition, and then installed fedora replacing the arch /boot with the new fedora /boot? or you just told fedora to use the arch /boot as its /boot ?
thanks

Similar Messages

[Solved]Dual booting Arch and Fedora

i was hoping to partition like this:
/boot (same for both)
/root (arch)
/swap (same for both)
/root (fedora)
/home (same for both)
this doing is according to: bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=97121
as both are using grub2, i don't think having same /boot would coz any trouble
and about /home, having uid and gid 500 for both arch and fedora would not cause any trouble,eh?
how do i change uid and gid from 100 to 500 on first boot in arch?
thnz in advnc
Last edited by eric17 (2012-05-25 18:25:04)

eric17 wrote:guys!..ran into a new one
now that, i have gpt table(want to try it for the first time), so bootloader doesn't install in MBR, so how to install it on /dev/sda1(no seperate for boot)?
there is no method to change the location from sda to sda1(as installer discourages it)
if it is so important to have it in MBR, then how do I force it while 'Install bootloader'?
first i created bios_grub(1mb) on /sda1 through fedora installation(as without it, after installing arch, fedora was showing error that there is no boot storage device 1 or somethin like that)
then, through Gparted:
/root /sda2 fedora
/root /sda3 arch
/swap both
simple ext4 data partion (later i would create folders in it and bind them to each distro's home
then installed arch without bootloader in end....after that fedora and it installed grub 1.99 on /sda
now, both are booting fine
thnx to every one

[Success] Dual Booting Arch and Windows 7 [Advice / Confirmation]

So I have been trying to get Starcraft II to work with wine and no luck.
I have decided to install windows back on my computer, besides it might come in handy since I'm heading back to school soon.
Anyways I have tried dual booting arch and windows in the past, and my results have never been stable.
Today I will try using the program gparted.
Let me give you my thoughts on how I plan to go through this and please give me some advice so I don't loose everything I have worked for on my linux box
1.Currently I have two hard drives, one for all my main programs and one for my media files (mounting usb, dvd, etc, and it actually has no files in it xD).
I plan to use gparted to re-size my second harddrive (media drive), create an extended partition, and a logical ntfs partition within it.
2.I pop in my windows cd that I recieved with my laptop and install it on the space I have partitioned for windows.
3. If my grub gets wiped out my windows (which I hope it doesn't not sure how the MBR stuff works) I insert a Ubuntu live cd and do
sudo grub
> root (hd0,0)
> setup (hd0)
> exit
4.Configure grub to boot windows 7.
5.Be happy with no headache.
SO....
If someone with past experience with dual booting windows and arch could please give me some advice, as I do not want to lose all my data, start over, and have another headache.
I know I must learn to backup arch, which I will before september.
But if anyone has any protips, or sees a flaw in my plan please point it out!!!
Thank you very much for taking the time to read this and even more if advice has been given to boost my confidence!
For now I will wait
Thank you fellow archies.
Last edited by Jabrick (2011-07-03 01:29:36)

satanselbow wrote:
1) Windows must be installed to a primary partition - attempting to install it to an logical partition will result in an epic fail
2) Physically disconnect the harddrive you do not want windows on as windows typically installs the bootloader on the 1st hardisk (ie /sda) regardless of installation drive (ie /sdb)
3 / 4) Complete the windows installation then reattached your Arch drive and edit /boot/grub/menu.lst (as root) pointing the W7 entry to (hd1,0) - no need to reinstall grub
5) Hey it's windows - anything could happen
If you create an NTFS partition right at the beginning of the the drive before you start the W7 install you can prevent it greedily using up 2 of you 4 primary partitions - I would also completely update you new W7 installation past SP1 before reattaching the other drive to further prevent W7 going mental
satanselbow thank you so much!
Everything works great I had no stumbles, and I hope no problems in the future!!
I will post exactly what I did in case someone has the same issue.
1. Partition you're secondary harddrive as primary ntfs with gparted
2. Reboot, and if you get a file system check error, check you're udev rules. (For my case in particular I had to change the udev rules I got for auto mounting usb, ext harddrive, etc.
3.Power off your computer and physically remove the harddrive that contains all your linux goodies
4. Plug in your windows cd and install in the partition you created
5. Update your windows OS
6. Plug in Ubuntu live CD and reboot
7. Use commands to get grub to overwrite the windows boot loader (In my case I put grub everyone hd0,0 hd0,1 just to be sure, but you might want to do things cleaner)
8. Reboot and see if grub loads up
9. Use Ubuntu live CD again and launch Gparted, select the boot to your extra linux space (if you had one, not sure if this is needed)
10. Plug in your linux harddrive and reconfigure /boot/grub/menu.lst and your good to go
Once again shout outs to satanselbow!!! For without him I might've failed brutally!
Cheers!

Dual booting Arch and Ubuntu

Hi, I would like to dual boot Arch and Ubuntu using GRUB2.
I already have Arch, set up as it's described in the Beginner's Guide, with GRUB2 installed. How would I go about dual booting Ubuntu, preferably without overwriting the existing bootloader?
I haven't tried anything yet, but the problem that I can see is resizing my /home; is this possible on the Ubuntu liveDVD? If not, would I be able to resize /home with my gParted liveCD?
Unfortunately, I have no backup media to use, so I wouldn't be able to transfer anything away as a backup.
Here is my partition table:
%lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 931.5G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 30G 0 part /
├─sda2 8:2 0 12G 0 part [SWAP]
├─sda3 8:3 0 5M 0 part
└─sda4 8:4 0 889.5G 0 part /home
sda1 is my root partition, sda2 is swap, sda3 is GRUB's boot partition, which I was told that I needed in the guide, and sda4 (/home) occupies the "rest of the disk".
I am using a GPT-partitioned drive, as I read this has many advantages and I do not plan to triple-boot Windows.
So, can someone tell me what I do if I want to dual boot Ubuntu? I'm very sorry if this should have been posted on the Ubuntu forums, but I'm just more familiar with Arch, and I already have it installed. Please ask if you need any other files like my fstab. I have my Ubuntu liveDVD, GParted live CD (and Arch CD) at hand.
Thanks in advance, rberyl.
(Also, does anyone else think it's a bit of a backwards thing to put the output of "date -u +%W$(uname)|sha256sum|sed 's/\W//g'" as a sign-up question? )
Last edited by rberyl (2012-12-29 11:45:23)

Hi rberyl,
You can change your partitions using an inbuilt tool like cfdisk, or if you'd prefer a GUI gparted can be installed from the Arch repos. This will allow you to shrink sda4, and set up the new partitions for your Ubuntu OS. Although this shouldn't cause any data loss, its best practice to back up just in case.
When installing Ubuntu, be sure to opt-out of bootloader creation. I think you have to use the alternate installation media to get this option. You can add your Ubuntu partition to the existing bootloader by running osprober (available from the repos) and then running grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg . Alternatively, you can manually edit your GRUB config. See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GR … NU.2FLinux for instructions.
Good luck!
Last edited by smazza (2012-12-29 16:04:08)

Dual boot Arch and Windows XP (arch installed first) [solved]

I recently moved over to arch from Ubuntu, and would like to install Windows XP so that I can dual-boot between the two. However, my arch install created four partitions on my disk, and I can not create another one.
I would rather not have to reinstall arch, as setting it back up would take days on my current network connection. Is this possible? While I have installed XP over Ubuntu in the past (and am more than able to reform the MBR after the XP install) I have absolutely no experience with disk-partitioning, so concise instructions would be very much appreciated.
errata: my laptop has 4 gigs of RAM, so I don't think I need the SWAP partition. I am hesitant to delete it outright however.
this is a Gparted screenshot, running off of a Ubuntu live CD. The 60 gigs of unallocated space is where I was hoping to install windows.
Last edited by spotdart (2009-02-05 17:13:55)

What's on /dev/sda4? If you can blow away the last partition, turn the whole thing into an extended partition and then you can set up as many logical partitions as you want inside the extended partition. I suppose Arch is probably on sda4 and if that is the case you could move arch to sda3 first--there are lots of posts in the forum about how to move an installation of arch from one place to another.
Edit: Beat to the punch again. Yeah like he said you might want to delete the swap partition and then incorporate it into the 1st or third partitions so you can free up that last one.
Last edited by bgc1954 (2009-02-05 15:27:21)

Dual Boot Arch and Windows 8 from Windows Boot

I tried doing some research before posting but haven't had too much luck. I just upgraded to Windows 8, but after having a nice experience with Arch previously on VirtualBox, I thought I would dual boot this time... and this is my first post.
I followed the Beginners Installation Guide and the Win Arch Dual Boot and then did some reading on setting up the BCD manager in Windows following from the link in the Arch Wiki.
My setup is as follows
/dev/sda1 = Windows (>150 GB)
/dev/sda2 = /boot (100 MB)
/dev/sda3 = / (15 GB)
/dev/sda5 = /var (8 GB)
/dev/sda6 = /home (~65 GB)
The linux portions are all ext4, but after reading the above article on the BCD Manager, I realized I left out the FAT32 partition so Windows can see it (note... if I get this to work, I will try and update the wiki to mention that).
So the problem is I used up all my hard drive space and need to make room for the FAT32 section. I was wondering
a) how to resize the /home partition to make room for the FAT32 partition
or
b)if I were to delete the /home entirely and just add an sda4 (FAT32) and sda6 (/home) (since I forgot to use sda4), do I need to go through the pacstrap process again, or generate an fstab again, or just edit the fstab manually?
or
c) there is a possibility that I missed something where I shouldn't need to have an FAT32 section.
Thanks for the help!

Thanks for the help!
I was able to use GParted to add that extra partition and was able to generate the proper file for Windows to see, and then copy over to the C: drive (which is what's missing from the Wiki).
I unfortunately had some issues that kept me starting in emergency mode, so after some time spent in the fstab section and setting the right filesystems, I was able to get it to work!

Dual boot: Arch and another Linux (GRUB issue)

Hi, everybody,
I've got two SATA hard drives: sda and sdb. There is a Linux on sdb, and the GRUB in it's MBR. Here's /boot/grub/menu.lst (sdb):
timeout 10
color black/cyan yellow/cyan
gfxmenu (hd0,0)/usr/share/gfxboot/themes/pclinuxos/boot/message
default 0
title linux 2.6.22.15.tex2
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22.15.tex2 BOOT_IMAGE=2.6.22.15.tex2 root=/dev/sdb1 acpi=on resume=/dev/sdb2 splash=silent vga=788
initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd-2.6.22.15.tex2.img
title linux old kernel
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux root=/dev/sdb1 acpi=on resume=/dev/sdb2 splash=silent vga=788
initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd.img
title linux-nonfb
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux-nonfb root=/dev/sdb1 acpi=on resume=/dev/sdb2
initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd.img
title failsafe
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=failsafe root=/dev/sdb1 failsafe acpi=on resume=/dev/sdb2
initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd.img
title Arch Linux
root (hd1,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda5 ro
initrd /boot/kernel26.img
chainloader +1
#title FreeBSD
#rootnoverify (hd1,0,a)
#kernel /boot/loader
#chainloader +1
#title windows
#root (hd1,0)
#makeactive
#chainloader +1
The Arch entry won't work: GRUB Error 13: - something wrong with the kernel image...
I tried to install the Arch's own GRUB into the sda MBR; now Arch is booting successfully from it's own GRUB - provided the sda is first in the BIOS boot order. Now I have to change the BIOS boot order depending on what system I want to boot, which is less then a satisfactory arrangement .
/boot/grub/menu.lst (sda, Arch's own):
# Config file for GRUB - The GNU GRand Unified Bootloader
# /boot/grub/menu.lst
# DEVICE NAME CONVERSIONS
# Linux Grub
# /dev/fd0 (fd0)
# /dev/hda (hd0)
# /dev/hdb2 (hd1,1)
# /dev/hda3 (hd0,2)
# FRAMEBUFFER RESOLUTION SETTINGS
# +-------------------------------------------------+
# | 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024
# ----+--------------------------------------------
# 256 | 0x301=769 0x303=771 0x305=773 0x307=775
# 32K | 0x310=784 0x313=787 0x316=790 0x319=793
# 64K | 0x311=785 0x314=788 0x317=791 0x31A=794
# 16M | 0x312=786 0x315=789 0x318=792 0x31B=795
# +-------------------------------------------------+
# general configuration:
timeout 5
default 0
color light-blue/black light-cyan/blue
# boot sections follow
# each is implicitly numbered from 0 in the order of appearance below
# TIP: If you want a 1024x768 framebuffer, add "vga=773" to your kernel line.
# (0) Arch Linux
title Arch Linux
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda5 ro
initrd /boot/kernel26.img
# (1) Arch Linux
title Arch Linux Fallback
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda5 ro
initrd /boot/kernel26-fallback.img
# (1) Windows
#title Windows
#rootnoverify (hd0,0)
#makeactive
#chainloader +1
I'd be happy to boot into Arch from sdb; what am I to change in the /boot/grub/menu.lst (sdb)?

See this for chainloading to another MBR:
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual … 02fWindows
OK right.
PCLOS grub=MBR of sdb (hd1)
ARCH grub=MBR of sda (hd0)
You'll want something like this in PCLOS grub:
title Arch Linux
unhide (hd0)
hide (hd1)
rootnoverify (hd0)
chainloader +1
makeactive
If that doesn't work then its just a case of swapping the ones and zeroes around (i hope).
Then something like this in arch grub (as long as the kernel is in the fifth partition of the first hard drive). Typo first time round, (hd1,4) should be (hd0,4):
# (0) Arch Linux
title Arch Linux
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda5 ro
initrd /boot/kernel26.img
# (1) Arch Linux
title Arch Linux Fallback
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda5 ro
initrd /boot/kernel26-fallback.img
Last edited by dyscoria (2008-04-07 11:07:17)

Dual booting Arch and Vista w/ recovery partition and a swap question.

I have a bit of a problem. The problem is, on a machine, you can only have 4 primary partitions. sda1 and sda2 are my Vista and Recovery partitions respectively, which eliminates two of my primary partitions already. I myself have never used logical partitions, and was wondering if any of the partitions the Beginner's Guide recommends (/, swap, /var, and /home) could be made logical, and if I even need a swap partition. Thanks in advance for your replies and suggestions.

The /boot/ directory needs to reside in a primary partition. Everything else can be in a logical partition.
Then again all you really need is / and swap.

Dual booting arch (usb) and ubuntu (grub2)

Greetings,
I'm trying to dual boot Arch linux (installed without a bootloader on a USB SSD) and Ubuntu 10.04 (installed on a hdd with GRUB2) but can't get Arch to boot. (Oh and I already have windows dualbooted)
The entry grub autogenerated:
menuentry "Arch Linux [/boot/vmlinuz26] (on /dev/sdb3)" {
insmod ext2
set root='(hd1,1)'
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 95d9208a-44e4-48ba-abd2-a365d1ac25ff
linux /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda3 ro
initrd /kernel26.img
Why did it input root=/dev/sda3 as it says (on /dev/sdb3)?
The entry I figured would work:
menuentry "Arch Linux" {
set root=(hd1,0)
linux /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sdb3 ro
initrd /boot/kernel26.img
Output from fdisk -l:
Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xbc4264d9
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 13 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 13 5286 42353664 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda3 5286 19458 113831937 5 Extended
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda5 18971 19458 3905536 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 5286 6502 9764864 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 6502 18971 100155392 83 Linux
Partition table entries are not in disk order
WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sdb'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted.
Disk /dev/sdb: 8019 MB, 8019509248 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 974 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 14 111 787185 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb3 112 685 4610655 83 Linux
/dev/sdb4 686 974 2321392+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdb3 is the root partition
The content of /dev/sdb1
grub
kernel26-fallback.img
kernel26.img
lost+found
System.map26
vmlinuz26
- If I try to edit the root=/dev/sda3 to /dev/sdb3 it begins booting but doesnt find /dev/sdb3.
Thanks in advance for any help,
Oskar

Greetings,
I'm trying to dual boot Arch linux (installed without a bootloader on a USB SSD) and Ubuntu 10.04 (installed on a hdd with GRUB2) but can't get Arch to boot. (Oh and I already have windows dualbooted)
The entry grub autogenerated:
menuentry "Arch Linux [/boot/vmlinuz26] (on /dev/sdb3)" {
insmod ext2
set root='(hd1,1)'
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 95d9208a-44e4-48ba-abd2-a365d1ac25ff
linux /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda3 ro
initrd /kernel26.img
Why did it input root=/dev/sda3 as it says (on /dev/sdb3)?
The entry I figured would work:
menuentry "Arch Linux" {
set root=(hd1,0)
linux /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sdb3 ro
initrd /boot/kernel26.img
Output from fdisk -l:
Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xbc4264d9
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 13 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 13 5286 42353664 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda3 5286 19458 113831937 5 Extended
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda5 18971 19458 3905536 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 5286 6502 9764864 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 6502 18971 100155392 83 Linux
Partition table entries are not in disk order
WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sdb'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted.
Disk /dev/sdb: 8019 MB, 8019509248 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 974 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 14 111 787185 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb3 112 685 4610655 83 Linux
/dev/sdb4 686 974 2321392+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdb3 is the root partition
The content of /dev/sdb1
grub
kernel26-fallback.img
kernel26.img
lost+found
System.map26
vmlinuz26
- If I try to edit the root=/dev/sda3 to /dev/sdb3 it begins booting but doesnt find /dev/sdb3.
Thanks in advance for any help,
Oskar

Dual Boot Vista and Arch

Hey, I am attempting to set up my laptop to dual boot Windows Vista and Arch Linux.
The problem I'm having is after installing Arch my laptop still boots windows w/o going to the grub
I started with having Windows Vista installed on the laptop, and then shrank down the partition with vista by 30 gigs for Arch.
I was following the Arch setup guide in the wiki along with the Dual Boot Windows and Arch guide in the wiki [wiki]Windows_and_Arch_Dual_Boot[/wiki].
My partitioning Scheme is:
/dev/sda1 1.46 gb (some sort of toshiba recovery partition I believe)
/dev/sda2 117.8 gb (Vista Partition)
/dev/sda3 1 gb (Swap partition)
/dev/sda4 29 gb /root partition
According to the Dual Boot wiki article, I should install the grub to /boot, which in my case is in /root which I did.
The thing that confuses me about this is if I install the grub to /boot how do I get the grub to boot before the windows MBR?
Thanks in advanced

Mclarenf1905 wrote:
Hey, I am attempting to set up my laptop to dual boot Windows Vista and Arch Linux.
The problem I'm having is after installing Arch my laptop still boots windows w/o going to the grub
I started with having Windows Vista installed on the laptop, and then shrank down the partition with vista by 30 gigs for Arch.
I was following the Arch setup guide in the wiki along with the Dual Boot Windows and Arch guide in the wiki [wiki]Windows_and_Arch_Dual_Boot[/wiki].
My partitioning Scheme is:
/dev/sda1 1.46 gb (some sort of toshiba recovery partition I believe)
/dev/sda2 117.8 gb (Vista Partition)
/dev/sda3 1 gb (Swap partition)
/dev/sda4 29 gb /root partition
According to the Dual Boot wiki article, I should install the grub to /boot, which in my case is in /root which I did.
The thing that confuses me about this is if I install the grub to /boot how do I get the grub to boot before the windows MBR?
Thanks in advanced
It still works fine. It doesn't matter if its not in root directory. Others linux OSes have their bootloaders in the same directory and it manages to boot just fine.

[SOLVED] Dual booting arch onto an SSD that already has W7 in MBR?

I currently have windows 7 64bit installed onto a 256gb m4 SSD. I would like to be able to dual-boot W7 and Archlinux, but so far I've been getting wildly varying accounts of doom and data deletion from every source that I've looked at- and unfortunately, the Archwiki's guide to dualbooting is out of date.
So here's the questions:
First, is UEFI something I need to look at? At the moment W7 seems to be on MBR. I'm getting conflicting accounts on whether this is not even an issue or if it will attempt to make my computer eat my dog.
Next, what is going on with sectors and alignment and such? Some people ignore them, some people delve so far into it that I think I vaguely know they're still talking about a hard drive.
Which leads me into partitioning, and not doing it in a way that's terrible. I can't find any information on this anywhere that isn't buried within the above-mentioned posts, along with incredibly vague warnings of GParted moving a partition, spoken of in a way as if that data is lost to the twilight zone.
Finally... pulling all this together is the largest issue.
Do any of you know good, factual resources where I can look into this stuff?
Last edited by ilar (2013-04-03 03:53:31)

1) If you knew what UEFI was you should have known it wasn't an option, and shouldn't have asked about it.
2) (G)parted and gdisk (if you go with GPT at some point) handle SSD sector alignment automatically, and have for some time. A google search could have revealed that.
3) Whether one uses an SSD or HDD, dual-booting will be the same: 2+ partitions devoted to separate operating systems. While SSDs and HDDs may be fundamentally different constructs, booting from them is not different at all. That's why you aren't finding anything saying such.
4) As for the wiki being out-of-date, the specific reason (as stated page's in the header) is that GRUB legacy is no longer officially supported in Arch. Disregard that information and use GRUB2/Syslinux/LILO and the process remains the same: Install the operating systems side-by-side and chainload the secondary OS. It doesn't matter one bit: I've dual-booted every Linux distro I've used over the past four years with Windows, from Ubuntu to Mint to SuSE to Sabayon to Arch to whatever, and I've done it all the exact same way, using HDDs and an SSDs and both in combination. There's plenty of information out there on this, and your time could better have been spent looking it up rather than arguing with people here.
5) Welcome to Arch.

Dual Boot Arch & Mac OS X(Boot device didn't show up after 30 seconds)

I was trying to Dual Boot Arch & Mac OS X on my new Mac book pro, I followed the steps (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBookPro)
Dual Boot (Arch & Mac OS X)
Two possibilities:
- Install Bootcamp, resize the Mac OS X partition
When Mac OS X installation is finished. Go on http://refit.sourceforge.net and download rEFIT (Mac disk image)
To install rEFIT, mount the rEFIT.dmg file (it is normally automatic).
There is an other way (refer to rEFIT documentation) but you can open a terminal then you copy /Volumes/rEFIT/efi/ to /
# cp -r /Volumes/rEFIT/efi /
To install rEFIT :
# cd /efi/refit/
# ./enable.sh
Now we can synchronized MBR with GPT partition table thanks to rEFIT so you restart your computer. You can see rEFIT, you press down key to access to the Partitioning Tool. You press y to accept.
Put your Arch Linux CD in the CD-ROM drive first then restart the computer. You can press C to boot from the CD or you can choose it in the rEFIT menu.
Now it is the typical Arch Linux installation.
So I burn the archlinux-2010.05-core-i686.iso to an blank disc on mac then restart the computer , press C to boot from the CD.
After choose to boot Arch linux and then I got this
Waiting for 30 seconds for device /dev/disk/by-label/ARCH-201005...
ERROR:boot device didn't show up after 30 seconds...
Falling back to interactive prompt
You can try to fix the problem manually, log out when you finished /bin/sh: can't access tty;
job control turned off
[ramfs /]#
[ramfs /]#
Any ideas?
Thanks!

heleos wrote:
This line:
Waiting for 30 seconds for device /dev/disk/by-label/ARCH-201005...
You need to make sure that's the exact name of your iso disc. If it's not, it isn't a big deal. I've run into problems on this with my arch USB drive.
Once you get to the [ramfs /]# prompt, type in:
mv /dev/disk/by-label/(insert name of the current cd here) /dev/disk/by-label/ARCH-201005
exit
It should then be able to boot from the cd
did:
mv /dev/disk/by-label/(insert name of the current cd here) /dev/disk/by-label/ARCH-201005
exit
shows:
ERROR: mounting was successful, but /bootmnt/isomounts file doex not exist.
Then I checked:
cd /bootmnt
ls
archlinux-2010.05-core-i686.iso
exit
shows another problem /boot/init does not exist
exit
kernel panic!

Dual boot Windows and Linux?

I recently bought a T61, and will be taking a programming course. One prof I spoke with said they ask us to use Unix tools, so one option is to dual boot linux and Windows. I haven't decided yet whether I will keep Windows Ultimate, or go to XP for this. But I was wondering how easy/hard is it to make this work, and what kind of steps need to be taken? If you could point me towards any good tutorials/guides that would be appreciated too.
Also, I have never really used linux, so which version is best? I will be needing it for programming, but also still want to do the basics like web surfing, music, dvd's, burning discs, etc. I have an old copy of Ubuntu that I never used, but its probably about 4 years old. Is this still acceptable or will I need something newer?
Message Edited by amace on 05-29-2008 01:28 PM
T61 15.4" T9300 (2.5GHz 6MB L2) Windows 7 Professional x64 4GB Memory, NVidia Quadro NVS 140M

Hi,
If it's just a couple of programming courses that you are going to take I suggest you'd try out VMware player:
http://www.vmware.com/products/player/
You can get this software for free and since your system packs a lot of punch it will be able to run it smoothly without any hassle. I'm an engineering grad student and I have to do alot of programming. I've used VMware player before to do some software developement in Ubuntu when I didn't have enough HD to install dual boot but still couldn't do all my other stuff without XP.
VMware Ubuntu will need a bit of fiddling to get it work just right (USB devices, etc) but it shouldn't be harder than installing a dual boot (actually it is alot easier for my opinion). The only down side is that file sharing between VMware and Windows can be somewhat difficult. I used an external USB drive to share my files but you could always set up Samba to handle file sharing.
I hope this helps out with your decision.

Dual Booting Windows and Solaris

Hi
how do i dual boot windows and solaris
Do i install windows first and then solaris or do it the other way around..?
how do i make sure that Windows and Solaris appear in my boot options..?
Is their a guide on doing this...?
Thanks
Liam

Hey I did a quick google search for you. So I havent tried this method myself but it sounds reasonable.
The text below is from the following link:
http://www.hccfl.edu/pollock/AUnix1/DualBoot.htm
"Solaris boot loader
Partition the drive to leave at least 2GB of space available for Solaris;
more drive space is desirable.
As with Linux, install Windows first then Solaris.
Do not use the Installation CD but boot and install
from Software CD 1.
If you accept the default partitioning scheme which
the installer provides you will soon run out of space in
your / and /usr partitions since only enough space is
allocated to install the system.
All extra space is allocated to /export/home.
A typical installation on a 4.5GB partition might look
something like this:
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/dsk/c0d0s0 900M 536M 310M 64% /
/dev/dsk/c0d0s1 334M 109M 192M 36% /var
swap 671M 8.0k 671M 1% /var/run
swap 671M 8.0k 671M 1% /tmp
/dev/dsk/c0d0s5 845M 222M 565M 29% /opt
# (FAT32 partition):
/dev/dsk/c0d0p0:1 5.0G 3.3G 1.6G 66% /c
/dev/dsk/c0d0s7 1.1G 92M 954M 9% /export/home
/dev/dsk/c0d0s4 752M 225M 474M 33% /usr/local
The Solaris boot selector enables you to choose either
Solaris or Windows with Solaris as the default.
(I prefer grub or lilo!)
To mount FAT under Solaris:
# mount -F pcfs /dev/dsk/c0d0p0:c /dos (or �:1�?)
And the vfstab file:
/dev/dsk/c0d0p0:c - /dos pcfs - yes -
To create a GRUB boot floppy, follow these steps:
$ mkfs -t ext2 /dev/fd0
$ mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/fd0
$ mkdir /mnt/fd0/boot /mnt/fd0/boot/grub
$ cp /boot/grub/stage[12] /boot/grub/grub.conf \
> /mnt/fd0/boot/grub
$ /sbin/grub --batch <
Hope this helps!
/Oscar

Dual Boot Windows7 and OSX on an HP 2140

I thought this was a great blog from networkjew.com about creating a Dual Boot Windows7 and OSX on an HP 2140.
Now that you’ve got your sleek little HP 2140 netbook, its time to blow away Windows XP and put something a bit snazzier on there. I’ve toyed with OSX86 previously, and knew that most of the netbooks out there support it in one way or another, and many of them quite well. I had also read that Windows 7 played very nicely on these tiny computers, and it’s free for a few months, so why not?
Here’s how I made it work – there may be better ways, but this worked for me, mostly:
HP Product Expert for the Officejet Pro X Series.
Was your question answered? Mark it as an Accepted Solution!
See a great post? Give it a Kudos!

Windows 7 runs great on the 2140. I actually haven't had a chance to test all hardware functionality, but its nice and snappy; and as far as I can tell, all the hardware was recognized right out of the box. I loaded several of the Vista drivers/software from the HP support website and a few of them failed, but many installed just fine. I forgot to note which ones, unfortunately.
Great netbook.

Dual boot Arch and Fedora

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