Order of installing Windows XP, Solaris & Red Hat Linux...

Question

Hi all,
If I were to install Windows XP, Red Hat Linux & Solaris in intel dual core machine, in which order do I proceed to install. First Windows XP, then Solaris & Linux, I believe. Am I right. If not, please correct me.
Thanks,
...

Answer 1

Although posted under different title and content, your most recent thread
Windows and Solaris not booting on a Windows, Solaris and Linux Machine.
is actually the duplicate of this thread.
The right order of install is Windows XP, RHEL, Solaris. Because, if the Linux is the last installed OS, the Linux version of GRUB will be installed on the MBR (Master Boot Record), and you will not be able to boot Solaris. Why? Because the Linux GRUB doesn't currently recognize Solaris VTOC (Volume Table Of Contents) and UFS (Universal Disk Format File System) formats. Only the Solaris version of GRUB works as common loader for Solaris and Linux. Since you installed Linux as the last OS (as per your duplicated thread), you can try to chainload from the Linux GRUB by modifying the grub.conf on Linux, eg:
# cat /boot/grub/grub.conf
default=2
timeout=15
color white/blue black/cyan
title Windows XP
     rootnoverify (hd0,0)
     chainloader +1
title Solaris 5.10
     root (hd0,1)
     makeactive
     chainloader +1
     boot
title Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS (2.6.9-78.0.1.el5)
     root (hd0,2)
     kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-78.0.1.el5 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
     initrd /initrd-2.6.9-78.0.1.el5.imgwhere
(hd0) is the first (bootable) BIOS physical disk, and GRUB boot loader is installed on its MBR
(hd0,0) is the first primary partition of the first BIOS disk - Windows XP
(hd0,1) is the second primary partition of the first BIOS disk - Solaris 5.10
(hd0,2) is the third primary partition of the first BIOS disk - RHEL-4
Modify this according to your real disk partition map if it's necessary.
If this doesn't work (at least it should work for Windows and Linux), then I suggest reinstalling all three OSs from the ground up. A year ago I successfully installed Windows Server 2003, RHEL-4.5 and Solaris 10 on single 250 GB physical disk. You can follow my procedure. Before that, boot the system with the first RHEL-4 installation CD, type "linux rescue" and press Enter. When linux console appears, delete all partitions using fdisk. Or, alternatively, type
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1024 count=2048This will erase your Master Boot Record and MBR Partition Table inside it, even much more filling out 2 MB continuous disk area with zeros. Restart the system, insert Windows installation media and start the procedure:
1. install Windows XP as the first OS. If it doesn't matter, create only one 25 GB C: drive on the entire primary partition rather than 10 GB C: and 15 GB D: drives, unless you are not sure Solaris had overwritten the D: drive on the extended partition
2. install RHEL-4 as the second OS. At this point you will be able to access Windows and RHEL-4 from GRUB. Boot RHEL-4 and navigate to /boot/grub/grub.conf. As you might need this information later, copy or make a note of the Linux entry on paper. The entry is something like this:
title Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS (2.6.9-78.0.1.el5)
     root (hd0,1)
     kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-78.0.1.el5 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
     initrd /initrd-2.6.9-78.0.1.el5.img3. install Solaris 10 (SunOS 5.10) as the third OS. That way the Solaris version of GRUB will overwrite Linux GRUB in MBR and will be installed as the common loader for all three OSs. At this point your system might be set to boot all three operating systems. If not, you will be able to access the Solaris and Windows only. In that case boot Solaris, navigate to /boot/grub/menu.lst and add the Linux entry you copied from Linux grub.conf in the step 2. The next time you restart the system, you should be able to boot all three operating systems using Solaris version of GRUB.
NJ