[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

Similar Messages

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

[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)

[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 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)

[SOLVED] Dual-boot Arch/Windows - 2 hard drives

Hi Everyone
I've just installed Arch and I'm having a bit of a problem dual-booting between Arch and Windows XP, which are each on a seperate Hard drive.
I've done this successfully before with Mepis Linux and Windows XP, but for some reason it's not working this time.
The difference is that I've recently purchased a new computer and both Windows and Arch are on SATA drives whereas last time they were both on IDE drives. Also I'm not sure whether or not to enable SATA AHCI mode in the BIOS (apparently it doesn't work with XP anyways), or SATA port 0-3 Native mode. Although I've tried all possible combinations and it doesn't seem to work at all.
Here is my menu.lst file:
# (0) Arch Linux
title Arch Linux
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/0df05d3b-537c-4576-ad36-1f90a6b01ec0 ro vga=773
initrd /boot/kernel26.img
# (1) Windows
title Windows
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
When I boot into Arch from Grub it works fine, but when I try to boot into Windows from Grub, I get this:
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
and then nothing....No error message or anything. It just hangs. Does anyone have any ideas as to what's happening? Thanks in advance.
edit: It seems I solved the problem by adding these lines to the menu.lst file:
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
root (hd1,0)
I can now boot into either Arch or Windows from the Grub menu
Last edited by axle (2008-09-30 02:35:54)

This is a question that can very easily be answered by doing a simple google serach. Google is your friend. I suggest you start there and come back if you run into issues.

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!

[SOLVE] Dual Boot Windows and ArchLinux with Syslinux

Ok, i installed ArchLinux on my laptop with Windows XP (syslinux) and I cannot find get Windows to boot or mount it. I have tried to do what i can to do this but cannot. I Installed XP first like a should and something i think might be needed to know is after i created the partitions scheme (10Gb (boot partition), 50GB (XP), 80GB(was unallocated)). The installation disk formated both 2 partitions in NTFS but i installed XP on the second and Windows reported them as C and D drives. Windows being D. Thought that was bit werid thinking Windows installed the mbr on that partition. When I installed ArchLinux, it did have the boot flag set on 10GB (or C drive).
Since I installed ArchLinux, I have been unable to find a solution to mounting/booting to Windows. Installed NTFS-3G and that didn't work when i tried mount /dev/sda3 windows and i did created a folder named windows but got ...
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda3,
missing codepage or helper program, or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so.
Tried dmesg | tail and got
[ 76.524133] SGI XFS with ACLs, security attributes, realtime, large block/inode numbers, no debug enabled
[ 179.468499] ACPI: \_SB_.PCI0.LPC0.ACAD: ACPI_NOTIFY_DEVICE_CHECK event: unsupported
[ 705.472330] 8139too 0000:02:03.0 enp2s3: link down
[ 717.380879] 8139too 0000:02:03.0 enp2s3: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x41E1
[ 726.447184] 8139too 0000:02:03.0 enp2s3: link down
[ 727.596128] ACPI: \_SB_.PCI0.LPC0.ACAD: ACPI_NOTIFY_BUS_CHECK event: unsupported
[ 732.616138] 8139too 0000:02:03.0 enp2s3: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x41E1
[ 733.848832] 8139too 0000:02:03.0 enp2s3: link down
[ 834.062062] 8139too 0000:02:03.0 enp2s3: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x41E1
[ 2131.449211] perf samples too long (2534 > 2500), lowering kernel.perf_event_max_sample_rate to 50100
This is when i run sudo lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 149.1G 0 disk
|-sda1 8:1 0 9.8G 0 part /boot
|-sda2 8:2 0 1K 0 part
|-sda3 8:3 0 53.6G 0 part
`-sda5 8:5 0 85.7G 0 part /
sr0 11:0 1 1024M 0 rom
My syslinux is
LABEL arch
MENU LABEL Arch Linux
LINUX ../vmlinuz-linux
APPEND root=/dev/sda5 rw
INITRD ../initramfs-linux.img
LABEL windows
MENU LABEL Windows
COM32 chain.c32
APPEND hd0 3
NOTE: chain is in the same directory with syslinux
I really think Windows got corrupted but not sure. Thought about repairing the mbr on windows and booting to it then reinstall syslinux but really don't want too.
Thanks in advance
Last edited by jag-ster (2014-11-27 02:12:12)

Here is the partition table:
/dev/sda1 one HUGE linux /boot primary partition (assuming ext4)
/dev/sda2 "name" of the extended partition
/dev/sda3 primary Windows partition (assuming NTFS)
/dev/sda5 logical Linux root partition (assuming ext4)
/dev/sda1 to /dev/sda4 are either all primary, or three primary and one extended. After /dev/sda4 all partitions are logical. If you're still wondering why is there no /dev/sda4, it's because you have 2 primary and one extended, so /dev/sda4 is reserved for another primary partition.
Windows problem:
The /dev/sda1 which Windows named C: is Windows equivalent of linux /boot. When you told linux to place its /boot on /dev/sda1 it formated boot files of Windows. Now you have Windows OS with no kernel. In other words there is no way to boot Windows if you don't reinstall it. Actually there is a way, but you would than screw up Arch.
Mounting problem:
You can never mount extended partition, only logical (an extended partition is made of logical partitions). You want to do:
sudo mount /dev/sda3 -t NTFS-3g -o rw,uid=YourUserName /path/where/you/want/this/partition/mounted
EDIT:
Try it this way:
- Backup all your data
- Delete every partition
- Start Windows installation
- Make only one partition (c:/ for Windows)
- Let Windows make another partition
- Make one more so you could have a data partition, which does not need to be formated to reinstall Windows
- Start Arch installation
- Get to partitioning
=Partitioning=
- /dev/sda4 extended (take the rest of the drive)
- /dev/sda5 logical /boot 512MiB
- /dev/sda6 logical / 20GiB
- /dev/sda7 logical /home (the rest)
Making a separate /home partition will come in handy when reinstalling Arch (any linux distribution), or switching between distros, because it is the equivalent of D:/ in Windows. Also consider LVM.
Last edited by bstaletic (2014-02-28 23:25:33)

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 boot Grub2 : file not found

here is my config :
Ubuntu 11.1 installed on sd1. It is my default system, and where the GRUB2 config is.
I installed Archlinux on sd2, with /boot on (hd1,1) and / on (hd1,2).
I want to set up GRUB to boot both systems.
here is my /etc/grub.d/11_linux_arch, in the Ubuntu system :
#!/bin/sh -e
echo "Adding Archlinux"
cat << EOF
menuentry "ArchLinux" {
set root=(hd1,2)
linux /boot/vmlinuz-linux
initrd /boot/initramfs-linux.img
EOF
vmlinux-linux and initramfs-linux.img are well in my /boot folder on (hd1,1)
At grub prompt, I can see Archlinux as an option. When I select it, I get an error message, "file not found".
I can't see where is an error.
TY for any help.
Last edited by gabx (2011-11-29 22:41:11)

Here is what I added to /etc/grub.d/40_custom
# Arch Linux
menuentry "Arch Linux" {
set root=(hd1,1)
linux /vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/38616db1-366f-40f4-a728-1230e81abb21 ro
initrd /initramfs-linux.img
I think telling the uuid is better but /dev/sdb2 (my / partition) works too.
Then :
#sudo update-grub
and I have been able to dual boot Archlinux and Ubuntu 11.10.
The resolution is bad, so I will add a line about it, but I guess it is not diificult.

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!

[Solved]Dual booting Arch and Fedora

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