dumb bootable partition question

s003apr · Apprentice Joined: 04 Oct 2002 Posts: 162

I currently have both hda1 (windowsXP) and hda7 (/boot) set as bootable.

Is this what I want to do? or with Grub installed on the master boot record, is it even necessary to set these as bootable?

Or is my understanding of the Master Boot Record completely flawed? and is it contained on the partition designated as bootable?

If I have to change the bootable flags on the partition table, will this be damaging to my partitions at all, or is this completely harmless?

Thanks in Advance!

sa · Guru Joined: 10 Jun 2002 Posts: 450

if you have Grub installed on the master boot record, you dont need to have any set to bootable, tho i think you need to have one of your partitions bootable (thats probably just a windows thing) . If you had grub installed to hda7 instead of your mbr you would need to make hda7 the bootable prt.
changing the boot flag is harmless in fdisk. what I recmmend is leaving it on the windows partition, that way if you could still boot to windows if grub gets messed up. (actually what I reccomend is removing windows!)

anyways have fun,
sa

Possie · Posted: Tue Oct 22, 2002 9:20 am Post subject:

Don't know if you solved it yet but in the "Gentoo-Linux Documentation -- Gentoo Linux 1.4 Installation Instructions" is a part describing how to configure grub for dual boot. See final steps: configure GRUB, code listing 48. boot from hda7.