WinXP Bootloader, Grub, ReiserFS and Gentoo

Newbie123 · n00b Joined: 09 Jun 2002 Posts: 43

I've been having some major problems with 1.4rc1. I've successfully installed Gentoo 1.2 before, but 1.4 is giving me a bunch of problems.

I have one hardrive, set up as the following
/dev/hda1 - primary windowsXP
/dev/hda5 - logical reiserfs boot partition, mounted with -o notail
/dev/hda6 - logical swap
/dev/hda7 - logical reiserfs root

What I want to do is install grub to /dev/hda5, then I can copy the first 512 bytes to a floppy, so that the WindowsNT/XP bootloader can boot Gentoo.

After several painstaking attemps, I realized that the standard Gentoo 1.4 grub didn't work with reiserfs, so I did emerge grub 0.92, and that seemed to work

grub> root (hd0,4) //set boot partion to /dev/hda5
grub> setup (hd0,4) //install grub to this partition

Grub detected my filesystems, and installed everything.

My grub.conf/menu.lst file looks like this:

default 0
timeout 0
hiddenmenu

title=Gentoo Linux
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/bzImage root=/dev/hda7

my /etc/fstab looks like this:
/dev/hda5 /boot reiserfs noauto,noatime,notail 1 2
/dev/hda6 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hda7 / reiserfs noatime 0 1
and the cdrom and proc mounts

Basically, when my computer boots, I am presented with 2 options, windows or gentoo. I want it so when I click gentoo, it will immediately load grub (which will immediately load linux). When I choose Gentoo linux as my boot option however, it successfully loads grub, but it goes straight to the grub prompt. I fooled around and realized that this grub prompt no longer recognizes my reiserfs filesystems.

I did copy the reiserfs_stage_1_5 file into the proper directory after installing the new grub.

I've used windows bootloader before, and I don't think the error is in my copying the first 512 bytes for the bootloader.

I've spent several days trying to solve this problem, but to no avail. This is the last single thing preventing me from adopting gentoo as my primary OS. I'm just frustrated because of a few annoying bugs with 1.4rc1...

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Newbie123

plate · Posted: Thu Dec 26, 2002 7:31 am Post subject:

Just checking: Do you have ReiserFS support built straight into your kernel or compiled as a module?

Newbie123 · n00b Joined: 09 Jun 2002 Posts: 43

I compiled it straight into the kernel.

pilla · Posted: Thu Dec 26, 2002 5:40 pm Post subject:

If you have a separate boot partition, the line

BlackBart · Apprentice Joined: 07 Oct 2002 Posts: 252

out of curiosity what does your boot.ini look like? i was thinking of setting something similar up.

plate · Posted: Thu Dec 26, 2002 9:12 pm Post subject:

Dunno what his boot.ini looks like, but it could well say:

Newbie123 · n00b Joined: 09 Jun 2002 Posts: 43

I figured it out guys, but thanks for your help anyway.

My problem was that I needed to copy the reiserfs_stage_1_5 file into the /boot directory.

Previously I copied it into /boot/grub

pilla · Posted: Fri Dec 27, 2002 4:46 pm Post subject:

Note to myself: add this to the FAQ