What's wrong with this @*X( forum?

[archp2008]

What's wrong with this forum. I wrote a fairly long post and when I clicked to post it, it said something about only the subject line being saved. Then I saved it but when I clicked on "Your Posts" it showed nothing. Whew! This one will be short and to the point. How likely am I to be able to access a triple boot Windows disk (XP32/64/MCE) after installing Mint to it?

[Husse]

I think you accidentally clicked save instead of Submit
Go to the user control panel > Manage drafts and I guess you find it

[archp2008]

Thanks It's only a rant but it sort of tells you where I'm at. This is what I typed.
Hello all,

I am a newbie to Linux Mint but not a newbie at multibooting. I have succeeded in a few short months at setting up a multibooting system involving at least 7 operating systems including Ubuntu 8.04 (I've lost count). Don't ask me why I've been doing this. I don't know. It's sort of like the guy who is asked why he climbed that mountain. Answer, "Because it's there." Now I haven't done all the installations according to the book. Some of them I added to a single separate hard drive and disconnected the other drives until the installation was completed. I have been able to acheive multboot menus for each single drive using multiboot software, but I have to use BIOS to select the drives. The most difficulty installation to date has been with PC-BSD which definitely did not like this procedure. Nevertheless it is in fact presently dual booting with Vista64 but with a couple of minor bugs to be ironed out.

Now what is my question? Well, I have prepared an Allysum 5 installation disk.I have also ordered a 4th hard drive which I expect to receive in a week or so. I wanted at last to leave this large (640 gb) drive for image backups alone. How big a risk is it to attempt to install Linux Mint on one of the drives I have at present using extended partitions. How likely am I to screw everything else on the disk up? Will Linux Mint see 3 versions of Windows XP (WinXP Pro 32bit/WinXP MCE/WinXP64) on separate petitions on a single drive? Does it set up Grub to work as well as Ubuntu on the first try? Should I wait and use a partition on that new drive? Thanks in advance for any comments.

[Husse]

Well I think it sees three versions of win
The installer (Ubiquity) is very good at taking care of the boot needs for other operating systems.
What should be avoided is to put grub anywhere else but the "first" disk, although it's possible
Putting it at (hd1,2) - as an example means that it ends up in sdb3 - the third partition of the second disk
I don't recommend it - I've seen to many questions about things like this

[archp2008]

Thanks for your comments. I waited for the new drive to arrive and the install went without a hitch until I reconnected all 3 drives and went back to trying to boot Ellyssa. It didn't mind having the other SATA2 drive reconnected but when I reconnected the IDE drive it only partially booted coming down with something like this:

mounting /root/dev on dev/static/dev failed

target filesystem doesn't have /sbin/init

Busybox v1.1.3
Enter 'help' for commands
initramfs>

I listed the commands here (seemed like nearly a hundred) but had no idea what to enter to allow the boot to resume.

When I turned off the computer and disconnected the IDE drive Elyssa booted ok again.

I've started another thread on this but only yesterday so no responses as yet...

Now I've got to remember to hit submit and NOT SAVE!!!

[Husse]

I have to think about this - this can drive me nuts. Fred is the guy that can answer
He is probably ill (he hurt his back seriously some time ago) and inactive
Please describe your partitioning scheme with the IDE disk connected and tell us which partitions have a /boot folder on it and which that has Elyssa /boot

[Husse]

I started writing an answer, and I know roughly what to say, but then I started thinking that this can't be right
A good night sleep gave me the solution I hope
I have experienced something like this and I've also just answered a few questions about it
This is both complex and simple
The BIOS tells which disk to boot from, so far so good
Grub queries the motherboard to find the primary, secondary and so on masters
In your case IDE has priority over SATA
So when you connect the IDE drive the disks are renumbered
This means that the disk where grub expects to find Elyssa (or at least a Linux) does not have the right content
Grub is powerful and works independent of the rest of your system
It reads the menu.lst and then sends you to the partition specified
The lines looks like these

root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-16-generic root=/dev/sda2 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-16-generic

If there is no vmlinuz and initrd then we get the error you have
As the IDE disk is considered higher sda becomes sdb and so on
This is exactly what happens to me if I forget to shut down an IDE disk I have for backup purposes which has a power switch (it's in a cabinet)
So if you want to have the IDE connected you have to find out the "designation" of the disks
To do that the simplest way would be to boot the live CD (with the IDE connected of course) and open gparted
Take note of the disks - it's only the letter that is changed the partition number is the same
Suppose you find that sda has been changed to sdb
Then you should change (hd0,1) to (hd1,1) and of course sda to sdb in the above lines
This can be done from the live CD
You may have to (rather you will have to) change the lines in other Linux you have installed as I suspect the same will happen in all of them - grub is grub....
But Mint uses gfxgrub so there may be some difference....

[reactiv8]

Pardon for butting in here, but I'm having almost exactly the same problems with BusyBl**dyBox and it is nearly driving me crazy ... I had eventually found a version of Linux to have an appropriate driver for my wide-screen monitor, and everything was going swimmingly until I made the mistake of allowing updates, then the familiar nightmares with this wretched application ... Is this someone's idea of a joke, 'cos it ain't funny, and as well as wasting a great deal of our time, puts folk off Linux too ... What are developers thinking about? I ask you ... Please, please can someone tell me what simple 'command' to enter to get BB out of its limbo, then I can get on and kill it dead forever!

Phew! I even have to boot back into dreaded M$ Windows Vista to have any communication with the outside world, and post this.

Death to Elyssa & BusyBox ... Can we build a pyre and torch it whilst we all dance around in celebration? Chris.

[Husse]

@ reactiv8
I understand your frustration, but this topic is not about busy box even if it may be mentioned
This is about how tricky it can be to have some non standard setup for you hard drives - and it would stop Vista as well
If the computer is told to boot from a partition without an operating system - it will not boot no matter what.
Post a description of your problems with hardware mentioned in a new topic and I'll see if I can help you

[Husse]

I hope this helps
http://www.linuxmint.com/wiki/index.php ... annot_boot