Installing Ubuntu

band-aid

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Well I have been working on this off and on for 4 days now. It started with a rather comical problem. I couldn't get my screen resolution above 640 X 480. This ment that the installer window was too large and I couldn't click the finished button on each page. Well I sorted that out by figuring out how to move the window around (inconvenient but it worked). I went through the installer and got my 320 GB hard drive partitioned. I got the files installed and here's where the problem starts. I cannot boot from this linux I installed because I boot off of a different hard drive. I don't want to use up 20 gb for linux on my boot drive because I put all my faster games on it (CSS, BF2 etc.). Its only 74 gb so 20 would be a sizable piece.

My question is this, how can I make it so I can get the choice on startup of which OS to boot. I know that Ubuntu is supposed to automatically install grub, but I think that this is screwed up because of they way I have my hard drives set up. Any help would be greatly appriciated. I would like to become fluent in linux before I get my laptop for college, which will most likely run linux almost exclusively.
 
in the bios, set the hard drive with linux as the first boot device so it boots grub and then you can choose.
 
When I go into my bios and into the boot order, It just says first boot - hard drive. I'll play with it.

Lemme just give an update on my progress. I was able to lunch grub and therefore ubuntu by using smartboot bootdisk and choosing the correct hard drive to boot linux. Everything was going great, I let the auto updater do its deal and then it told me to restart. Thinking that I had magically solved the problem I removed the floppy and restarted. Unfortulately my computer booted into XP and now when I use the floppy method to get into linux is says that my X-Server has failed and boots me to the terminal. When I try to browse around using the ls/CD commands it shows me a directory but will not let me CD to it. I may end up relaunching from the live CD tomorrow and starting over from the beginning.

Oh and before I forget, what is the default root password usually. I tried to log on as root/passwd root/*blank* and root/pass and none worked. Thats not the major issue right now. Right now I just want ubuntu running stable and grub asking me what to launch every time I boot up, not just when I tell it to using a bootdisk.
 
Correct me if Im wrong ... as far as I know you can only dual boot from the same hard drive. You can definitely install an OS on a different drive, but you're going to have the problems you currently are having, where you'd have to change your boot order in bios.
I suppose you could be willing to deal with the inconvenience of going into bios and "toggling" between hard drives as your first boot device everytime you decide to change OS's. I read that your bios only says "first boot device - hard drive". There may be a place somewhere else in bios where you can actually change the order of hard drive, then select it to be "the hard drive" in your boot sequence listing. On my motherboard bios, the boot sequence lists hard drive, cd-rom, floppy ... etc - all in general terms. However, I have several hard drives and 2 cd/dvd drives attached. There is a place in my bios where I can go into "hard drives" and move one up or down. Then the number one hard drive becomes the general term hard drive in my boot sequence. Hope that made sense.
Basically, if you're wanting a grub loader to do the work for you and make it easier to select between OS's ... you're going to have to load both on one hard drive. My suggestion would be do this, then on the second hard drive create 2 partitions and assign one for Windows OS use, and the other for Linux use.

***Edit *** There is another option that you might consider. Have you ever tried Virtual PC? I believe its a free download from Microsoft. I dont know what you plan to do with Ubuntu, but if it's just messing around and trying things out, Virtual PC would be the way to go. You can install the vhd (virtual hard disk) on your second hard drive as dynamic (expands only as you add data to the OS). You can set the virtual network interface to access the internet and so on ... pretty cool software. VMWare is another.
 
crosscech: Wrong

It's possible to dual boot on multiple drives or even cd roms and usb drives for that case...

You'd just have to specify which drive and partition to boot from for each choice. The advice posted above could be helpful ;).
 
hypetech said:
Maybe you should read up on editing your grub.conf file ;)

I did indeed ask to be corrected, but keep it in mind, I'm not the one wanting to do this. I don't dabble much in Linux OS. However, if I was wanting to work with multiple OS's, then going the Virtual PC route would be my preference. To go through all the work of editing a grub.conf file for an OS I may lose interest in after a week ... I'd rather just create a virtual machine, or if the option exist ... go the with LiveCD. To each his own.
 
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