Plop Boot Manager & separate Linux hdd

[Benbrockn]

Hello, so I'm trying to configure a dual-boot setup with Windows and Linux but using Plop Boot Manager as the boot method.

I set it up in virtualbox having Plop & MiniXp on one harddrive with a full Slitaz distro on a seperate hardrive with it's own grub bootloader on that linux harddrive.

Like so:

sda1 - Plop Boot Manager (full install) & (In the future, MiniXp will be on here too)

sdb1 - SliTaz (full install with grub bootloader)


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This is what I did for Plop:

I set up the partitions like this:


This is the profile setup:


And on the profile setup window, you select "linked partitions" to get to this screen, and I set it up like this:

The set boot partition was on both sda1 & sdb1 with no luck (Here it lists them as hda1 & hdb1)

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Forgetting about the miniXp for a moment (since that doesn't matter right now), the Slitaz distro runs on it's own if I boot straight to sdb1. If I boot it up using Plop it gives an error of "This is not a bootable disk". Maybe I configured Plop wrong??


Any help is greatly appreciated.

-Ben

[Elmar]

hello,

install grub to the boot sector of sdb1

best regards
elmar

[Benbrockn]

hello,

install grub to the boot sector of sdb1

best regards
elmar

Hey elmar,

As far as I know, grub is already installed on sdb1. When I go into the bios and boot directly from sdb1 (no plop), it boots fine. Even one of the installation options for installing SliTaz asks "do you want to install grub as your bootloader?" and I selected that.

As far as terminology goes (of which I admit that I'm lacking), unless the boot sector of sdb1 is different than where grub is normally installed, I already did that.

-Ben

[Elmar]

when you did not say that grub should be installed to the boot sector during the install process, then grub is installed to the mbr

bios booting works, because bios loads the mbr where grub is and grub boots linux.


elmar

[Benbrockn]

elmar,

This is what the option on the SliTaz distro says:



I checked that box and it installed SliTaz (Linux) only on sbd1. Like I said, it loads straight from BIOS. It installed grub automatically, I'm not sure where.

I think what you are saying is to install grub to the partition's boot sector instead of the disk's MBR, correct?

I'm currently trying this command as root:

grub-install /dev/sdb1

but it is not working. Is this the correct command?

Thanks,
-Ben

[Elmar]

I'm currently trying this command as root:

grub-install /dev/sdb1

but it is not working. Is this the correct command?

i need more infos. is there an error output?

[Benbrockn]

When I use (as root):

Code Select Expand

grub-install /dev/sdb1
--It errors:--

Could not find device for /boot: Not found or not a block device

So I looked up the error on Google and instead mounted sdb1 to /mnt/a and entered in this:

Code Select Expand

grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/a --recheck /dev/sdb1
--Which says:--

Probing devices to guess BIOS drives. This may take a long time.
Installation finished. No error reported.
This is the contents of the device map /mnt/a/boot/grub/device.map.
Check if this is correct or not. If any of the lines is incorrect, fix it and re-run the script 'grub-install'.

(fd0)  /dev/fd0
(hd0) /dev/sda
(hd1) /dev/sdb

I'm not sure what fd0 is since I only have two disks attached and both of those are hd0 & hd1.

I restart the system, plop will not load sdb1 (linux). BIOS will load sdb1 (linux).

Any ideas??

Thanks,
-Ben

[Elmar]

try

grub-setup --force /dev/sdb1
grub-install /dev/sdb1

[Benbrockn]

grub-setup is not an available command.

I tried a different approach. I went back into Plop Boot Manager, under the main profile I selected "linked partitions" and selected hdb1 as the boot partition.

So it seems to work, Plop then boots up grub4dos, but then gets stuck at the grub screen with this error:



I see that it says it is trying to read a FAT partition, I know it's not right, so I go to the "Edit Grub" screen and see this:



All of that looks good, it is what it is supposed to be. I decide to mess around with it and instead of:

Code Select Expand

root (hd1,0)

I type in:

Code Select Expand

root (hd0,0)

Okay, so oddly enough, it works -- to a point --. I don't know why Plop somehow changed around the HDD listings. It appears to load and then errors out with this:



So, I got plop to work, but how do I fix this? BIOS still loads fine.

- Ben

[Elmar]

whats the slitaz download link. i want to reconstruct the situation when i have free time.

[Benbrockn]

http://mirror.slitaz.org/iso/4.0/slitaz-4.0.iso

[Benbrockn]

Did you ever get it to work?

[Elmar]

i had no time for a test