GRUB or LILO on NTFS?

[Kertis Henderson]

Hello,

I have a PC laptop that has a single NTFS partition, and I'd like to
install GRUB or LILO. My goal is to boot into the OS on the NTFS
partition using a Linux-type bootloader. Of course, it's easy to
install GRUB if you have an available e2fs or fat partition for /boot/
grub, but I only have NTFS at this time. I have never installed LILO
by hand, but I understand that it might work, too.

I compiled GRUB2, but it segfaults. GRUB legacy doesn't seem to want
to install to NTFS. It says "filesystem type unknown, partition type
0x7." I'm using the GRUB from Knoppix 5.0 DVD, which is 0.95 or so.

Does anyone know of a way to install a Linux-type bootloader onto an
NTFS partition? If not, is there a better place to ask this question?

Thanks in advance.

(Hardware is Dell Inspiron 9300, WD 250GB 2.5" hard drive as /dev/
sda. CD-ROM + USB. No floppy.)

- Kert

[Allen Kistler]

I'm not certain why you want a Linux loader for only Windows, but ...
I'm not aware of NTFS support for grub.conf, so that leaves LILO.
Unless there's a live CD that includes LILO support, your best bet is
probably installing LILO from a bootable USB drive with Linux.
So now you need to make a bootable USB drive and put LILO on it, first.
(I'm assuming your laptop can boot to a USB drive.)
That seems like a lot of work not to use the NT loader on a machine that
only has Windows.

[supra99]

I have managed the dual system (Linux and WindowsXp) on the Laptop. What
you need is rescue CD that allows to shrink the NTFS partition from
Windows. Then create new partions for Linux and move from there to load
Linux. At this time you may use LILO or GRUB.

pravin

[Michael Paoli]

On Apr 24, 7:13 pm, Kertis Henderson <kertishender...@hotmail.com>
wrote:

> I have a PC laptop that has a single NTFS partition, and I'd like to
> install GRUB or LILO. My goal is to boot into the OS on the NTFS
> partition using a Linux-type bootloader. Of course, it's easy to
> install GRUB if you have an available e2fs or fat partition for /boot/
> grub, but I only have NTFS at this time. I have never installed LILO
> by hand, but I understand that it might work, too.
>
> I compiled GRUB2, but it segfaults. GRUB legacy doesn't seem to want
> to install to NTFS. It says "filesystem type unknown, partition type
> 0x7." I'm using the GRUB from Knoppix 5.0 DVD, which is 0.95 or so.
>
> Does anyone know of a way to install a Linux-type bootloader onto an
> NTFS partition? If not, is there a better place to ask this question?

Okay, let's see if this gives you some ideas - it's from my laptop:
$ uptime
18:00:37 up 115 days, 6:52, 24 users, load average: 0.20, 0.14,
0.10
$ sudo sfdisk -uS -l /dev/hda

Disk /dev/hda: 4764 cylinders, 240 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units = sectors of 512 bytes, counting from 0

Device Boot Start End #sectors Id System
/dev/hda1 63 619919 619857 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 * 619920 25477199 24857280 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda3 25477200 25749359 272160 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda4 25749360 72031679 46282320 85 Linux extended
/dev/hda5 25764480 26369278 604799 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 26369280 30563567 4194288 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda7 30572640 33521038 2948399 8e Linux LVM
/dev/hda8 33521040 36469438 2948399 8e Linux LVM
/dev/hda9 36469440 39417838 2948399 8e Linux LVM
/dev/hda10 39417840 42366238 2948399 8e Linux LVM
/dev/hda11 42366240 45314638 2948399 8e Linux LVM
/dev/hda12 45314640 48263038 2948399 8e Linux LVM
/dev/hda13 48263040 51211438 2948399 8e Linux LVM
/dev/hda14 51211440 54159838 2948399 8e Linux LVM
/dev/hda15 54159840 57108238 2948399 8e Linux LVM
/dev/hda16 57108240 60056638 2948399 8e Linux LVM
/dev/hda17 60056640 63005038 2948399 8e Linux LVM
/dev/hda18 63005040 65953438 2948399 8e Linux LVM
/dev/hda19 65953440 68901838 2948399 8e Linux LVM
/dev/hda20 68901840 71850238 2948399 8e Linux LVM
$ mount | fgrep hda2
/dev/hda2 on /home/m/michael/tmp/mnt/hda2 type ntfs
(ro,umask=077,uid=1003,gid=1
00,iocharset=utf8)
$ cat /home/m/michael/tmp/mnt/hda2/BOOT.INI; echo
[boot loader]
timeout=300
default=C:\BOOT\grub.boot_sector
[operating systems]
C:\BOOT\grub.boot_sector="GRUB"
C:\BOOT\lilo.boot_sector="LILO"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional"
/fastdetect
$ sed -ne '3,4p;28,31p' /etc/lilo.conf
boot=/boot/lilo.boot_sector
root=/dev/hda5
other=/dev/hda1
label="GRUB"
other=/dev/hda2
label="NT_boot_loader"
$ sed -ne '25,30p' /boot/grub/menu.lst
title LILO
chainloader (hd0,0)/boot/lilo.boot_sector

title NT boot loader
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1 (hd0,1)
$ ls -l /boot/boot
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 1 Jul 19 2003 /boot/boot -> .
$

Some additional hints:
The NT booloader generally perfers to boot "foreign" operating systems
by loading a boot sector from a file on an NTFS filesystem.
In the configuration I've illustrated, when one needs to update the
GRUB (rarely) or LILO (every time
it's reconfigured) boot blocks, those need to also be copied onto the
NTFS filesystem where the
NT boot loader has been configured to use them.

[philo]

"Kertis Henderson" <kertish...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1a2d7b96-72d2-4136...@24g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...

First off, though I know of no way to install grub or lilo on an NTFS
partition...
that's *not* where you'd want it to reside.

If you really want to use such a boot loader...you'll need to install it on
your MBR

I never tried it as I'd see no possible use for doing so...
but you could probably boot from a Linux live cd such as Damn Small Linux
and install lilo or grub from there.

If you end up trashing your mbr in the process you can
use the fixmbr command from the repair console

[zhangxue...@gmail.com]

> If you end up trashing your mbr on the process you can

> use the fixmbr command from the repair console

it's possible to install grub in ntfs patition

it's possible to install grub on a ntfs partition, though that is not recommanded.
you can from a linux system execute command
grub-install [OPTION] install_device
use the ntfs partition to replace "install_device"