How to dual boot with minix 3 and windows 7

[Ratul Thakur]

I downloaded Minix 3 iso burned it to a disk then installed it to a new disk partition on my SONY laptop. after installation i removed the CD and powered off the system and started it again. the problem is that my PC does not ask for the operating system to boot. it boots windows only. how do i boot to Minix .?? please help. thanks :-)

note - while installation i chose the 2nd option i.e. Regular minix 3 with AHCI because while installing with option 1 it gave me error- Not found No CD found.

[Antoine LECA]

On 07/02/2016 14:48Z, Ratul Thakur wrote:
> I downloaded Minix 3 iso burned it to a disk then installed it to a new
> disk partition on my SONY laptop. after installation i removed the CD and
> powered off the system and started it again. the problem is that my PC does
> not ask for the operating system to boot. it boots windows only. how do i
> boot to Minix .?? please help. thanks :-)

Please make clear you are using ATBIOS-style firmware (EFI firmwares,
like in any 2012-and-up computers, are unlikely to work smoothly.)

Another point is that Windows did install itself as primary (active) in
the MBR table; unless you changed that at any point, it will still be
there, so the behaviour is kind of expected.
MINIX installation does NOT fiddle which such sensitive settings, which
could easily make your computer unable to boot; and more importantly,
unlike Windows, MINIX does not silently change the booting configuration
of your computer. If at no point you were advised that the MBR table has
been altered, then it means it has not been done.

To be able to solve that, you need to instruct the program which will
take the control of the computer at boot time, to have a new option to
start the _other_ operating system (this is colloquially known as
'chain-loading'). If you just install MINIX from the CD, thus not using
a complex boot manager (like GRUB), MINIX itself comes with NetBSD boot
manager which AFAIK does not have the option to chain-load. So keep
using Windows Boot Manager: you just need to add an entry which would
launching MINIX. I detailed the way to do that earlier: please read
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/minix3/1uGVKmmp2HY/vtND-5ytUAcJ
Notes: the point about installboot -d does not apply any more; you need
to use an elevated prompt in Windows, of course; if you cannot locate
the system partition, try mount /s; I did not test that for many years.

Please report how it worked for you, since we certainly could update the
documentation in the wiki on that process.

As the thread mentioned above made then clear, another option is to
install a specialized "multi-OS" boot manager which knows how to boot
both Windows NT6 and MINIX/NetBSD; GRUB is an obvious solution if you
want full control and many options; just make sure that the program
handles correctly Vista/7 (most do, but some do not.)


Antoine

[r0ller]

Hi Antoine,

I'm pretty much not an expert in boot loaders but just wanted to mention that I have a system at home with an old WinXP+NetBSD 7 on one disk where NetBSD got installed later and it just worked out of the box to have the NetBSD bootloader happily offering two options: 1) Win 2) NetBSD.

Best regards,

r0ller

[Ratul Thakur]

antonie...i am new to all this.

i just wanted to ask that selecting

[2. regular minix 3 with AHCI]     makes any difference???

and thanks for your help.

ill try to sort this out with GAG and ill tell you if it works.

thanks once again :-)

[Antoine LECA]

On 08/02/2016 10:45Z, r0ller wrote:
> I'm pretty much not an expert in boot loaders but just wanted to mention
> that I have a system at home with an old WinXP+NetBSD 7 on one disk where
> NetBSD got installed later and it just worked out of the box to have the
> NetBSD bootloader happily offering two options: 1) Win 2) NetBSD.

Thanks a lot to remind me.
This worked (and still works) because rather than acting at boot manager
settings and chain-loading the other, the NetBSD way is rather to enable
the MBR code (also known as boot0 or /usr/mdec/mbr*) to select either
the Windows or the NetSBD partition thus system, this feature is aptly
named "bootsel."
I feel sorry to have forgetting this feature from my earlier post. :-(

What happens with MINIX is that this system is not installed: as I said
before, MINIX does not touch the details of the existing booting
settings to avoid any mistake.

It could be certainly possible to install it manually (and it certainly
will work, I myself had it working for years). The real problem is that
it relies on an utility (the NetBSD fdisk(8)) which is still not ported
to MINIX; as a result, it is not easy to explain how to set it up from a
MINIX command prompt.
If you have access to a NetBSD system acting on that system (either i386
or amd64), it is as easy as running fdisk against the drive, selecting
mbr_bootsel (or mbr_ext) for -c, and using the correct "bootmenu" labels
with -s options. Read attentively the manual page
http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?fdisk which has the details.


Antoine

[Antoine LECA]

On 08/02/2016 12:26Z, Ratul Thakur wrote:
> antonie...
That's Antoine (and it's pronounced as [antwan] if you wonder.)

> i just wanted to ask that selecting
> [2. regular minix 3 with AHCI] makes any difference???

Not much difference for your problem: as you said earlier, this is
required for your laptop (since it uses AHCI rather than "at_wini" to
address the drives), but the installed MINIX on your disk takes care of
that and it should have any impact. Your problem is much earlier in the
timeline. If you read
http://wiki.minix3.org/doku.php?id=developersguide:frompowerontologinprompt,
your problem as I understand it is at the beginning of the "Boot
monitor" phase (master boot record or MBR replacing itself), while the
AHCI-vs-AH_WINI stuff occurs at system initialization, after loading the
ramdisk.


Antoine

[r0ller]

Hi Antoine,

Thanks for the clarification:)

Regards,

r0ller

[Ratul Thakur]

antonie...

i tried GAG. it when i boot minix this happens-

Boot failed ...and something like - boot monitor does not exist or not found

sorry i forgot the exact statement.

and now i am going to try netBSD