Multi Boot Question

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Patrick Bouldin

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May 6, 2017, 12:39:29 AM5/6/17
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I was attempting to go by the instructions here:
https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/multiboot/

Confused on which instructions to execute. First, I repartitioned, then installed Windows 7 - it booted fine. Then I installed Qubes on the other position - and Qubes now boots fine to that partition. With that in mind, do I follow the instructions under Windows or Linux on the guidelines?

And, if I'm to use the Windows instructions, then when doing a blkid in order to get the volume for windows and substituting that name into the X in the "ntldr (hd1,X)/bootmgr" line of the /etc/grub.d/40_custom file - I am unclear as to what to use there. If I blkid I see this:

/dev/sdal: LABEL="System Reserved" UUID="lotsOfcharacters", and then type, and then PARTUUID="othercharacters". So, which do I want for the X substitution. Either way upon boot I get "error: hd1 cannot get C/H/S values"

Thank you,
Patrick

cooloutac

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May 7, 2017, 2:56:24 PM5/7/17
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If you figure out I would be interested to know. i installed debian just to use it as triple boot grub manager lol

Unman

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May 8, 2017, 7:28:55 PM5/8/17
to Patrick Bouldin, qubes-users
That error suggests that the drive is not identified correctly.
It would help if the page made it clear that these are examples, not to
be followed blindly.
You need to understand how grub identifies disks and partitions.

grub2 will reference sda (the first disk) as hd0.
But partitions are numbered from 1.
So sda1, which you identify as the System reserved partition , should be
identified as (hd0,1)

The relevant line should therefore be:
ntldr (hd0,1)/bootmgr

Try that and see what happens.

unman

Patrick Bouldin

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May 8, 2017, 11:53:17 PM5/8/17
to qubes-users, pat...@runthisproject.com, un...@thirdeyesecurity.org

Thanks unman, that actually worked. However, apparently the QubesOS install apparently corrupted the Windows OS partition that was installed first. I guess that's a different problem! Do you think I need to start over? If I try to boot to the USB windows7 ISO it doesn't recognize it, but I know the ISO is good.

Patrick

cooloutac

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May 9, 2017, 12:19:43 AM5/9/17
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you might of deleted a ntfs boot partition by accident. usually its the other way around lol. but you say that windows usb won't boot now, thats weird. Maybe you disabled it in bios and forgot?

Patrick Bouldin

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May 9, 2017, 1:34:47 AM5/9/17
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I'll double check the iso. But I think I may have not partitioned correctly. If I want to start over, and if I want to run Win7 and QubesOS, do I need to configure 3 partitions, the first one for NTFS and how big, like 100 MB? Then run the Windows 7 ISO and use one of the other partitions, then run the Qubes ISO?

Thanks,
Patrick

cooloutac

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May 9, 2017, 3:25:02 PM5/9/17
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just install win 7 first. define how big you want it, or just shrink it from within windows after install and leave unpartitioned space for Qubes. Then choose option in QUbes to install alongside windows, Then, after install, you will have to add windows entry to the Qubes grub menu to boot both. When I get around to it, I'm going to try to add windows to my Qubes grub too.

cooloutac

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May 10, 2017, 12:27:54 AM5/10/17
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On Monday, May 8, 2017 at 7:28:55 PM UTC-4, Unman wrote:

in my case it didn't work. machine just reboots.

cooloutac

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May 10, 2017, 12:35:27 PM5/10/17
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I don't know about the doing it at your own risk method. I'll just go back to installing debian to use its grub lol.

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