Cant find Fedora OS in New Partition (Loader)

Hi,

I've installed Fedora 5 Core on another partition on my hard drive. Windows XP sp2 is the host on C:

It all installed fine, but when I get to the boot loader (Acronis) it can't find the new OS and tells me to specify the boot files.

Now, I have an idea that this maybe because I chose NOT to install a boot loader during the fedora install, thinkiong Acroins would conflict, or at least not like it.

So I'm thinking maybe I NEED GRUB or LiLo - does Acronis look for GRUB/LiLo to boot the Linux OS from? I can go in and repair the install and install a loader, but I thought that was the point of Acronis, because I can do all of this boot selection with GRUB which I have dual booting my laptop....

Thanks in advance...all help appreciated! ;o)

 

From what I have read in the last few moins, it seems that you cant install Linunx on any other partition without writing the mbr too, so you'd have to use a linux bootloader anyway. So to do that I could just use GRUB and not need Acronis at all - in fact I cant use Acronis in this cxonfiguration, right?

It cant see the Fedora OS - does it need to have GRUB installed as well? Shouldnt Acronis pick up the OS on the partitoon and be able to boot it

Seem like a ridiculous question....

And the answer should be: Of course it can! Someone tell me it is!!

 

matulike:

You need a loader (LILO or GRUB) to start Linux.

I'm assuming here that you are talking about using Acronis OS Selector when you say "Acronis loader". Correct me if I'm wrong and you're talking about the Acronis loader that is installed with Acronis True Image Home for activating the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager.

If you want to keep OS Selector then just install GRUB to the partition containing your Linux installation (/ or /boot partition) and leave your MBR as-is.

If you don't need or want Acronis OS Selector, then uninstall it and install GRUB to the MBR. GRUB will then be your "OS Selector".

 

Yeh @I use GRUB on my laptop, but have Acronis OS selector on my PC and wanted to install Fedora... so didnt think I'd need a loader for the linux install... but, OK, I can go back and install GRUB...

I guess Acronis has more features than GRUB, but just as a boot loader I cant understand why you even want 2 loaders...you could just use GRUB and be done with it. Then use the boot disk for Acronis tools if and when you need em.

Anyway, thanks for your help - I'll go install GRUB )

 

OS Selector has to chain-load operating systems anyway. If you use it to boot into Windows, it chainloads to NTLDR in the Windows partition. If you use it to boot into Linux, it chainloads to GRUB.

You can always edit GRUB's menu.lst file to uncomment the line "hiddenmenu" so that you don't see GRUB's menu displayed. You can also set the timeout to be very short to minimize the delay. Try 1 second, but if you ever need to choose an alternate selection in GRUB then you'll have to be quick to hit the ESC key!

Not sure if you're interested but I tried all kinds of combinations before settling on the following for a multiboot system:

1. Uninstall OS Selector
2. Reinstall the standard Microsoft MBR (Windows XP recovery disk; fixmbr)
3. Create a small (100 MB) primary partition at the start of the disk for GRUB
4. Install GRUB and the Linux /boot files in the small partiton
5. Make the GRUB partition active
6. Use GRUB to start everything; it's very versatile