My friend uses a typical dual-boot setup (Windows XP and Centos 5.3). The machine is online 24/7 and he often uses it from a remote location (Linux via ssh -X, Windows via rdesktop).
The problem is that he wants to be able to remotely configure which of these two OSes is to be the default on next reboot, so he can switch from one OS to the other and back remotely. If Linux is up, he just needs to reconfigure grub.conf, but if Windows is up (and default) he has no way of accessing grub.conf.
Now, he has several partitions on the drive, some ntfs, some vfat and some ext3. Is there a clean way of putting grub.conf on a vfat partition? Is there a way for Windows to have rw access to ext3 filesystem (namely, /)? Is there some other way of handling this without physical access to the machine while it boots?
I have suggested virtualization of Windows, so he could run them both concurrently without pain, but for certain (computational performance) reasons that is not a good option for him --- he wants hard reboots between OSes.
Any suggestions?
Thanks! :-) Marko
Marko Vojinovic wrote:
My friend uses a typical dual-boot setup (Windows XP and Centos 5.3). The machine is online 24/7 and he often uses it from a remote location (Linux via ssh -X, Windows via rdesktop).
The problem is that he wants to be able to remotely configure which of these two OSes is to be the default on next reboot, so he can switch from one OS to the other and back remotely. If Linux is up, he just needs to reconfigure grub.conf, but if Windows is up (and default) he has no way of accessing grub.conf.
Now, he has several partitions on the drive, some ntfs, some vfat and some ext3. Is there a clean way of putting grub.conf on a vfat partition? Is there a way for Windows to have rw access to ext3 filesystem (namely, /)? Is there some other way of handling this without physical access to the machine while it boots?
I have suggested virtualization of Windows, so he could run them both concurrently without pain, but for certain (computational performance) reasons that is not a good option for him --- he wants hard reboots between OSes.
You don't really have to choose VMs or dual-boot - you can run a bootable partition under VMware, and perhaps virtualbox and others. It is somewhat more convenient to make the windows install the host, though, because otherwise it wants to be re-licensed every time you switch and it sees different hardware. I suppose you could fire up the centos VM under windows to edit the grub.conf file, then shut it down and reboot the physical machine.
On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 5:58 PM, Marko Vojinovic vvmarko@gmail.com wrote:
My friend uses a typical dual-boot setup (Windows XP and Centos 5.3). The machine is online 24/7 and he often uses it from a remote location (Linux via ssh -X, Windows via rdesktop).
The problem is that he wants to be able to remotely configure which of these two OSes is to be the default on next reboot, so he can switch from one OS to the other and back remotely. If Linux is up, he just needs to reconfigure grub.conf, but if Windows is up (and default) he has no way of accessing grub.conf.
Now, he has several partitions on the drive, some ntfs, some vfat and some ext3. Is there a clean way of putting grub.conf on a vfat partition? Is there a way for Windows to have rw access to ext3 filesystem (namely, /)? Is there some other way of handling this without physical access to the machine while it boots?
I have suggested virtualization of Windows, so he could run them both concurrently without pain, but for certain (computational performance) reasons that is not a good option for him --- he wants hard reboots between OSes.
Any suggestions?
Thanks! :-) Marko
I have not done this, but maybe a small vfat partition with syslinux instead of grub as the boot loader. Then you could edit the configuration from both Windows and Linux.
It might also be a good idea for him to look into one of these single-port IP/KVMs in case he needs to get to the console: http://www.lantronix.com/it-management/kvm-over-ip/securelinx-spider.html
Hi Marko, On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 10:58 PM, Marko Vojinovic vvmarko@gmail.com wrote:
My friend uses a typical dual-boot setup (Windows XP and Centos 5.3). The machine is online 24/7 and he often uses it from a remote location (Linux via ssh -X, Windows via rdesktop).
The problem is that he wants to be able to remotely configure which of these two OSes is to be the default on next reboot, so he can switch from one OS to the other and back remotely. If Linux is up, he just needs to reconfigure grub.conf, but if Windows is up (and default) he has no way of accessing grub.conf.
Along with other options provided in the list, you can also use this to mount that partition as ext2 within Windows.
See the section about mounting ext3 partitions: http://www.fs-driver.org/faq.html#acc_ext3
On Wed, 2009-04-22 at 23:58 +0200, Marko Vojinovic wrote:
My friend uses a typical dual-boot setup (Windows XP and Centos 5.3). The machine is online 24/7 and he often uses it from a remote location (Linux via ssh -X, Windows via rdesktop).
The problem is that he wants to be able to remotely configure which of these two OSes is to be the default on next reboot, so he can switch from one OS to the other and back remotely. If Linux is up, he just needs to reconfigure grub.conf, but if Windows is up (and default) he has no way of accessing grub.conf.
Now, he has several partitions on the drive, some ntfs, some vfat and some ext3. Is there a clean way of putting grub.conf on a vfat partition? Is there a way for Windows to have rw access to ext3 filesystem (namely, /)? Is there some other way of handling this without physical access to the machine while it boots?
I've used this in the past with great success.
Ok, to summarize, using a small CentOS system in a virtual machine is one option (the "safe" one, I would say), while mounting / from Windows using that driver is another one (the "easy" one, because It doesn't feel so safe).
Thanks to all who have replied, I'll look into these ideas over the weekend, and then I'll decide.
Best, :-) Marko
Hi,
On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 09:34, Marko Vojinovic vvmarko@gmail.com wrote:
using a small CentOS system in a virtual machine is one option (the "safe" one, I would say), while mounting / from Windows using that driver is another one
I did not test this, but I'm almost positive that GRUB supports FAT as the partition type for the /boot filesystem.
At least, I have a "fat_stage1_5" file in my /boot/grub directory, I would expect that one to be FAT filesystem support for GRUB.
It shouldn't be very hard to test, just backup /boot, reformat it as a VFAT filesystem and move the kernel/grub files back, then reinstall GRUB with a grub-install command. Boot it (keep a rescue disk handy) and see if it works. If it does, just check that you can mount that VFAT partition from Windows, edit it, and see if you can boot to Linux the next time.
HTH, Filipe
Hi,
On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 10:44, Filipe Brandenburger filbranden@gmail.com wrote:
I did not test this, but I'm almost positive that GRUB supports FAT as the partition type for the /boot filesystem.
From /usr/share/doc/grub-0.97/NEWS:
New in 0.5.93 - 1999-10-30: * FAT32 support is added.
New in 0.5.94 - 2000-03-06: * Long filename support in the FAT filesystem is added.
So I guess you should be safe.
HTH, Filipe
Marko Vojinovic wrote:
Ok, to summarize, using a small CentOS system in a virtual machine is one option (the "safe" one, I would say), while mounting / from Windows using that driver is another one (the "easy" one, because It doesn't feel so safe).
Note that the CentOS that you boot in the VM can be the same one you boot physically (which may, in some cases eliminate the need to reboot...). If you give it access to the whole disk, you'll be booting from the same grub setup so you have to manually select the centos boot from the grub menu, but in this scenario you still have control through your remote access to the running host.
For something a little stranger, you could set up a VM image with access to the raw disk, but set to boot from an iso image of your favorite Linux rescue or live cd or dvd.
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Brian Mathis -
Filipe Brandenburger -
Hakan Koseoglu -
Les Mikesell -
Marko Vojinovic -
Michael Kralka