[CentOS] Re-doing the MBR

Johnny Hughes mailing-lists at hughesjr.com
Thu Sep 28 11:02:52 UTC 2006


On Wed, 2006-09-27 at 22:30 -0700, Al Sparks wrote:
> I tried to install CentOS 4.4.  This was on a machine where I've got
> Windows XP on the first partition (hda1).
> 
> CentOS, like most of the distros will automatically install Grub in
> the MBR unless you tell it not to.  In fact it will wipe the MBR first
> pretty early in the install.
> 
> Here was my problem.  During the install, the second CD had some sort
> of read issue.  So I had to abort the install by intervening with the
> power switch.
> 
> So when I rebooted, I couldn't boot into my XP because the MBR had
> been wiped.
> 
> I pulled out an Insert distribution and did a RAM only boot up.
> 
> I could still see my NTFS partition where XP was located, and I could
> also see where the CentOS installed the /boot partition in /dev/hda2.
> 
> Now I finally solved this problem by going back and doing a minimal
> install of CentOS which doesn't require the second CD.
> 
> I've now got something in the MBR, and I'm up an running.  But does
> anyone have suggestions on how to semi-manually install grub so that
> it sees what it calls the "other" partition to boot into?  Is there a
> tool out there that will do that?
> 
> I mean, what if the install had hung up on the first disk instead?
>    === Al
> 

If mbr is installed, just add this to the bottom of the
file /boot/grub/grub.conf to get a selection to boot Windows:

title Window XP 
  rootnoverify (hd0,0) 
  chainloader +1

(that assumes that hda1 is the windows partition, and that it is still
intact).
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