Making Fedora Core 2 and Windows play well together [LWN.net]

Making Fedora Core 2 and Windows play well together

Posted May 26, 2004 16:54 UTC (Wed) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330)
Parent article: Making Fedora Core 2 and Windows play well together

Wow.

Certainly this document is useful to anyone who has already been hurt by the bug, or who has already downloaded and burned Fedora 2 ISOs. I would like to see a bit more detail, though, on exactly at what point the disk geometry information becomes corrupted, to assess whether an upgrade via apt or yum would be affected.

But does the Fedora team think that asking everyone who wants a dual-boot setup to follow this procedure is a satisfactory solution? It's complex enough to be error-prone, and greatly increases the complexity of installing Fedora dual-boot.

If I were in charge, I would declare Fedora Core 2 a "paper bag release" because of this bug, and put out 2.01 (or whatever you want to call it) in a hurry. It should be possible to do this in a way that only the first CD needs replacement.

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1 Strike and your out?

Posted May 26, 2004 22:18 UTC (Wed) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link]

I guess he can't use Windows either, because it nukes LILO and/or GRUB if
they are on the MBR.

1 Strike and your out?

Posted May 26, 2004 22:25 UTC (Wed) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

But almost no one installs Windows. They get it pre-installed when they buy their computer. And almost everyone who does install it doesn't install it after installing Linux. On the other hand, large numbers of people install Linux after Windows using a dual-boot setup. The consequence is that far more people are affected by this problem.

Look, the Fedora folks need to fix this bug. It should be treated as a show stopper.

1 Strike and your out?

Posted May 26, 2004 23:02 UTC (Wed) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link]

Lots of people install Windows.... like after it screws up and needs to be
reinstalled... or after a virus or worm, etc. The need to reinstall isn't
as bad with W2K and XP.

Again, I installed on about a dozen systems before I ran into this the
first time. It certainly doesn't happen every time... or at least that
hasn't been my experience. Perhaps it is because I've installed mostly on
pre-partitioned systems that previously ran Linux... but I'm not sure.

As reported over and over, it isn't unique to Fedora Core 2 and it is
really an issue with the kernel. I'm sure the kernel developers
(including several employees at Red Hat) are working on it.

The vast majority of people installing FC2 have downloaded it... and it
isn't their first Linux. Once it starts coming out in books and more
beginners start locking themselves out of Windows, it might be a bigger
issue.

1 Strike and you're out?

Posted May 26, 2004 23:35 UTC (Wed) by kena (subscriber, #2735) [Link]

Most home users don't "install" Windows. Most home users can't "install" it -- they can only re-image their system with the manufacturer's included image CD's. Which, sadly, will gladly step on not just the MBR and partition table, but everything else on the primary physical disk. Go buh-bye. Needless to say, MS doesn't care a great deal about the possibility that -other- operating systems might co-exist. Of course, the fact that that wipes Windows data as well shows how little they truly do care...

$.02

1 Strike and your out?

Posted May 26, 2004 22:55 UTC (Wed) by hchristeller (guest, #4246) [Link]

Windows may nuke the boot loader, but it doesn't overwrite the partition table without permission. Reinstalling GRUB or LILO is pretty easy, and well documented.

Figuring out why the partition table changed when installing FC2 to existing partitions was neither easy nor well documented. At least it's documented now.

In my case, Windows wasn't an issue. I wanted to install FC2 on a spare partition to evaluate it before upgrading my current Linux partitions. The FC2 installer complained about the partition table it found. I'd backed up the system, so I created new partitions with FC2. After restoring, my previous Linux complained about the FC2 partition table. I've been burned by partition table issues before, so I don't like to see warning messages.

Now maybe I have enough information to have a partition table that both old and new Linux distributions are happy with. Is that asking too much?

Making Fedora Core 2 and Windows play well together

Posted May 26, 2004 22:29 UTC (Wed) by szaka (subscriber, #12740) [Link]

SUSE 9.1 is affected too, moreover at least most distro using 2.6 kernel with Parted based partitioning code (quite many, unless fixed). Fdisk should be ok.

Will fdisk with its "x extra functionality (experts only)" command work?

Posted May 26, 2004 22:53 UTC (Wed) by nicku (subscriber, #777) [Link]

I have used fdisk with the "x extra functionality (experts only)" command to change the CHS values a couple of times in the distant past, and do not remember a disaster happening.

Does anyone here know whether that would be a suitable way of setting the drive geometry settings in the partition table, as an alternative to using the sfdisk method described in this article?

Making Fedora Core 2 and Windows play well together

Posted May 27, 2004 0:16 UTC (Thu) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

SuSE is affected to. One of my students says that he had similar problems with GenToo. Face it Linux is crap.. just stick with Windows ;)

Making Fedora Core 2 and Windows play well together

Posted May 29, 2004 23:11 UTC (Sat) by surhudm (guest, #21939) [Link]

Hey well it is your windows which is doing all the crap... Check out hte above article on why the problem arises...

Surhud

Making Fedora Core 2 and Windows play well together

Posted May 27, 2004 22:55 UTC (Thu) by advaita (guest, #21897) [Link]

Excellent guidebook this. I wish it were out a few days earlier. I was bitten by this bug in spite of having Windows XP and FC2 on different hard disks, since I decided to install GRUB on /dev/hda1. I would like to describe my mistakes, and hopefully someone else will know exactly what *not* to do!

Instead of Googling for more detailed info (there was quite a bit that would have helped me recover almost instantly) I ended up doing very stupid things like going to the WinXP recovery console and then trying FIXMBR and FIXBOOT and such. Consequence: my WinXP installation went kaput. Then I had the fortunate idea of installing NTFSprogs on FC2, after which I mounted the WinXP disk, and copied over all my personal stuff and burned CDs. Finally, I swiped /dev/hda clean and re-installed WinXP.

So lots of time wasted, instead of changing the disk access mode in the BIOS from C/H/S to LBA and letting WinXP live its usual life. But the info on resetting the partition table is great though.

Thanks and cheers!