Installer with Arch on non-first drive

oldpond · 2010-12-14 04:32:40

Hi folks,

I am having trouble getting arch installed on my setup. I had win7 on my first drive and Sabayon on my second drive. The way I usually do things, I install Sabayon on the second drive, put Grub on the second drive, and then go into the bios and flip the order of my drives. This way I can boot to either Grub with linux and windows, or just plain windows. Works like a charm.

When I tried this with Arch, I had a heck of a time. On my first try I told Arch to install on sdb, but it went and clobbered my windows install on sda. I thought this was because of my bios settings, so I flipped the drives around and put windows back on the "first" drive again. The second install seemed to work, but Grub gave me error 15, and flipping the drives in the bios again would not launch windows from the first drive. I suspect that grub went down on the first drive instead of the second drive as configured. Is this because the installer and Grub have different ways of detecting the first drive? One via the bus, the other via the bios?

I'd like to give it another try, but I don't want to clobber things again. A little guidance would be much appreciated. I've read over the Grub2 docs on UUID's and such, so I think I've done my homework. Any Arch specific things I should be aware of before I pop the installer in again? I want to keep my windows on the current "first drive" and have Arch land on the second drive with Grub on the second drive if possible. Then i want to switch the order of my drives in the bios so that grub works for both Arch and windows, but the windows drive can boot by itself if need be.

skunktrader · 2010-12-14 04:46:59

The problem is that changing the order of the drives in the bios affects which drive is called sda and sbd

oldpond · 2010-12-14 05:12:27

Well, that's the thing, it works perfectly with Sabayon, and they are still running Grub 1.9.7 (iirc). Changing the boot order in the bios just tells it to boot from the second drive.

Mr.Elendig · 2010-12-14 11:52:07

Why overcomplicate it so much? grub(legacy) can boot windows 7 just fine. Just install grub on mbr of the first drive, and add an entry for windows to the menu.lst/grub.cfg

schuay · 2010-12-14 12:17:05

Mr.Elendig wrote:

Why overcomplicate it so much? grub(legacy) can boot windows 7 just fine. Just install grub on mbr of the first drive, and add an entry for windows to the menu.lst/grub.cfg

Yep, this sort of thing is very simple.
In fact, all you need to do (after installing all arch stuff to sdb and grub to sda) is uncomment the windows entry in the arch default menu.lst.

Grub even handles a windows installation on the second drive fine, all you'd need to do is use grubs map commands to trick windows into thinking it's installed on the first drive. This doesn't apply to your case, so feel free the forget the previous sentence

Last edited by schuay (2010-12-14 12:18:44)

oldpond · 2010-12-14 15:19:50

Yeah, you are right. I should put Grub on sda and it should work fine. Fixing the MBR later on, if required, is trivial. That's the answer.

Thanks all.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-12-14 04:32:40

Installer with Arch on non-first drive

#2 2010-12-14 04:46:59

Re: Installer with Arch on non-first drive

#3 2010-12-14 05:12:27

Re: Installer with Arch on non-first drive

#4 2010-12-14 11:52:07

Re: Installer with Arch on non-first drive

#5 2010-12-14 12:17:05

Re: Installer with Arch on non-first drive

#6 2010-12-14 15:19:50

Re: Installer with Arch on non-first drive

Board footer