[UPDATED] Getting Windows and Linux to coexist on my Samsung NC10

xelados · 2009-08-06 00:18:45

I went to install Arch, but unfortunately I couldn't get into cfdisk to set up my partitions. However, I had made a partition on the end of my drive that's about 40 gigs, so I installed to /dev/sda3. However, GRUB won't install to /dev/sda for some reason. Everytime I boot up my system, it goes straight to XP. I have no reliable way to backup my recovery partition (which is /dev/sda1 as far as I can tell) and I'd love to figure out how to get Arch to install properly...

cfdisk complained that /dev/sda2 ended on a partial cylinder or something. Is there anything I can do to clean up the partition table and figure out how to get Arch installed?

Last edited by xelados (2009-08-14 01:45:10)

whiteychs · 2009-08-06 06:12:23

Can you provide any more information? Specific errors ect..

Strange that grub wouldn't install to your mbr.

When things like this happen, I dust off a live cd and use the utilities (which include partition managers).

"FATAL ERROR: Bad primary partition <number>: Partition ends in the final partial cylinder"

Is that the error? If so, http://www.articlesbase.com/data-recove … 10523.html has a solution... but it involves reformatting

Also, http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=33916.

Last edited by whiteychs (2009-08-06 06:17:45)

xelados · 2009-08-06 06:20:32

Yes, that's the exact error I got. Unfortunately, the NC10 doesn't have an optical drive and I don't own a USB optical drive. Ironically, that's the type of media the recovery stuff is on. I could arguably 'dd' it to an SD card through my USB SD reader on my desktop... but I dunno if that would work out so well. Is there any way I can get through this without needing to get rid of my existing Windows partition? I have discs with Samsung's software, but I've already gone through the trouble of installing all the important Windows apps I want.

EDIT: Could I perhaps use a partitioning app here on the Windows side to rectify the partition issue?

Last edited by xelados (2009-08-06 06:23:10)

whiteychs · 2009-08-06 06:27:35

I don't know your situation exactly, but if you have a computer with an optical drive avaliable, you could share it over a network and accesses it that way...

As a fellow netbook owner (Lenovo S10 that I'm posting this on), I feel your pain.

kriz · 2009-08-06 12:47:51

u can try to install grub4dos as a bootloader -> https://gna.org/projects/grub4dos/
its even possible to install it from windows

xelados · 2009-08-11 18:39:31

I decided to just take the plunge and go with straight-up Arch on this puppy. I set aside enough space for Windows, and the only thing I'll have to worry about is reinstalling GRUB once Windows is installed. The only mystery here is how to get Windows installed! lol

whiteychs: You mentioned sharing an optical drive over the network... how is that done? I'm intrigued.

EDIT: I tried this guide to try and make a bootable USB install media for Windows, but it didn't work out so well, complaining about a corrupt hal.dll and missing files. What would I need to share my optical drive over the network?

Last edited by xelados (2009-08-14 01:44:41)

xelados · 2009-08-16 00:14:20

I did a little research, and it seems that it's possible to share any dir I want to with NFS. I've set up NFS on my desktop and laptop, but when I try to mount my share (from the client), it gives me an error:

mount.nfs: system mount call failed

(For reference, the laptop is always 192.168.1.109 and the desktop is 192.168.1.101)

I've made sure the daemons were started in the correct order, both on the server and the client... I have no clue what the problem is. I can ping the server from the client...

My /etc/exports on the server is

/srv/xelados 192.168.1.109(rw,sync)

Server's /etc/conf.d/nfs-server.conf:

# Parameters to be passed to nfs-server init script.
#
STATD_OPTS="--no-notify"

# Options to pass to rpc.nfsd.
# See rpc.nfsd(8) for more details.
NFSD_OPTS=

# Number of servers to start up; the default is 8 servers.
NFSD_COUNT=

# Where to mount nfsd filesystem; the default is "/proc/fs/nfsd".
PROCNFSD_MOUNTPOINT=

# Options used to mount nfsd filesystem; the default is "rw,nodev,noexec,nosuid".
PROCNFSD_MOUNTOPTS=

# Options for rpc.mountd.
# If you have a port-based firewall, you might want to set up
# a fixed port here using the --port option.
# See rpc.mountd(8) for more details.
MOUNTD_OPTS="--no-nfs-version 1 --no-nfs-version 2"

# Do you want to start the svcgssd daemon? It is only required for Kerberos
# exports. Valid alternatives are "yes" and "no"; the default is "no".
NEED_SVCGSSD=

# Options to pass to rpc.svcgssd.
# See rpc.svcgssd(8) for more details.
SVCGSSD_OPTS=

On the client side, all I've done is set NEED_STATD to "YES"

The client's /etc/fstab entry is

192.168.1.101:/srv/xelados    /mnt/mini-spork    nfs    rw,user    0    0

What can I do to get this share to work? Once I get a share going, I'll see what I can do to share the optical drive and let the laptop boot over the network.

I took apart the NC10 to check out its hard drive. Unfortunately, it uses mini-SATA and the only mini-SATA connection I have in my desktop is the very one used for my optical drive! The universe must have it in for me! Haha.

Last edited by xelados (2009-08-16 00:15:30)

hokasch · 2009-08-19 13:02:08

I tried this guide to try and make a bootable USB install media for Windows, but it didn't work out so well, complaining about a corrupt hal.dll and missing files.

This guide, and all similar ones I have seen so far, only works if Windows gets installed exclusively:

"From this point on it is just like any other windows XP installation delete/recreate the primary partition on your EEE pc and format it using NTFS. Make sure you delete ALL partitions and recreate a single partition or you will get the hal.dll error message."

You can resize your NTFS partition afterwards to make room for Linux, e.g. with PartedMagic, or see last paragraph here.
Another way would be to install Windows through PXE, but not sure if you will run into the same problem again.
So if your Arch install is still relatively fresh, your best bet would probaply be to wipe it (back it up if that's worth it), install windows, resize partition, reinstall Arch.

P.S.: For NFS, did you edit hosts.allow? Apart from that, I have no idea how this will gonna help you installing windows.

Last edited by hokasch (2009-08-19 13:09:02)

xelados · 2009-08-23 11:32:08

Yeah, I didn't actually delete all the partitions... Perhaps that's the issue. I'm not really sure. The directions I found were hazy at best. I could try it again, since the majority of my settings are stolen from the desktop anyway.

I found a way to share files between them with samba. It works out pretty well. Quick question; could I conceivably make a .img file of my current Arch install and expect it to work when dd'd back to a partition? Just to save configuration time, for the most part.

R00KIE · 2009-08-23 13:54:43

Well, even before you started to think about playing around with should have done a backup with dd, this means doing a backup of the mbr and any boot and recovery partition (and even maybe a resized windows boot partition).

If you use dd then you will/would copy sector by sector, dd doesn't care about what it is copying so no worries there, just make sure you allow it to copy a bit more than the space that is actually used (just to be safe), example: if the 3 partitions (after resizing sda3) were using 10GB then you should allow dd to copy the first 11GB, 1GB may seem a bit of overkill but at least you don't need to do some tricky math and be sector accurate

After that I would wipe all the partition and start from scratch (which I did with my current notebook ).

About the error you get, cfdisk complains because it does things properly. I don't want to get into many details because things can get tricky but the short story is that partitions should start and end on cylinder boundaries, if that doesn't happen things will get messy as you have discovered and programs that do things properly will not touch your disk so they don't do nasty things.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-08-06 00:18:45

[UPDATED] Getting Windows and Linux to coexist on my Samsung NC10

#2 2009-08-06 06:12:23

Re: [UPDATED] Getting Windows and Linux to coexist on my Samsung NC10

#3 2009-08-06 06:20:32

Re: [UPDATED] Getting Windows and Linux to coexist on my Samsung NC10

#4 2009-08-06 06:27:35

Re: [UPDATED] Getting Windows and Linux to coexist on my Samsung NC10

#5 2009-08-06 12:47:51

Re: [UPDATED] Getting Windows and Linux to coexist on my Samsung NC10

#6 2009-08-11 18:39:31

Re: [UPDATED] Getting Windows and Linux to coexist on my Samsung NC10

#7 2009-08-16 00:14:20

Re: [UPDATED] Getting Windows and Linux to coexist on my Samsung NC10

#8 2009-08-19 13:02:08

Re: [UPDATED] Getting Windows and Linux to coexist on my Samsung NC10

#9 2009-08-23 11:32:08

Re: [UPDATED] Getting Windows and Linux to coexist on my Samsung NC10

#10 2009-08-23 13:54:43

Re: [UPDATED] Getting Windows and Linux to coexist on my Samsung NC10

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