WolfW

I have two SATA (non-raid)HD's that I would like to setup to dual boot Fedora Core 6 and XP Pro. My partition layout is as follows Disk 1 FAT32 54.9MB Primary Holds Boot Magic bootloader Disk 1 NTFS 41.8GB Primary Holds XP Pro Disk 1 Unallocated Remainder (114GB) Disk 2 Unallocated 109.8MB Could this be used for the /boot part? Disk 2 Extended 61.47GB Primary Disk 2 NTFS 30.00GB Logical Disk 2 NTFS 20.00GB Logical Disk 2 NTFS 11.47GB Logical Disk 2 Unallocated Remainder (94GB) I would like to use Boot Magic to select XP or Linux NOT Grub. But I need GRUB to Boot Linux. Using the default setup except for the above about GRUB. Can I install GRUB on the first sector of the boot partition of Disk2? Will this work? DeviceMapper really has me confused. It combines both drives into a large single virtual drive. I can see the vfat and NTFS partitions for BootMagic and XP Pro clearly, but I can't see the logical drives in the extended partition on Disk 2 at all, simply because only one drive is presented to me after devicemapper presents its view. My question is: How can I ensure that GRUB installs on Disk 2 when I can't "see" Disk 2 at all?

You're right. I disabled both IDE controllers (I have two SATA Drives not arrayed)When I do so the RTL ethernet controller does NOT show a RAID message. Both SATA drives are listed under IDE on the main BIOS page as the 3rd master and 4th master drives. But I need to enable IDE to keep my DVD RW Drive accessible so now what? I only have it enabled on the primary controller. The secondary ide IS disabled. Maybe I should move it to the secondary controller? I don't think it will make any difference. Again, what is the connection between an onboard ethernet controller and the storage system?

Absolutely correct about the BIOS setting being ignored. It's linked to the RTL8169 ethernet. This board has two GB ethernets one an NVidia and the RTL8169. Strangely when I enable the RTL ethernet I get a POST message NVIDIA RAID ROM BIOS vX.XX on startup then a "detecting arrays" message appears. This is despite the fact I have RAID DISABLED in the BIOS and there is no RAID array configured. If I disable the RTL I receive no such message. I haven't the foggiest idea what the ethernet controller has to do with the RAID, but there is definitely a connection. I have no doubt that this ethernet controller (the RTL 8169) is what is fooling devicemapper into thinking I have a RAID array enabled. That is what caused my whole problem in the first place. So I went and disabled the RTL, re-booted and tried to re-install Fedora. Sure enough at the Disk Druid screen I could see both drives SDA and SDB. I'm sure if I would have gone further Grub and Fedora would have booted normally bootstrapping off Boot Magic. So there are two options to make Fedora work with this board on installation. Use the nodmraid option or disable the RTL 8169. I opted for the first as at least I have both ethernets working. Now if I could just figure out what a network controller has to do with the Hard Drives.

Thought I might add this. I'm writing this from Fedora Core 6. The trick was to install using the nodmraid option. With that enabled I could now see both SDA and SDB and all partitions in them. It was then a simple matter of loading GRUB to the boot partition of SDB instead of the MBR. After going back and reviewing danleff's answer I retried installing Core 6. This time I got the following error message "Invalid partition table on /dev/mapper/nvidia_jchbhada --wrong signature ccc6. My mobo is an MSINeo2Platinum. The BIOS has RAID disabled. The trouble was not that I didn't know how to work with Boot Magic chainloading GRUB which in turn loads Fedora, it was with devicemapper not allowing to see my two SATA HD's. Instead it presented me with ONE HD by combining both at the Disk Druid screen. Thus I had no choice but to install GRUB on SDA (it did not give an option to install to SDB) as to devicemapper no SDB existed. Naturally since I now had GRUB and BootMagic both acting as Boot Loaders on the same MBR everything froze on bootup. I wish the answer were as simple as danleff implied but until I applied nodmraid I couldn't see my 2 HD's. I hope this clears up any confusion. As I posted previously the problem was not the bootloaders but devicemapper.

I have already done this numerous times for earlier releases of Fedora w/o the default LVM setup. I can't see HDB as DeviceMapper only shows me a single "virtual" drive combining both HD's into one. I have a networked FULL Backup of Disk 1 and it's a good thing I did because although I selected first sector of the boot Partition for GRUB (not MBR) upon re-boot all I saw were the words GRUB at DOS screen and the system hung there. Had to restore the entire drive from my backup. How can I ensure GRUB goes on Disk 2 (HDB) when I can't see Disk 2 with DeviceMapper?