[LAU] [ot] a little help with bootloaders...

[Peder Hedlund]

Quoting Julien Claassen <julien at c-lab.de>:

> Hello!
>    I'm having a bit of a worry over an istallation: I have a computer with a
> windows on the first partition, unfortuintely it must remain there. Then on
> the space behind it I want to install my Linux. How should I go about
> bootloaders?
>    I could install grub in the MBR right up front, but then I should  
>  take care
> of win's bootloader, in any case win is known to simply overwrite another
> bootloader, if it feels like updating. Wouldn't really want to risk it. Is
> there a way to put grub at the start of the Linux partition and make it known
> to win, tat there's another bootloader sitting there, waiting to be started?
>    Kindest regards and THANKS!
>                Julien
>
> --------
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Normally there's no problem in installing linux bootloader in MBR  
assuming you have installed windows first; you will get one entry in  
the boot menu to boot windows and one to boot linux.

The only risk of windows overwriting it is if you reinstall it,  
WindowsUpdate doesn't touch MBR.
If you really want to use windows MBR here's an example on how to add  
a linux entry to boot.ini :  
http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux/grub-w2k-HOWTO.html
Note that in this case, installing GRUB on a partition, that partition  
can't be formatted in XFS.