Thinkpads Forum

Hi, there,
I just join this forum. Nice to find a place of Thinkpad users.
I wrote a short introduction about how to install windows, linux while ensuring that AccessIBM is still working.
http://ce.et.tudelft.nl/~zhijiangchang/ ... tml#useful

This is just a primitive version.
PLS feel free to give your advices.

I have not tried this, but shouldn't installing grub on the first sector of your Linux partition instead of the MBR leave the AccessIBM functionality intact?

o, you are right!
Sorry I forgt to mention DONOT install the lilo/grub onto the MBR.
I will add it to my article.
Actually, I think most people know this. right?

No, what I was trying to say was, isn't doing just that (not messing with the original MBR) enough to maintain AccessIBM functionality intact?

O, I c. You got this old question. Well, the answer is: NO.
I try to do that with grub/lilo many times when leaving the MBR intact. It doesn't work. It will give you a "missing operating system" error. Many people write about this. This is why you must use windows booter instead of the grub/lilo. Well, if what you say is true, there won't be so many trouble.

I write to IBM support about this question. They said "you will damage the AccessIBM when using grub/lilo".... This is what "technical support" means.

Actually, dragonlittle, the answer to that is yes and no,

For some reason, a lot of distros have trouble installing the bootloader to the linux partition. I'm still trying to find an answer as to why, but that's neither here nor there. I posted an earlier thread regarding this exact problem, and I found out on someone's blog that they were able to install the bootloader on the linux boot partition without issues when installing SUSE.

I had assumed that this would be the case for any distro, and installed Slackware on my t42p, expecting lilo to get things right. Wrong, I came up with the common missing operating system error reported quite a lot.

After trying to get things right in Slackware for a while, I downloaded the openSUSE installer, ran it, went into the expert mode for the bootloader, and configured it to install to the boot sector of the linux boot partition, and everything worked fine with it. More than that, I could then completely hose the SUSE installation and install Slackware with LILO installed to the boot partition, and it ran fine as well.

I'm not sure why this problem exists, or how exactly SUSE manages to get things right where other distros fail, but from what I have gathered thus far, I think it has something to do with yast using parted to do the partitioning of the system on the backend rather than fdisk or cfdisk. That's about all I know so far, but it might be good to add a note to your tutorial so that people know that there is another way to have a fully functional install that keep both linux and windows separate.

I guess that another thing to try that I hadn't thought to do (and probably won't now that I've gotten a working system) was to do the partitioning first, set the partition you want to run the bootloader from to active, and then reboot before doing the install. I know that people had to do this before since the new partition layout wouldn't go into effect on a running device until after the system reboots. Again, I'm not sure if that's a solution or not, but it might be worth trying.

I found this article VERY interesting. Scroll down to the bottom for actual instructions.
http://sharadware.com/2005/07/11/suse-l ... nkpad-t43/
Looks very straight forward. As the writer commented, almost feels
like 'cheating'.

IBM has also finally commented on how to get the access ibm partition to be accessed through GRUB, as you can see in the replies to the article. (Though I don't think IBM's method would allow the partition to be accessed through the access ibm button at startup).

I'm trying to figure out if its worth it to keep the partition, as I do have all the restore CD's anyway, and using the access ibm restore partition would nuke my linux install

Yeah, that article was exactly what I used to get my installation working. Definitely a good read.

As far as keeping the extra partition, if you're worrying about hosing your linux installation hosing your linux install, Rescue and Recovery has a feature that will only touch the C: partition on a factory reinstall. I tried it just after my linux install just to be sure. You just have to make sure that you've got at least one other primary partition. Something with the extended partitions messes up the restore process.

Have a T21 thinkpad with win2k. Installed RH80 Linux for dual boot. GRUB trashed the F11 access to restore partition of HD. After much googling and tinkering, i now can access the win2k restore partition.

This thinkpad came with no restore CD, and none are available. It has no floppy drive, so boot from floppy is not possible. The restore partition of the hard drive would be the only way to reinstall win2k.

For the dual boot install, i first booted to the RH80 install CD, and used linux fdisk to adjust the partitions. Leaving the restore partition untouched, I deleted the win2k partition and created three partitions below the restore partition for win2k, linux, and linux swap. The partition table looked like

Disk /dev/hda: 240 heads, 63 sectors, 3876 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 3000 22679968+ c Win95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda2 3744 3875 997920 1c Hidden Win95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda3 3001 3663 5012280 83 Linux
/dev/hda4 3664 3743 604800 82 Linux swap

Next i booted to the hard drive, selected F11 access to the restore partition, and installed win2k in the shortened first partition.

Next boot to RH80 install CD and install linux. (I tried Fedora 4, but could not get the display working well, so fell back on RH80).

Dual boot worked fine, accessing either windows or linux, but i was shocked and dismayed to find GRUB had obliterated F11-at-boot access to the win2k restore partition.

After reading here and other boards, I began tinkering with /boot/grub/grub.conf. The final working configuration I settled on was:

title Red Hat Linux (2.4.18-14)
parttype (hd0,2) 0x83
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-14 ro root=LABEL=/ hdc=ide-scsi
initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.18-14.img
title Win2k
hide (hd0,1)
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
title Win2k Restore
unhide (hd0,1)
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1

During this tinkering I several times trashed access to linux because the hide commands were changing the partition id type. I recovered by again using the linux install CD up to fdisk, and using fdisk to return the linux partition id to 83.

GRUB then let me select and get to the win2k partition, but i got error message 'cannot find command.com'. This was fixed by using linux fdisk to make the restore partition bootable (showing '*').

Now GRUB allowed boot to linux, win2k, and restore partition.

Also during this tinkering the linux and restore partitions began showing up as E: and F: drives in win2k. This was undesired because it allowed chance of inadvertently writing to one of these partitions.

I removed these from the win2k mount list by:
control panel > admin tasks > computer mgt > storage > disk mgt;
on detail (right) side of window, highlight E:, right click > change drive letter/path; remove.