Multiboot with GRUB Mini-HOWTO
 Ivan Kanis, [email protected]
 v1.0, 2001-01-15

 This document describes how to install Windows 98, Windows 2000, DOS
 and Linux using GRUB.

 1.  Why ?

 I wanted to be able to boot all operating systems without having to go
 through multiple menus. I know I can install NT on top of win9x on top
 of DOS. I would have to go through the NT menu then the win9x menu in
 order to boot DOS. I wanted to be able to boot all these operating
 systems at once.


 This turned out to be quite a challenge. The problem with Microsoft
 operating system is that they all want to boot from the primary
 partition. This is where GRUB comes in. It can hide primary
 partitions. You can use up to 3 partitions to install Microsoft
 operating systems. GRUB will hide the other 2 partitions so that the
 operating systems will not see it. This means you will need another
 partition to share data between DOS, Win9x and Windows 2000. The 4th
 partition is used for the extended partition.


 I also wanted a menu system and GRUB provides a nice one.


 Another nice feature of GRUB is that it supports reiserfs so I don't
 need to keep my /boot file in a separate ext2 partition.


 2.  Installation procedure

 2.1.  Preparing boot floppies

 You will need 3 floppy disks. Make the first floppy a DOS bootable
 disk. Copy fdisk.exe and sys.exe onto this floppy disk.



      FORMAT /S A:
      COPY FDISK.EXE A:
      COPY SYS.EXE A:



 Use your second floppy disk to make a Windows 98 emergency disk. You
 will use the third floppy for GRUB shortly.


 2.2.  Installing linux

 Install your favorite distribution of linux. You will need to use
 fdisk to partition your hard disk. Calculate ahead of time how much
 disk space each of your operating systems will take.


 Here is how I partitioned my hard disk:



    Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
 /dev/hda1             1         6     48163+  16  Hidden FAT16
 /dev/hda2             7        19    104422+  16  Hidden FAT16
 /dev/hda3            20       593   4610655   1b  Hidden Win95 FAT32
 /dev/hda4           594      3737  25254180    5  Extended
 /dev/hda5           594       848   2048256    6  FAT16
 /dev/hda6           849      2123  10241406    7  HPFS/NTFS
 /dev/hda7          2124      2140    136521   82  Linux swap
 /dev/hda8          2141      2523   3076416   83  Linux



 My first partition is for booting Windows 2000. 10MG should be plenty
 to do that. This partition will only contains the file necessary to
 boot NT such as boot.ini, ntldr, ntdetect.com, etc... NT will reside
 in partition 6 in my example. This partition is Hidden FAT16.


 The second partition is for DOS. I deemed 100M sufficient. This is
 FAT16 too


 The third partition is for Win9x. I gave it 5G and made it FAT32 for
 performance.


 Next create the extended partition for the remaining of your hard
 disk. This shows up as partition 4 on fdisk.


 Create a 2GB partition. This partitions is used to share data between
 all operating systems. Make sure that all the sum of all above
 partitions are less than 8GB. This is a DOS limitation.


 Next create your Windows 2000 partition. I gave it 10G since this
 breed of windows is a bloated pig. I made it a HPFS/NTFS partition for
 speed.


 Next add your swap partition and linux partition. Make sure you do not
 have a separate partition for /boot. Things look better in GRUB if you
 keep /boot in the root partition.


 After you have installed linux go ahead and format the fat16
 partitions:


      mkdosfs /dev/hda1
      mkdosfs /dev/hda2
      mkdosfs /dev/hda6



 2.3.  Installing GRUB

 Make sure you have the latest version of GRUB. I am using version
 0.5.96.1. The version that came with my distribution was out of date
 and gave me a lot of grief. You can download the latest version at
 http://www.fsf.org.

 Now you'll want to install GRUB on the floppy disk. You don't want to
 install it on the hard disk yet because Windows 2000 will overwrite
 it.



      grub-install '(fd0)'



 Create the following menu.lst for GRUB. This file lives in /boot/grub.



 #
 # Sample boot menu configuration file
 #

 # Boot automatically after a minute.
 timeout 60

 # By default, boot the second entry.
 default 1

 # Fallback to the first entry.
 fallback 0

 title Windows 2000
 unhide (hd0,0)
 hide (hd0,1)
 hide (hd0,2)
 rootnoverify (hd0,0)
 chainloader +1
 makeactive

 # For booting Linux
 title  Linux
 root (hd0,7)
 kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.2.17 root=/dev/hda8 video=matrox:vesa:261

 title Windows 98
 hide (hd0,0)
 hide (hd0,1)
 unhide (hd0,2)
 rootnoverify (hd0,2)
 chainloader +1
 makeactive

 title DOS 6.22
 hide (hd0,0)
 unhide (hd0,1)
 hide (hd0,2)
 rootnoverify (hd0,1)
 chainloader +1
 makeactive

 # For booting Linux
 title  Linux (single user)
 root (hd0,7)
 kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.2.17 root=/dev/hda8 video=matrox:vesa:261 single

 title Partition 2 (floppy)
 hide (hd0,0)
 unhide (hd0,1)
 hide (hd0,2)
 chainloader (fd0)+1

 title Partition 3 (floppy)
 hide (hd0,0)
 hide (hd0,1)
 unhide (hd0,2)
 chainloader (fd0)+1



 Check that you can boot linux with the floppy disk. If you are having
 trouble you can drop in GRUB's command line and figure out what is
 going on. GRUB is very well documented, if you have any trouble please
 take a look at the documentation.


 2.4.  Installing windows 2000:

 I had to initialize the first partition before installing windows
 2000. Insert the DOS startup disk and reboot your computer. Once you
 get to the DOS prompt do the followings:



      FDISK /MBR
      SYS C:



 Now you can go ahead and install windows 2000. At some point Windows
 2000 will prompt you for the partition on which you want to install.
 The partition you created with fdisk should show up as damaged or
 unformatted partition. Go ahead and select it.


 To hide the Windows 2000 menu edit a file called boot.ini that should
 be in the C: drive. Change the timeout value from 30 to 0.



      [boot loader]
      timeout=0
      default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT
      [operating systems]
      ...



 2.5.  Installing DOS.

 Insert the GRUB disk. When you see the menu insert the DOS boot disk.
 Select partition 2 (floppy) from the menu.Hit enter. This will boot
 the floppy disk and hide partition 1 and 3.


 Run FDISK and check that the C: drive is partition 2. Next install
 DOS:



      SYS C:



 2.6.  Installing Windows 98

 Insert the GRUB disk. When you see the menu insert the Windows 98
 Emergency disk. Select partition 3 (floppy) from the menu.Hit enter.
 This will boot the floppy disk and hide partition 1 and 2.



 Run FDISK and check that the C: drive is partition 3. Next install
 Windows 98:



      SYS C:



 2.7.  The final touch

 Test that everything is working from GRUB:


 You should be able to boot from all 4 operating systems from the GRUB
 floppy disk.


 If everything looks right you can go ahead and install GRUB on your
 hard disk. From linux type:



      grub-install /dev/hda



 You should now be able to boot all 4 operating systems from the GRUB
 menu. Enjoy!


 3.  References

 I have found these links useful while setting up my system.

 �  GNU GRUB <http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/grub.html>

 �  The Linux-DOS-Win95-OS2 mini-HOWTO
    <http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/Linux+DOS+Win95+OS2.html>

 4.  Feedback

 I would like to hear about your experience (good or bad) with this
 document. If you have some instructions for adding another OS please
 send them to me so that I can add them.

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