Dual boot Mageia with Arch Linux.

[doktor5000]

Hi, i am a newbie of Linux.
I have installed Arch Linux and Windows 7 on my laptop

The disk partition is like:

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sda1 system reserved.
sda2 Windows C:/
sda3 Windows D:/
sda4->Extended partition
   sda5 /var
   sda6 /boot
   sda7 /
   sda8 /home
   sda9 linux-swap

Yesterday, I removed the Windows 7, format sda1, sda2, sda3 and merge them to be an unallocated disk.

Than boot the machine by using mageia USB.
I just separate the unallocated disk to /, /home, /swap. than try install mageia 5 on it.
But after installation finish, mageia 5 installer would give me a useless GRUB bootloader, and i can find a choice to stop this action.

The installation result is weird too, now the disk partition is:

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sda1  /boot
sda4-> Extened partition
   sda3  linux-swap-> mageia swap??
   unallocated 1.88MB ? what is this?
   sda10 /mageia?
   unallocated 1.41MB ? what is this?
   sda5 /var
   sda6 /boot
   sda7 /
   sda8 /home
   sda9 linux-swap

what are those unallocated space??

However, i boot into Arch Linux, update the GRUB, than reboot.
Error occur, and Arch Linux GRUB cannot recognize mageia 5 ???

So how can i dual boot mageia 5 with Arch Linux on a disk??
Anyway? Does mageia 5 have a cli installer version??

[doktor5000]

Please next time use code tags as explained in ftp://ftp5.gwdg.de/pub/linux/mandriva/m ... e_tags.ogv

The unallocated space is for alignment, mostly for 4K drives. Common denominator is that for all of those, if partitions are alined at boundaries of 2MB, then they're properly aligned.

Can you please show the output as root of

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fdisk -l
lsblk -f

You can select the bootloader config during this step: http://doc.mageia.org/installer/5/en/co ... oader.html

And yes, there's basically an ncurses installer, not necessarily a CLI version but comes closest to a text-based installation.
See e.g. https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Installation ... k_Installs and https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_Netin ... _(Boot.iso)

For the question about Arch's grub not loading Mageia, can you please show the grub configuration added for Mageia under Arch?
Maybe gohlip has an idea how to fix this?

[gohlip]

You deleted all your primary partitions (sda1, sda2 and sda3) without creating new primary partitions before you attempted to install Mageia.
A msdos disk must have at least one primary partition so Mageia installer created one (/boot) for you and put the rest in the extended partition.
And doktor5000 is correct about the unallocated spaces. Not really something to worry about, but if prepared using gparted first, then it won't happen.
Preferably, we should prepare our partitions first before installation, and recommend using gparted for this.

A few things first.
o Your mbr is probably not in good shape. (you've deleted all primary partitions).
Go boot into Arch, do a 'grub-install' and grub-update.

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sudo grub-install /dev/sda
sudo update-grub


Now check if Mageia entry is there?

o If Mageia entry is there, watch out if it contains 'nokmsboot' in the linux line.
If not there, put in manually first,
If unsure, compare the grub.cfg or menu.lst (at /boot/grub/menu.lst or /boot/grub2/grub.cfg) from Mageia OS with the Arch grub Mageia entry.


o If Mageia entry is still not there, copy the grub entry from Mageia /boot/grub2/grub.cfg into Arch /boot/grub/grub.cfg and see if this boots.
If Mageia is menu.lst and not grub.cfg, modify parameters to grub 2 syntax.
If unsure, print out for us the Mageia menus.lst (first entry is fine) and the Arch grub.cfg (one entry is fine).

o Finally, probably best. Reinstall Mageia, but prepare partitions beforehand. Also still need to do the grub-install at Arch (your mbr is not good).
This time leave the primary partition alone (/boot - if it not too big - haven't seen the fdisk -l yet) without using it.
And select grub 2 as bootloader when installing (you can select to put it in 'own partition' if you want - so Arch is default boot).

Good luck.

ps: If Mageia is default boot, it will not boot Arch because Arch modifies its grub (not good) due to its implementation of intel-ucode.
But if you choose this, come back here and we fix how to boot Arch from Mageia grub (grub 2 please - grub-legacy may have problem doing this - still possible but without intel-ucode).