Mageia forum

I have three hard disks, HD0 and HD1 contain various eCS (OS/2) volumes and HD2 has Mageia 3 installed. The Mageia installer sees HD2 (plugged into 3rd SATA controller) as sdb. I installed Mageia 3 onto sdb, putting GRUB onto /dev/sdb1/. The installer then mentioned that I had put GRUB on a partition because I probably was using another bootloader, and it asked which drive I was booting from. I tried first sda and then sdb. I have Air-Boot (an MBR bootloader) on the first hard drive, HD0, sda. I then tried booting from Air-Boot which saw three Linux volumes. Each time I was unable to boot. Using the entry for sdb1 resulted in an error saying that a Grub file was missing from HD0,0.

I am very new to Linux and know very little of console commands. Is there a known problem with this type of setup using Air-Boot? When installing Mageia, where should I put Grub and from which drive should I say I am booting?

Also, to change the bootloader position, instead of reinstalling, I use the installation DVD to "update Mageia 3," but I do not actually choose any updates. I just move the bootloader. Is this a proper use of the installation DVD?

Martin Rosenfeld
Costa Mesa, California, USA

Welcome to the forum.

I've not used Air-Boot but I would try putting the bootloader on the master boot record of /dev/sdb not a partition and yes using the Install DVD to do an Upgrade Install is an easy way to do this.

Ken,

I am new to Linux and I might be misunderstanding you because of terminology. When you say to put the master boot record on MBR you mean to tell the installer to use the MBR of sdb, or do you mean to put Air-Boot on MBR of sdb? In Linux lingo, how do you say "MBR of sdb"?

Martin Rosenfeld

The Mageia bootloader should go on /dev/sdb not a partition.
Air-Boot should then be able to boot it as if it was the only HD on the system.
Of course as I said I haven't used Air-Boot but it should work.

I have found the root of my problem in not being able to install Mageia 3 or 4beta1 or beta2 and have it boot via Air-Boot. I had the hard drives plugged into the MB in a different sequence than I had them listed in the BIOS for booting order.

Martin Rosenfeld

Please mark the thread accordingly by editing the topic of the first post and prefix it by [SOLVED], thanks