On 5/2/05, Richard Fish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Maxim Vexler wrote: > > >I think that the claim of "Windows unable to boot from logical > >partition" is half true. > >As I have written, I did managed to install and boot windows from a > >logical partition but the windows boot loader (ntldr) had to be on a > >physical partition. > > > >That leades me to this idea : What do you think about creating a > >virtule drive, where there will be only 1 partition with the windows > >bootloader, those fooling ntldr to make it think it boots from hdx1. > >To create this I would repeat the steps I've made in the process of > >installation windows, but now insted of dumb copying from hda1 to hda5 > >(thank you for teaching me about the fact the these files are block > >mapped) I would dd the whole partition to the virtual drive. > > > >The whole question is : Is it possible to mount the virtule drive and > >point grub to boot from it? > > > >Thank you for helping. > > > > > > I'm not quite sure what you mean by a 'virtual drive'...please explain.
Quoting the Linux Kernel Documentation : "Loopback device support BLK_DEV_LOOP Saying Y here will allow you to use a regular file as a block device; you can then create a file system on that block device and mount it just as you would mount other block devices such as hard drive partitions, CD-ROM drives or floppy drives. The loop devices are block special device files with major number 7 and typically called /dev/loop0, /dev/loop1 etc. This is useful if you want to check an ISO 9660 file system before burning the CD, or if you want to use floppy images without first writing them to floppy. Furthermore, some Linux distributions avoid the need for a dedicated Linux partition by keeping their complete root file system inside a DOS FAT file using this loop device driver." > I don't know if windows does the block mapping in 'absolute' sectors > from the start of the disk, or in relative sectors from the start of the > partition. My guess is that it is in absolute sectors from the start of > the disk, and if so the 'dd' trick would only help you in copying a > partition from one disk to another at the same start ing sector. > OK, so maybe dd from sector 1 up to the end of the first partition ? > I still think your best bet is to install windows into a primary > partition, and let Linux be installed in the logical partitions (or LVM > volumes). > Yes, but reinstalling everything is lame. > -Richard > > -- > gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list > > -- Cheers, Maxim Vexler (hq4ever). Do u GNU ? -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
