on install the root partition of linux doesn't get the active flag on

[jetdrone]

I've a very picky laptop from sony with a pickier bios Right now my partition scheme is the following:

hda1 recovery partition
hda2 windows xp (active)
hda3 linux /
hda4 swap

When i install kubuntu 9.10 i say that i want to have grub installed not on the mbr but on hda3, and it installs but the hda3 partition is not set as active so on reboot i fall back to windows

If i set grub to install on hda2 it starts ok but i cannot boot windows anymore

If i set hda1 i can only trigger grub if i press the recovery button at bios startup

Oddly enough if i say mbr, it was no effect, as if the bios or whatever forced the boot from the active partition instead of the mbr

I wished that the installar would make a partition active if one picks grub to install it there, in my case i'd like to see hda3 active on install.

This was the default behaviour on OpenSolaris but Kubuntu seems to have a different approach, how can i say to make the partition active on install? Any tricks?

[dibl]

Re: on install the root partition of linux doesn't get the active flag on

Download a Parted Magic Live CD ISO and make yourself a Live CD. Use it for partitioning, including setting that "boot" flag, and it has all kinds of useful utilities, like a GUI front end to smartmon for testing hard drives, and CPU benchmarking tools.

http://partedmagic.com/download.html

[wizard10000]

Re: on install the root partition of linux doesn't get the active flag on

You can't have more than one active partition on a hard drive and you're not supposed to have more than one in any PC no matter how many hard drives it has

I don't do dual boot machines any more but I personally prefer to install grub on the Linux partition instead of the MBR and using a Windows bootloader to call grub since that way you can reinstall either OS without trashing the other one.

There are many readmes on using a Windows bootloader to call Linux. Doesn't work for Vista or later but there's a cool Windows utility called bootpart that'll do all the hard work for you.

http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm

Again, this only works with XP and earlier - for Vista and later you need something like EasyBCD.

http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1

[jetdrone]

Re: on install the root partition of linux doesn't get the active flag on

I know i can only have one active partition and that was what i said on my post. All i wanted was that the installer would activate the partition where grug is installed. This was more of a bug report, but i am not sure if this is a feature or really a bug.

[wizard10000]

Re: on install the root partition of linux doesn't get the active flag on

I know i can only have one active partition and that was what i said on my post. All i wanted was that the installer would activate the partition where grug is installed. This was more of a bug report, but i am not sure if this is a feature or really a bug.

IMO it's by design. Most people who don't install grub on the mbr have a reason for not doing so and can mark their own partitions active