Help with Multi-Boot System

Hello everyone

I am a new user here but not totally new to BeOS and Haiku, I had BeOS 4.5 running on a Dual P3 back in the day, and I recently came across a system that was very similar, blah blah . . . Snip!

OK to get to the point I have the system setup to multi-boot using Grub, I currently have Win Xp, in the First Partition, a small Grub chainload partition, and an extended partition for the Ubuntu and Haiku.

I can boot the Ubuntu and the XP with no problems, but when I try to boot the Haiku CDrom so that I can install it in the partition that I have set aside for it, I can never get the CD to load all the way. Haiku Boot CD gets 4 icons in and then jumps out into debug mode with an error of ‘did not find any boot partitions’

I know the Haiku CD works, because I have installed, Haiku before but the only way I could get it to work was to have a Hard Drive that had nothing on it.

So any help will be great.

c0op3r

Haiku Boot CD gets 4 icons in and then jumps out into debug mode with an error of ‘did not find any boot partitions’

This looks like a bios or ata driver problem. Might want to try a nightly build and see if it will boot from the cdrom.

You need to install Haiku in a primary partition. You can’t boot an extended partition (except Grub/Linux)

regards

You need to install Haiku in a primary partition. You can’t boot an extended partition (except Grub/Linux)

That’s interesting as I am currently booted on an extended partition using Haiku’s bootmanager. To boot from a second hard disk, one needs a different bootmanager as the haiku one will only show partitions on one hard disk.

Hi c0op3r.

I see you use BeOS 4.x, maybe interest you this topic:

http://haikuware.com/forum/beoszetahaiku/1859-anyone-running-beos-r4

[quote=bbjimy]

That’s interesting as I am currently booted on an extended partition using Haiku’s bootmanager. To boot from a second hard disk, one needs a different bootmanager as the haiku one will only show partitions on one hard disk.[/quote]

Exactly.

[quote=bbjimmy] Haiku Boot CD gets 4 icons in and then jumps out into debug mode with an error of ‘did not find any boot partitions’

This looks like a bios or ata driver problem. Might want to try a nightly build and see if it will boot from the cdrom.[/quote]

Could be what bbjimmy says or something else. This seems to be a hard bug to debug.

http://dev.haiku-os.org/search?q="did+not+find+any+boot+partitions"&noquickjump=1&milestone=on&ticket=on&changeset=on&wiki=on

Looking at some of the tickets above may help you out.

If the crash happens in main2 (or another general thread) then difficult to debug.

On-screen debug + your hardware list (lspci -nn in Linux) would help somewhat. Syslog or serial debug would help even more. Go into safe-mode for these.

http://dev.haiku-os.org/wiki/ReportingBugs#Syslog

You should also create a ticket with whatever information you can get from what I listed above.
http://dev.haiku-os.org

The easiest way to multi-boot Windows, Linux and Haiku would be to first install GRUB to your Linux partition and not to the MBR, then install bootman by typing “bootman” in the terminal application in Haiku. When you choose the “Ubuntu” (or whatever you decide to name it) option in bootman, it will take you to GRUB, which is only needed to boot Linux.

I am having some trouble multibooting Windows, Linux, and Haiku. Bootman can boot to Windows and Haiku, but not Linux. GRUB2 doesn’t seem to detect Haiku when running update-grub, either.

To run haiku beside other systems you need to be on the same harddisk as the other systems. Create a partion (does not be primaty) and install here is the best way. I need to change the hdd with haiku to the first one, before i can run haiku, in bios.

http://besly.de/index.php/en/installation/how-to-install-haiku-on-a-pc

I had already made a Haiku partition on the same disk as other partitions. Problem is:

Forgot to mention that this is on a disk using an Intel/MS-DOS partition table and that attempting to install GRUB2 into the Linux partition results in this:

grub-install: warning: File system `ext2' doesn't support embedding.
grub-install: warning: Embedding is not possible.  GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using blocklists.  However, blocklists are UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged..
grub-install: error: will not proceed with blocklists

The Linux partition actually uses ext4.

TL;DR: Haiku’s Bootman can’t see Linux, while Linux’s GRUB2 cannot see Haiku either.

Edit: Turns out that creating a manual GRUB2 entry is required for Haiku, as per this guide. Still sucks that neither GRUB2 nor Bootman can see each other automatically, though.

This is a bug in os-prober package https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=590897

I avoid these system/boot configuration issues by using an independent boot manager, such as System Commander, and so on. I prefer using XOSL due to its reliability. I have used System Commander – that’s a good one too. One of my retro-PCs is set up with four OS’s-- MS DOS6.22 & Win 3.11, Windows 98 SE, Zeta OS 1.51, and Haiku B2, which XOSL manages the boot loading.

I would suggest using a independent system/boot manager.

Maybe a new topic would have been better than ressurecting a 9 year old one, to save some confusion. Anyway…

Yes, Linux decided to not do things like other systems. It’s not possible to boot the Linux kernel directly, you have to go through GRUB (just as for Haiku you need to go through haiku_loader which provides our boot menu, etc). But Linux does not allow GRUB to live inside the ext2 filesystem. So they install it as the main bootloader for the whole system.

So, in this situation, you really need to boot everything from Grub. I think we have instructions in the user guide on how to manually configure grub to add an entry for Haiku to it.

Other bootloaders like XOSL wouldn’t help, as they also need to go through GRUB to boot Linux.

If you plan to use GRUB2 as a system bootloader (installed to MBR), then you need to create /etc/grub.d/40_custom file with the following content:

#!/bin/sh
exec tail -n +3 $0

menuentry "Haiku on partition HDD 1, partition 3" {
     insmod part_msdos
     insmod chain
     chainloader (hd1,3)+1 # adjust values for (hd1,3) to disk number and partition number
}

Only after that, update-grub will add Haiku to boot menu. If the file /etc/grub.d/40_custom already exists, just append menuentry item to it. In this configuration you don’t need Haiku’s Bootman.

If you plan to use Bootman as system bootloader, then it only can detect Linux bootloader, not Linux kernel. In this case you need to install GRUB2 to Linux partition (opposite to whole disk), that is, to /dev/sda3 (3 is a partiton number) rather than to /dev/sda.

I am complete confident GRUB2 is capable of being able to install to ext4 partition, as well as ext3, etx2 and almost any other filesystem from Linux ecosystem. (And I am sure GRUB2 can distinguish ext4 from ext2). So your problem seems to me as corrupted partition or wrong path to install GRUB2. But just in case, there is also GRUB Legacy, LILO, ISOLINUX bootloaders which can be used instead.