Hey guys! I’ve run the livecd, and I must say that I am impressed! So I want to say that first.
Anyways, I have a problem. I have installed haiku on a multiboot system, so I’ve been trying to edit grub to boot haiku. I’ve tried a lot of things, but I cannot get GRUB to boot haiku.
Here’s a pic of all my partitioning information:
http://i359.photobucket.com/albums/oo33/robertneville777/haiku_partitioning.jpg
Anybody see what I’m doing wrong?
Thanks guys, and keep up the hard work!
Is there any particular reason for you to boot Haiku through GRUB? Otherwise, if you reinstall GRUB to your Linux system partition instead of the Master Boot Record, you can use Haiku’s own boot manager, bootman. It’s very straight-forward to set up, with a nice GUI. In Haiku, you can just type “bootman” in the terminal to start up the wizard.
Adding Haiku to grub2:
http://www.haikuzone.net/tips/installation/adding-haiku-grub2-ubuntu-9.10
I believe that will help you out.
What distro are you running? Looks interesting from the screenshot and I may want to try it out later on.
Sorry for the double post.
[quote=tonestone57]Adding Haiku to grub2:
http://www.haikuzone.net/tips/installation/adding-haiku-grub2-ubuntu-9.10
I believe that will help you out.
What distro are you running? Looks interesting from the screenshot and I may want to try it out later on.[/quote]
Thanks for the link Tone! But if I were to stick with primarily using GRUB, what numbers would I put for (hdX,Y)? That’s what’s goofing me up; I can see the Haiku menuentry in GRUB, but it’s not the right partition, because it boots into nothing.
Oh yeah, I’m on Ubuntu 10.4 Netbook Remix.
Denise, that sounds awesome!
I guess, first off, how would I reinstall GRUB to my Linux system partition rather than the Master Boot Record? I don’t expect a full blown explanation, but if you could send me a link, that would be perfect:)
If I went that route, would I just be using “Bootman” to boot into Linux and Haiku? Or would it boot into GRUB and then Linux? Either way, I’m cool with it, I just have to be able to boot into Linux one way or the other 
So this is what I’m thinking: reinstall GRUB to the Linux system partition, reinstall Haiku with the boot manager, and then when I reboot the computer, I should be seeing “Bootman” with my booting options, right?
I think it’s fairly simple to do in the terminal in the latest Ubuntu (Which I get you’re using). You need to just remove it, and I think you have to remove its settings as well. I’m not sure about the exact package name, if it’s grub or grub-pc, but anyhow, the command should look something like this:
sudo apt-get remove grub-pc --purge
When it’s completely removed, you install it again:
sudo apt-get install grub-pc
If it goes as expected, you should be presented with a number of partition names along the process. The one named /dev/sda (No number), will probably be selected by default since it represents the whole drive (Which means that it will be installed to the Master Boot Record). If you just choose the drive you installed Linux to instead though, it should install to that.
Well, the reason you need to keep GRUB around is because Linux for some reason needs the boot manager to tell it information like what kernel to boot. So indeed, when you choose the “Linux” option upon boot, GRUB will load. You might think that this will just give you extra bloat, and go with only GRUB, but for me it works better since I can just leave Linux’s and GRUB’s odd boot features alone to do what they do best: Linux.
Basically you got it right, although you don’t need to reinstall Haiku if it is already installed. Just start up the LiveCD again and run bootman from the terminal. Oh and, in case you missed it in the installation process, make sure the Haiku partition is bootable. See this option here called “Write Boot Sector”? http://www.haiku-os.org/files/slideshow/Haiku_Slideshow/04_install-cd_select-target-partition.png
If you missed it, just open it up again, choose your partition, and click it.
I don’t have any article now, but I hope my explanation works just as well. 
I use older grub version. For me, partitions start from 0 for the 1st partition. For instance, my windows is hd(0,0). Look at what is set for your ntfs (Windows?) partition in grub and work the partition numbers out from that.
Example for sda2 it would be either hd(0,1) or hd(0,2) - try both, or look at other grub entries to figure correct one.
You installed from CD? You should also boot LiveCD, mount your haiku partition on the drive and run makebootable from terminal. makebootable /mounted_volume_name. Just to be sure the partition has been made to boot.
[quote=Denise Purple]I think it’s fairly simple to do in the terminal in the latest Ubuntu (Which I get you’re using). You need to just remove it, and I think you have to remove its settings as well. I’m not sure about the exact package name, if it’s grub or grub-pc, but anyhow, the command should look something like this:
sudo apt-get remove grub-pc --purge
When it’s completely removed, you install it again:
sudo apt-get install grub-pc
If it goes as expected, you should be presented with a number of partition names along the process. The one named /dev/sda (No number), will probably be selected by default since it represents the whole drive (Which means that it will be installed to the Master Boot Record). If you just choose the drive you installed Linux to instead though, it should install to that.
Well, the reason you need to keep GRUB around is because Linux for some reason needs the boot manager to tell it information like what kernel to boot. So indeed, when you choose the “Linux” option upon boot, GRUB will load. You might think that this will just give you extra bloat, and go with only GRUB, but for me it works better since I can just leave Linux’s and GRUB’s odd boot features alone to do what they do best: Linux.
Basically you got it right, although you don’t need to reinstall Haiku if it is already installed. Just start up the LiveCD again and run bootman from the terminal. Oh and, in case you missed it in the installation process, make sure the Haiku partition is bootable. See this option here called “Write Boot Sector”? http://www.haiku-os.org/files/slideshow/Haiku_Slideshow/04_install-cd_select-target-partition.png
If you missed it, just open it up again, choose your partition, and click it.
I don’t have any article now, but I hope my explanation works just as well. :)[/quote]
Denise, you are awesome! Bootman was way easier to configure than GRUB. GRUB is a nightmare! But yeah, when Bootman starts up, it shows Haiku and Linux, and they both work.
I am literally blown away with Haiku. This is so fast! When I get better at coding in c++, I am totally going to help these guys. This is amazing. The boot time is unbelievable! It’s like “Booting Haiku – BAM! I’m done!” 
Here’s my Haiku desktop:
http://i359.photobucket.com/albums/oo33/robertneville777/screenshot1.png
And thank you Denise and Tonestone for your guy’s help!
Oh, yeah, how do I mark this as solved?
Thanks, I’m glad I could help and that it works fine for you!
Ohh, marking it as solved… I think you’d have to ask a mod about that.
If you’ll contribute with code, that’d be great! I really suck at programming… I guess I have to pick it up again too! Anyhow, enjoy Haiku! 
Robert, I guessed from your screenshot showing an ntfs partition that you are also running Windows XP/Vista. Be warned that if you ever have to re-install windows you’ll have to fix your booting arrangements all over again but, I guess you already knew that. We all know that M$ ignores all other OS’s when they do their install so I have taken to trying to work with the M$ bootloaders if at all possible. My solution is to put grub in the root partition of my linux systems at install time and use grub4dos to boot into grub and then use grub to boot everything else.
I’ve also developed a technique for preparing a flash drive with both linux (Ubuntu) and Haiku installed on it that, boots using grub to choose between the two. Here’s the relevant section from the menu,lst for one that has haiku in the first partition.
This is a divider, added to separate the menu items below from the Debian
ones.
title Choose one of the options below to boot haiku or ununtu:
rooton /dev/sda1
title Haiku
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
savedefault
chainloader +1on /dev/sda2
title Ubuntu Live
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
savedefault
chainloader +1
If Haiku is on the second partition, the two “title” lines switch places. Once yo figure it out, booting haiku’s relatively easy. Must not omit to mention all the great work that continues to be done by the developers in this area. Hats off to them.
Alan
No need to redo everything. If Windows’ boot manager takes over, you just boot up the Haiku LiveCD, type “bootman” in the terminal, and set it up. Should only take a few minutes. Also, I read somewhere that BFS will wear out a USB stick pretty quickly if you use Haiku on it permanently. I don’t know how big of an issue it is, but I’d be careful.
Yeah, there was a discussion on th haiku mailing list here: http://www.freelists.org/post/haiku/Installing-on-a-SSD and the consensus seemed to be that it shouldn’t be a problem but, no guarantees were given. Ever since I tried Ubuntu’s “USB Startup Disk Creator”, I have fallen in love with the concept. The resulting USB stick boots much faster than a CD and the install is amazingly quick. You could literally do “drive by” installs if non destructive partition editing didn’t take as long as it does!
Having both Ubuntu and Haiku on a USB stick lets you use gparted under Ubuntu to do the re-partitioning (non-destructive) and then re-boot into Haiku to do an install. It looks to me like USB sticks are a really convenient way to quickly test alpha/beta software on a reasonably wide variety of real hardware. It would be nice if at some point someone would put an option in the OS that would allow safe long term operation on SSDs. Not sure how that would work for SSDs that are meant to replace regular hard disks but, it would be nice if haiku could pretend that a USB stick is a CDROM, i.e. read/only. That way, running Haiku off a USB stick would be just like running a Live CD, only faster. Maybe that could be an option for the “Anyboot” images?
Alan
Time to start pumping out some Haiku thumb drives!
…Maybe that could be my donation?
