Dual Boot Windows/Linpus using Backup Image (Download Here)

I did include the grub files on the image, but it seems many have had issues with getting it to boot. So, I'd recommend following the WinGRUB instructions others contributed (I added them to my instructions). As for the swap partition, I thought you needed to have it and still think it's good to have a swap/page file since we don't have a whole lot of RAM, but others have used the backup image without one. You'll just have to manually edit the /etc/fstab file afterward to remove any references to the swap partition.

 

Hi,

Just Wanted To Say Thanks To 'mercado79' For The Original Post + The 'Life is a Sketch' Site + Linpus Image.

I Finally Got It To Work, After Many Attempts With 'BootPart' Which Despite Matching The 'LAS' HDD Partitioning Guide Just Did Not Boot. After Trying WinGrub, Got It To Work First Time

Here's What I Did:-

Created A BartPE Image http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ With Partition Magic v8.01 & Ghost v11 http://www.symantec.com/norton/ghost
Made A Bootable USB With FlashBoot http://www.prime-expert.com/flashboot/index.php
Booted Up BartPE Then Backed Up My WinXP Partition With Ghost To The Spare FAT32 Partition At The End Of The Drive
Set Up HDD Partitions With PQMagic- Re-Sized Primary NTFS To 90GB, Created Extended Partition, Create 1.5GB Linux Swap, Then A 20Gb Ext2 For Linpus & The Rest As FAT32
Booted Back InTo WinXP
Installed 'Macrium Reflect' - Restored Linpus Image From USB The The 20GB Ext2 Partition
Installed 'Ext2 Installable File System for Windows' - Gives Access To Ext2 Partition - Dont Forget To GoTo The Control Panel Applet And Set A Drive Letter ( )
Copied Files From /boot/grub/ To C:\grub - "bzImage, grub.conf, initrd-splash.img & splash.xmp.gz" Then Renamed 'grub.conf' To 'menu.lst'
Edited 'menu.lst' - See http://lifeisasketch.com/node/6/ - I Also Kept The Delay As 0 As I Just Wanted To Get InTo Linpus
Download & Install WinGrub http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=104188&package_id=112041 - See http://lifeisasketch.com/node/6/
Edited boot.ini To Show 'Starting Grub - Linpus Lite Linux'
Edit WinXP StartUp Option To Set 'Show Boot Menu' TIme To 10 Seconds
Re-Boot And Choose Linpus And It'll Run Set Up, Re-Boot Again And Choose WinXP!

I Come From A Windows Background, But Wanted To Try Linpus To Aid With Learing Linux. I Cant Gaurentee To Help (Or Spell Correctly) But If Any One Wants More Detials Let Me Know.

James

 

Yep thanks to mercado79 for the original post, just wanted to add it was the wingrub method that worked for me, thanks James for the extra info, like you I am windows man who would like to try out Linpus Linux. So following both guides I now have the best of both worlds.

Thanks

John

 

I tried this, but wouldn't work:
Reduced my Swap partition from 5 Gb to 1.5 Gb.
Tried to merge resulting free space (after Swap and before Linpus partition) with the Linpus partition.
GParted always gives me an error that it could not merge the free space with my Linpus partition. :x
Any suggestions?

 

As a n00b, I tried changing partitions from within Winblows... :shock:

Acronis Disk Director couldn't do the job. Tried some other partition managers but none of them could fix the job with the EXT2-format.
At last I tried Paragon Partition Manager. This one seemed good...
I was able to shrink the Swap partition from 5 Gb to 1.5 Gb and merged the resulting free space with the Linpus EXT2 Partition.
Everything looked good (from within Windows).
All partitions seemed to show the exact size, even the Linpus Partition (which didn't show exact free size before).

Then restart and.... :cry: .... could not boot into Linpus anymore.
XP works fine, but when I try booting into Linpus, I always get the error "Cannot mount selected partition".

Tried several settings in Grub's menu.lst file in C:

For now it says:
default =0
timeout=0
splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Linpus Linux RCD

rootnoverify (hd0,0)

kernel /boot/bzimage ro root=/dev/sda3 console=tty1
initrd /boot/initrd-splash.img


I also tried changing fstab.
First line looks like this: /dev/sda3 / ext2 defaults


WinGrub - Tools - Partition List shows:
(hd0,0) - unknown(12) .........blabla...... (according to its size, this is my Acer Recovery Partition)
(hd0,1) C NTFS(07) .........blabla...... (according to its size, this is my Windows XP Partition)
(hd0,2) - Extended(05) .........blabla...... (according to its size, this is my Linpus Partition)
(hd0,4) - Extended(05) .........blabla...... (according to its size, this is my Linux Swap Partition)


Bootpart shows:
0 : C: type=12 , size= ....blabla.... (according to its size, this is my Acer Recovery Partition)
1 : C:* type=7 (NTFS), size= ....blabla.... (according to its size, this is my Windows XP Partition)
2 : C: type=5 (Extended), size= ....blabla....
3 : C: type=5 (Extended), size= ....blabla.... (according to its size, this is my Linux Swap Partition)
4 : C: type=82 (Linux Swap), size= ....blabla.... (according to its size, this is my Linux Swap Partition)
5 : C: type=5 (Extended), size= ....blabla.... (according to its size, this is my Linpus Partition)
6 : C: type=83 (Linux native), size= ....blabla.... (according to its size, this is my Linpus Partition)


Can someone tell me what to do? What to change so I can get my Linpus boot again?
All help is much appreciated!
Thanks in advance.


EDIT:

Don't bother... I gave up.
Deleted Linux Partitions and started all over again.
Restored Mercado79's image (thanks again) and made it bootable using WinGrub.
Now I will just have to re-tweak my Linpus. :roll:

 

Hello again,

Now I have this dualboot-system, I would like to install another Linux-based-OS on my One.
Which steps should I follow to get a working triple boot?
I have an unused partion after the Linpus-partition on which I would like to install the third OS.
I used WinGrub to get my dualboot working (as explained in this thread).
Can I just install this OS and then manually edit the menu.lst file? Or what should I do?

 

Guys, i'd really appreciate some help if anyone knows.
I have a A150 with linpus installed.
I successfully installed XP and followed the WinGRUB steps.
However, when i try and boot linpus i get "Try (hd0,0): extended or non-MS:skip"

On WinGrub Partition list it says my linux partition ext2 is hd0,0, xp is hd0,1 and linux swap is hd0,2.

Here is what my menu.lst looks like:
default=0

timeout=2
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz

hiddenmenu

title
Linpus Linux RCD

rootnoverify (hd0,0)

kernel /grub/bzImage ro root=/dev/sda1 console=tty1
initrd /grub/initrd-splash.img


Could anyone please tell me where I'm going wrong! Thanks a lot in advance guys

 

Question: I have put Gparted on a bootable USB stick. After booting it, when I look at the present partions (stock configuration) I see two partitions. The first sda1 is the recovery partition, the windows partition is sda2. Will your scheme still apply? The screenshot on your webpage does not show the recovery partion, just the windows partition as being sda1. That makes me worry I may wipe my original windows partition! Would you please explain a little, as I am a newbie on Linux?

 

With some adjustments (namely using WinGRUB and fixing the fstab file to point to your partitions), your current setup will work fine. You have to do the partitioning yourself so create space for Linux wherever you want on your drive. I had removed the recovery partition. As for the image, you can restore it anywhere you like. It doesn't include Windows and doesn't overwrite anything. Just download it, unzip the file, and then tell Macrium to restore your image onto the partition you set up for it.

 

Re:

Sorry... hopefully someone else with WinGRUB experience can get you going. I do think something is missing from your configuration though. I doubt that your Linpus ext2 partition is at (hd0,0). That would be the very first partition of the drive and if you had Windows already installed, Windows would have had that spot. Try booting from a Linux live cd (or make a bootable USB flash drive) and see what it tells you. In my instructions, I mention using the Ubuntu live cd which I loaded onto a flash drive using Unetbootin. Once you are logged in, run Partition Manager and see what your drive looks like.

 

Thank you, I hadn't realised that Macrium would ask where the image should be restored, I thought that that information was in the image as well

 

Well, I have everything in place, image restored, boot.ini modified with bootpart.exe. But when I choose Linpus in the bootmenu, the screen says "booting new partition" and "bootsector from C.H. Hochstätter" and then waits forever, nothing happens.
/dev/sda5 is Linux swap, /dev/sda6/ is ext2 and the location where linpus lives. I can access the ext2 partition from Windows with "Ext2 Installable File System 1.11a", and I can see /etc/fsab is pointing to /dev/sda6 for linux and /dev/sda5 for swap.

I just can't figure out what I'm doing wrong .......

 

Well, I switched to Wingrub. And though not entirely satisfied yet, it works, I can dualboot XP and Linpus! Grub's bootmenu looks strange, with white stripes at equal distances. Probably wrong video mode? Well, work to do and more to learn .

Thank you Mercado79 for all the work you did!

 

Thanks for the reply mercado, i checked ubuntu and i think it is hd(0,0) as the computer had Linpus preinstalled not XP. anyway if that was correct, what should my menu.lst look like?

 

I have exactly the same situation. As I have the 160Gb disk, I made the Linpus partition 30GB. Has anyone solved this? I cannot shrink the partion to 3.98 Gb, and then grow it again. Interestingly, Gparted reports 29Gb of 30 in use ......

thanks,
Willem

 

Hi, my name is Washington and I just got an Aspire One running Windows XP(120 GB), and when I find out that you can have Linpus on it I say "Awesome!", I have followed Mercados tutorial to the letter, and I'm having problems booting into Linpus, I think I have done everything right, so here is my situation:

-I have Resize Windows Partition to 100 GB (keeping the original Windows and Restore partitions)
-Created a Logical Extended partition of 7 GB using Partition Magic,
-Restored the image provided by Mercado using the Reflect program, I didnt overwrite my MBR since I want them to both boot (XP and Linpus).
-I installed WinGrub and downloaded the 4 boot files, Installed the Grub into the boot.ini file, renamed the grub to menu, here is how it looks like:

Code:

default=0

timeout=0

splashimage=(hd0,5)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz

hiddenmenu


title Linpus Linux RCD
	

rootnoverify (hd0,5)
	

kernel /boot/bzImage ro root=LABEL=linpus vga=0x311 splash=silent loglevel=1 console=tty1 quiet nolapic_timer nolapic_timer
  	
initrd /boot/initrd-splash.img

and restarted the laptop, now I get to the first screen where is lets me choose between Windows and Linpus to start, I can start Windows just fine, but when I try Linpus I get an error 16, so I can't even log for first time into Linpus.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks in advance guys.

 

Seem to be replying to myself. I found the solution. Gparted has an option to let you check the partition (right-click on the partition). It then grows the filesystem to fill the partition. Linpus now reports correctly that I have 25 Gb of my 29 something Gb free.

 

ok, now I'm freaking out! ... I tryied SuperGrub on my Aspire after mutiple attemps to dual boot Windows XP and Linpus, when it restarted showed my the Linpus starting, ask me for a password and stuff, after that the screen went black like if the video card was bad or something, now I can't log into either one ... someone help me pleeeeeeease? Thanks u in advance

 

If you boot Gparted from a USB stick, you can right-click on the partition and select "check". That will grow the filesystem to the size of the partition.

 

My thanks to mercado79 for getting me started on dual booting my Aspire one.

I had the Linpus version machine and wanted to dual boot with XP.

I used gparted live cd to copy my Linpus partition from my Aspire One to a external USB drive.

I wiped my drive and installed XP. I then followed your instructions and apart from a couple of Grub issues (sorted with wingrub), I successfully managed to install your Linpus image and make my machine dual boot.

I then resized my old Linpus partition on the external USB drive to a much smaller size (30GB in my case as I had about 25GB in use on my original Linpus setup). Then using Gparted I copied my original (reduced) Linpus partition over the Linpus partition created by your instructions on my Aspire One and hey presto I have my original Linpus with all my tweaks and installed programs working as a dual boot machine!!