On Nov 22, 2013, at 3:25 AM, Andre Costa <blue...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have the following partitions on a 1TB disk:
> 1M BIOS boot partition
> 500M Linux boot partition
> 733G Linux LVM partition (Fedora 19)
> 200G unused space
> I would like to install Windows 8 on this last partition. Anyone knows if
> this will mess up with my current boot manager? Can Windows 8 coexist with
> GRUB?
Yes and no. The first 440 bytes of the first sector, LBA 0, cannot be shared.
Only one bootloader can exist there at a time, either Windows or GRUB. This 440
bytes of GRUB code was called stage1, it's now called boot.img, and it baked in
the LBA it's supposed to jump to next. For the Windows stage1 equivalent, it
jumped conditionally to the start LBA for the partition in the MBR with an
active bit set.
Because you're using BIOS Boot, it's possible grub-install put core.img
(formerly stage2) right at the start of that partition, in which case by merely
changing the boot flag (the active bit), you could choose which OS is loaded.
But it's not guaranteed that grub-install will put core.img right at the start
of that partition.
So I suggest you install Windows, let it blow away GRUB's boot.img on LBA0,
reboot from Fedora install media - ideally either netinstl or DVD because you
can choose the rescue option which will mount everything correctly so that all
you have to do is:
chroot /mnt/sysimage
grub2-install /dev/sdX
grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
exit
reboot
Where X is probably an a if this is the only drive on the computer. If you only
have live desktop media handy then you get to setup the mounts yourself and
since you're using LVM it makes it more complicated since you need to check if
the LVs are active, and find their names, and mount them all in the right
sequence:
mount /dev/mapper/fedora-root /mnt/sysimage
mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/sysimage/boot
mount -B /dev /mnt/sysimage/dev
mount -B /proc /mnt/sysimage/proc
mount -B /sys /mnt/sysimage/sys
And then the same as above starting with chroot. Reinstalling grub will toast
the Windows 440 bytes in LBA 0. And rerunning grub2-mkconfig *should* cause it
to call OS-PROBER, find Windows, and create a GRUB entry for it automatically.
Chris Murphy
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