Solved Any grub experts around?

B

balanga

Whilst going through my pile of disks I came across one which looked like this:

Code: 
=>       63  312581745  da0  MBR  (149G)
         63  217921662    1  ntfs  (104G)
  217921725       1859       - free -  (930K)
  217923584   31457280    2  ntfs  [active]  (15G)
  249380864   32258048    3  linux-data  (15G)
  281638912   30942896    4  !18  (15G)

This has grub installed and boots Arch Linux, but it identies itself as i686 so it's probably not upgradeable, so I won't be able to install os-prober on it.

It does have WinXP installed but I don't know how to manually add Windows to the grub.cfg.

Anyone know?
 
Apart from grub may not really be supported here...

What about a Grub manual/documentation? I didn't try Grub for ~ten years(?), and last time I tried it was very much more complicated then I was used to it >twenty years ago (Linux guys always need to complicate and enshittify things, while documentation ain't really part of their universe...)
And I'm not 100% sure which version of Grub is current (seems to be 2 - can be 2.0.0.0.3.0.a ...😁), obsolete, you use, because I don't need/use it myself (running FreeBSD exclusively, only - my Windows XP simply runs within VB [way less stress than boot this ancient cr... natively]), but I believe the FreeBSD bootloader also supports booting multiple OS.
However, since ChatGPT seems to gave you no useful answer this time - 😁 😘💋😜 - I googled duckduckgoed it for you:
seems to be the current official GRUB documentation (But I'm not sure, because with this Linux stuff you never know)

Anyway, booting an ancient WindowsXP on a machine which it was not originally installed on, can be a bit more tricky, than just having a correctly configured bootloader telling which partition where is to boot (You will have a lot of hardware failures - Windows ain't BSD or Linux.)
You may try. But my advice was: Do you really need to boot that one? Just mount it, get the data you need from it, and get that to another XP running within a VM or HV. Or try to get an image of that disk run in a VM/HV.
But trying to get an ancient XP run on a modern machine which it never was installed on (drivers, lots of missing drivers), to me seems more kind of Sisyphean.
 
to "renew" old stuff it's good to have at the same time with da0 another disk with a new linux. Even on a stick. You run os-prober. Copy over /boot/grub/grub.cfg. See. Install EFI/Legacy loaders. Then you can do whatever you want.
With da0 only. Your stuck afaiknow
 
Maturin said:
Anyway, booting an ancient WindowsXP on a machine which it was not originally installed on, can be a bit more tricky, than just having a correctly configured bootloader telling which partition where is to boot (You will have a lot of hardware failures - Windows ain't BSD or Linux.)
You may try. But my advice was: Do you really need to boot that one? Just mount it, get the data you need from it, and get that to another XP running within a VM or HV. Or try to get an image of that disk run in a VM/HV.
But trying to get an ancient XP run on a modern machine which it never was installed on (drivers, lots of missing drivers), to me seems more kind of Sisyphean.
Click to expand...
Actually Windows XP was originally installed on it, but installing Arch Linux messed everything up.

I did manage to install Windows XP from an ISO a few days ago on another disk and it was a PITA. but I do like to have these things handy in case I need them at some point. You never know.
 
Windows XP used a one sector boot loader partition and then started XP at sector 2. grub2 installs to sectors 1 and 2.
So, installing Grub2 on a disk with XP wipes out the initial XP sector.

What should work is to do the install and then use a utility to move the start of Windows XP from sector 2 to sector 3 and enlarge the boot partition to the first 2 sectors.

If you want a multiboot, then shrink the windows partion to make room for your Arch linux install prior to installing Arch.
 
balanga said:
Actually Windows XP was originally installed on it, but installing Arch Linux messed everything up.
Click to expand...
f#C4! I'm truely sorry.
As you already may have recognized, I'm not a big Linux fan, but apart from once several years ago one single OpenSUSE installation f#c3d up my main boot storage drive (🤬😤 - YES!!, OpenSUSE, at least as equally bad as Windows!! Shame on you! Bad! Bad! Bad! Shame! Shame!) I never thought any Linux could f#c4 up any main drive at all (I experienced that as being "normal" with W95/98/NT/2000 - but Linux, especially Arch? Well, one does never stop to learn...)
OK. Well. However. Then this ain't no bootloader prob, really, but a backup problem.
I don't wanna come as some 🥸 but...well....of course you gonna have to make a 1:1 BU first before you start such a stunt - RIGHT?!
 
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