Dual boot windows - backtrack with a protected MBR

[yalkshire]

Hi guys,

Although I usually work with linux fedora on my home pc I have only minimal experience with linux operating systems except for user applications.

I got a company portable yesterday and wanted to try out this backtrack 2 since I used Auditor in the past a couple times. I got windows installed, and installed BT2 as well on /dev/hda3, /dev/hda2 is a linux swap and /dev/hda1 is the windows NTFS. But liloconfig won't do anything, it simply gets booted to windows at all times. I presume the MBR is protected so lilo can't write to it, however I don't know how to can confirm this except for the error I get when calling lilo :
Fatal : creat /boot/map~: Read-only file system

The portable in question is a Dell Latitude D600 if that's important and I've already check the BIOS but there's nothing usefull in there either.

any help is greatly appreciated!

[sin_gage]

http://forum.remote-exploit.org/show...l+boot+windows

what is the order in which you have install different OS?

[yalkshire]

order :
windows (clean install yesterday).
BT2

and yes my lilo.conf is up-to-date and triple checked.
using lilo -V instead of lilo give me the following:

Reading boot sector from /dev/hda
Fatal : Creat /boot/map~: Read-only file system.

I've already tried unmounting & re-mounting :

mount [enter]
cd / [enter]
umount /mnt/hda1 [enter]
umount /mnt/hda3 [enter]
mkdir /mnt/bt [enter]
mount /dev/hda3 /mnt/bt [enter]
mkdir /mnt/bt/boot [enter]
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/bt/boot [enter]
cp /boot/vmlinuz /mnt/bt/boot/ [enter]
-->cp : cannot create regular file '/mnt/bt/boot/vmlinuz': Read-only file system

[purehate]

The order does not matter. If your sure windows is there and bt is there then boot your live cd and use the chroot command to change into your root install directory

bt~#chroot /mnt/sda3(or whatever) /bin/bash

then bt~#nano /etc/lilo.conf

Do a little searching on this site For "lilo.conf" for example and you will find all kinds of examples of what you config should look like.

Reboot and presto, Bobs your uncle.

[drivintin]

The problem is he is not writing to the MBR at all, so editing the lilo config doesn't sound like it will do much good... This windows XP or vista?

Try installing the bootloader to the BT partition, make sure it doesn't have a problem doing that.

With vista it is actually pretty easy to use it's boot loader to make a linux option to boot the BT partition. I would have to look on how to do it in XP, if it can be done at all. I am not 100% how to modify it in linux, but i know the Partition Magic cds have a way to turn off the MBR protection, and double check the BIOS under virus protection, sometimes there is a MBR security feature in there.

Z

[Re@lity]

Did you try running "liloconfig" in expert mode and re-write the mbr from there, adding the OS's as you go through the "wizard"?

I have known the standard hdd installer to inexplicably fail writing the mbr, when there is no "mbr protection" of any kind involved, but then work on the 2nd attempt, or from liloconfig.
Worth a go.....?

Failing that, take a look at your mbr with some of the excellent mbr tools on Hirens cd.

[TheSamurai]

i'm not sure about vista, but if this is XP and you want to dual boot, you'd have to make a file containing the first 512 bytes of the boot sector of bt... then, put that file into the "C:" directory and change the boot.ini file to have a selection to point to that file. i'm still a noob so this might be missing something. i'm sure you could find it with a general web search.

[purehate]

I have installed bt on various xp and vista machines with no mbr problems.

[InSanCen]

I have installed bt on various xp and vista machines with no mbr problems.

On this laptop I currently have BT, XP-Pro, Vista Ultimate, and Gentoo. Not a single MBR problem. I editied lilo.conf accordingly, issued lilo -v, and hey presto.

It's unlikely to be an actual MBR problem.

[lock_n_loll]

liloconfig is the best solution for writing linux loader at MBR
Just Try liloconfig with simple menu or expert menu ..but i think u should try expert menu
for your problem.