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Booting Backtrack


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#1 victor.hatley

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Posted 25 September 2010 - 01:24 PM

I think I've had this problem before, but I can't find of figure out how I solved it then. I'm trying to get an install of BT on my HDD, so I do a frugal install, and when I reboot the machine goes straight to windows. I've used UNETBOOTIN before and it worked fine, with the boot choices, everything. I believe that windows is stopping the program from changing the boot.ini file. Can it? and how do I stop it from changing the file back or preventing the boot file from being changed?
Any help would be sincerely appreciated, I really need this distro.

#2 JuniperSprouts

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Posted 26 September 2010 - 12:12 PM

Which version of BT? Which version of Windows?

BT4 has an install script on the "desktop"...is that what you are using? How is your drive partitioned? Most BT/Windows dual-boots are done with a boot loader installed to the Master Boot Record...so the computer looks to the MBR for booting instructions....the MBR points to a boot-loader (GRUB, for example).....Grub is a configurable boot-loader that offers you the choice of booting between your OS's.

If you do not change your MBR, your HDD will continue to boot from your Windows partition.

Alrighty.





I think I've had this problem before, but I can't find of figure out how I solved it then. I'm trying to get an install of BT on my HDD, so I do a frugal install, and when I reboot the machine goes straight to windows. I've used UNETBOOTIN before and it worked fine, with the boot choices, everything. I believe that windows is stopping the program from changing the boot.ini file. Can it? and how do I stop it from changing the file back or preventing the boot file from being changed?
Any help would be sincerely appreciated, I really need this distro.



#3 victor.hatley

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Posted 26 September 2010 - 12:51 PM

Thanks for the reply and answer...here's the poop.

Windows XP SP/3 new install
Backtrack 4 final
120 G HDD Parted as follows:
25 G= C: - left it blank
25 G= D: - Win XP install
30 G= E: - Storage
30 G= F: - Blank (Where I wanted to install BT)
05 G= G: - Blank, leftovers, actually just under 5 G

I actually finally got the BT to boot, and tried to use the install.sh on the desktop, but it locked my computer up. To get it to boot I used the boot tool PLoP, and then used unetbootin to create a USB drive...the only way I have found to get my machine to boot from the USB. (My machine doesn't have this option in the BIOS.) To be honest I'm starting to think my machine may not have enough a** to do the install. Here's the poop on it:

Dell Inspiron 7000, 120 G HDD, 400 MHZ, and this is what I think is kicking me...128 Mb RAM. The UBUNTU distro is what BT is on, can I put it in another distro?

In the end, I need more memory for other things anyway, I think, and going to go get it today. But I still need to be able to do the frugal install, the USB thing is painfully slow on a machine already severely limited. So how do I get Unetbootin to change the MBR without XP changing it back, or preventing the change?

Thanks a lot for the answer J.S., I really appreciate the help, and in the BT forums they are haughty, conceited, and downright rude. I hesitate to use the distro because of this, but I need it bad.

#4 squidster

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Posted 02 July 2011 - 06:18 PM

Hi

I have similar problem. After much hassle I was able to boot Backtrack 5 Gnome 64bit from HDD using Unetbootin with frugal install. I got in into BT5 live cd. Click install, everything is cool and then comes partitioning step...

I got one small empty partition ready with ext4 filesystem already on. I choose it as "/" mount point, select do-not format and mark all other partitions as "do not use". Great, I click "Next" and it starts to do something and then fails with error it needs to make some changes to the partition table and obviously can't because some are mounted and can't unmount them.

My question is... how do I do this? I just want to install BT5 to /dev/sda5. I do not have empty CD/DVD nor USB key big enough. Why does it even want to make changes to partition table? I already have partition ready and formated, empty and just waiting to be put something on. Do not make any changes to partition table, why does it insist on making some?

Any help greatly appreciated.

I understand it's easier to get an empty DVD, burn and/or USB key but I do not have either handy right now.

#5 RoyM

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Posted 02 July 2011 - 06:38 PM

Hi Guys
I have both HD and USB installs here using KDE-32 distro.
I would suggest letting BT5 format the target drive for you.
For HD install BT5 is going to want: ext4 + swap
For USB, BT5 is going to want Fat32 with files extracted from ISO to /BT5,
I also gave it a swap partition + casper-rw partition as ext4 for persistence
my installs went flawlessly using the install.sh on BT5 desktop

#6 squidster

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Posted 02 July 2011 - 08:01 PM

ok cool. thx. so i have to set the swap partition too. i will try.

can i use the same swap partition i use for my main Linux Mint installation? I will dual boot, so they won't be running at the same time. Is this ok? Or must it be separate?

thanks!

edit:

This is what i did; unetbootin - install diskimage to harddrive. Reboot and boot into BT5. Dekstop loads fine.

I click the Install Backtrack and this time select to format /dev/sda5 and mount as "/". Also let him use swap partition. Next step fails with error:

The installer needs to commit changes to partition tables, but cannot do so because partitions on the following mount points could not be unmounted:

/cdrom

Please close and applications using these mount points. Would you like to installer to try to unmount these partitions again?

sda1 is mounted as cdrom:
/dev/sda1 on /cdrom type ext4 (ro,noatime,barrier=1,data=ordered)


Could it be I have to many partitions? I do have one extended also. Here is fdisk -l:

# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000a93fc

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 1305 10482381 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 1306 7310 48235162+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 7311 8093 6287361 5 Extended
/dev/sda4 8094 19457 91281330 83 Linux
/dev/sda5 7311 7835 4214784 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 7836 8093 2071552 82 Linux swap / Solaris


But i guess this is not unetbootin's problem, so I'll try to look for solution elsewhere.

Edited by squidster, 02 July 2011 - 08:19 PM.


#7 squidster

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Posted 04 July 2011 - 09:05 AM

nevermind, found a workaround: http://hydtech.wordp...frugal-install/




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