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Jason Forum Fanatic
Joined: 19 Sep 2002 Posts: 16777215
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Posted: Wed Oct 30, 2002 10:35 pm Post subject: Dual boot *nix and winXP |
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Has anyone set up a machine to dual boot either Red Hat or FreeBSD with windows XP?
I would like to give it a go, but would appriciate any tips from more experienced users. My linux skills are not all that.
I already have Windows XP installed and is occupying all of my Harddisk. can i get FreeBSD / Red Hat onto the system without having to do a re-format?
any help, links etc much appriciated.
J
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flw Forum Fanatic
Joined: 27 May 2002 Posts: 16777215 Location: U.S.A.
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b4rtm4n Trusted SF Member
Joined: 26 May 2002 Posts: 16777206 Location: Bi Mon Sci Fi Con
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Posted: Wed Oct 30, 2002 11:05 pm Post subject: |
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Done pretty much everything dual booting except XP.
Lilo/Grub will handle booting to windows for you. I prefer Grub for it's flexibility. And create a /boot partition when installing Linux. It'll save more heartache than you can imagine. As will creating a boot floppy.
RH 7.2 and above installs grub by default. Slackware installs Lilo as do earlier versions of Redhat.
If you need to change the partitions I have to recommend partition magic. It's permanently in my toolkit.
The BSD boot loader will also boot to Windows (only tried that once and can't remember how it was configured).
Good luck!
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max_blakk Just Arrived
Joined: 29 Oct 2002 Posts: 0 Location: South Wales UK
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Posted: Wed Oct 30, 2002 11:52 pm Post subject: |
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I have db'ed winxp and mandrake 8.2, I started by spitting the drive into 2 20gb partitions with the XP install setup, installed XP on the first section, Mandrake on the second, lilo wrote an entry to xp (which it labelled NT) rebooted and way to go, lovely boot menu and two oses..
Of course removing one or the other is a prob, I removed the mandrake install (I have another machine with RH 7.2 and couldnt really justify using the HD space) used disk manager in XP to remove the partitions and, booted off the XP cd and choose the recovery option (which I am finding incredibly useful lately) and choose fixmbr to rewrite the mbr to remove the boot menu..
hth
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b4rtm4n Trusted SF Member
Joined: 26 May 2002 Posts: 16777206 Location: Bi Mon Sci Fi Con
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Posted: Thu Oct 31, 2002 12:11 am Post subject: |
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That's much the same way as I learned (smaller drives tho).
I find that currently 5-10gig is more than enough for Linux 5gig for BSD (Unless you're building a commercial system)
With windows installed PM is brill for removing/resizing the existing partitions.
Parted is open-source and only AFAIK linux but will do the same job.
I'll admit to having a win98 boot floppy on standby ready to use fdisk /mbr in the event of a crisis (or alcohol induced memory loss).
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ShaolinTiger Forum Fanatic
Joined: 18 Apr 2002 Posts: 16777215 Location: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
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Posted: Thu Oct 31, 2002 12:14 am Post subject: |
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Yeh dual-booted Debian/SuSe/Redhat/Mandark with Win2k, pretty much the same thing.
Use Grub if you can over LILO, anything that messes with your mbr is bad in my book.
As bm says always keep a Win98 boot disk handy, and I always keep a bootable version of PM4 about aswell, comes in handy
5GB is plenty for a *nix install.
Personally I'd use PM7 in Windows to unpartitions some space and then just boot from the Linux CD, most new distros do the rest for you.
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Jason Forum Fanatic
Joined: 19 Sep 2002 Posts: 16777215
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Posted: Thu Oct 31, 2002 12:35 am Post subject: |
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what is the difference between grub and LILO.
I have used LILO briefly before, but never seen Grub.
J
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ShaolinTiger Forum Fanatic
Joined: 18 Apr 2002 Posts: 16777215 Location: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
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Posted: Thu Oct 31, 2002 12:41 am Post subject: |
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Basically LILO infests the mbr where as Grub works off the /boot partition (much nicer), also Grub is more flexible and best of all prettier.
I may be wrong, but I've had LILO shaft me in the arse in the past rendering machines totally unusable..so I tend to stay away from it.
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hads Trusted SF Member
Joined: 23 May 2002 Posts: 3 Location: New Zealand
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Posted: Thu Oct 31, 2002 1:18 am Post subject: |
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I rekon grub is cooler too but I haven't had any trouble with Lilo.
As has been said, if you make changes to Lilo's config you have to re-write it to the MBR but with Grub you can just play with the config and it reads it from /boot when it next boots up.
This is a sample dual boot grub.conf
Code: |
default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,1)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.18-3)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-3 ro root=//[b][/b]dev[b][/b]/hda2
initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.18-3.img
title Windows XP (NT 5.1 2600)
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
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note it uses different device names i.e. //[b][/b]dev[b][/b]/hda1 = (hd0,0)
I don't have a lilo config handy at the moment.
The main thing about dual booting is to install Windows first 'cos it gets grumpy about it.
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Jason Forum Fanatic
Joined: 19 Sep 2002 Posts: 16777215
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Posted: Thu Oct 31, 2002 10:58 pm Post subject: |
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will an evaulation copy of Partition magic 7 be enough to do the job?
J
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max_blakk Just Arrived
Joined: 29 Oct 2002 Posts: 0 Location: South Wales UK
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Posted: Wed Nov 13, 2002 3:07 pm Post subject: |
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Didnt know that about LILO and Grub..., I have used GRUB on me rh box, but thats really interesting...
(dont laugh I did wonder how the image fitted in the mbr)
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max_blakk Just Arrived
Joined: 29 Oct 2002 Posts: 0 Location: South Wales UK
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Posted: Wed Nov 13, 2002 3:09 pm Post subject: |
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One more thing in the Grub excerpt what is the
bit..??
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ShaolinTiger Forum Fanatic
Joined: 18 Apr 2002 Posts: 16777215 Location: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
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Posted: Wed Nov 13, 2002 3:20 pm Post subject: |
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If you want to boot an unsupported operating system (e.g. Windows), chain-load a boot loader for the operating system. Normally, the boot loader is embedded in the boot sector of the partition on which the operating system is installed.
Load the boot loader by the command chainloader grub> chainloader +1
Command: chainloader [`--force'] file
Load file as a chain-loader. Like any other file loaded by the filesystem code, it can use the blocklist notation to grab the first sector of the current partition with `+1'. If you specify the option `--force', then load file forcibly, whether it has a correct signature or not. This is required when you want to load a defective boot loader, such as SCO UnixWare 7.1
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Jason Forum Fanatic
Joined: 19 Sep 2002 Posts: 16777215
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Posted: Wed Nov 13, 2002 5:46 pm Post subject: |
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thanks for the help guys.
I now have a laptop that dualboots winXP and RH 8, with grub as the boot loader.
On me!
J
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merlin__wizard Just Arrived
Joined: 29 Dec 2002 Posts: 0 Location: Bucharest
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Posted: Sun Dec 29, 2002 12:49 am Post subject: Where did you install the boot loader ? |
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Pls tell me where did you install the boot loader ? On MBR or the linux partition ?
I tried to install it on MBR and the XP did not start anymore .
Thx
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Jason Forum Fanatic
Joined: 19 Sep 2002 Posts: 16777215
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Posted: Sun Dec 29, 2002 9:09 am Post subject: Re: Where did you install the boot loader ? |
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merlin__wizard wrote: |
Pls tell me where did you install the boot loader ? On MBR or the linux partition ? |
On the Linux /Boot thingy.
J
PS: Welcome to SFDC
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