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Dual boot *nix and winXP

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Jason
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 30, 2002 10:35 pm    Post subject: Dual boot *nix and winXP Reply with quote

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
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 30, 2002 11:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have only done win to nt dual boots. But I did find the following that gives some basics on Linux and Win9x/NT dual boots from RedHat.

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-8.0-Manual/install-guide/ch-x86-dualboot.html

Hope this is of some help

fastlanwan
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b4rtm4n
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 30, 2002 11:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 30, 2002 11:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 31, 2002 12:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

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
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 31, 2002 12:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

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 Smile

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
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 31, 2002 12:35 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

what is the difference between grub and LILO.

I have used LILO briefly before, but never seen Grub.

J
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ShaolinTiger
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 31, 2002 12:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

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
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 31, 2002 1:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

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


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
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 31, 2002 10:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

will an evaulation copy of Partition magic 7 be enough to do the job?

J
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max_blakk
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 13, 2002 3:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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) Laughing
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max_blakk
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 13, 2002 3:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

One more thing in the Grub excerpt what is the
Quote:
chainloader +1
bit..??
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ShaolinTiger
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 13, 2002 3:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 13, 2002 5:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

thanks for the help guys.

I now have a laptop that dualboots winXP and RH 8, with grub as the boot loader.


Make a toast On me!

J
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merlin__wizard
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PostPosted: Sun Dec 29, 2002 12:49 am    Post subject: Where did you install the boot loader ? Reply with quote

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 Sad.

Thx
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Jason
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PostPosted: Sun Dec 29, 2002 9:09 am    Post subject: Re: Where did you install the boot loader ? Reply with quote

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 Hello! Waving!
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