[MikeDaMan]

Well, I'm going for it...I'm going to install Redhat 7.3 on the same hard drive as WindowsXP. Because I have no clue how to partition my drive could someone point me in the right direction? And does anyone know how I should go about doing this?

[merry]

I'm just about to do the same thing - when I find a whole day for it. I left some 6G unpartitioned space from the beginning (4G 98/10G XP/6G free/20G fat32 for docs).

I did that before on my old system. The Red Hat distribution of the moment (7.0 I think) claimed that it would install auto in free unpartitioned space, but I couldn't find RH at the time and gave Mandrake 8.0 a go... When it came to partitioning, the install program pulled a dialogue saying 'erase all data?' and the sole button OK.

The solution was to create the linux filesystems (three formated partitions, boot (extfs2) root (extfs2) swap (linuxswap)) and the install went smoothly. Linux doesn't need the first phisycal partition - neither does XP.

So I guess the best thing is to go like that - even if RH7.3 DOES install in free unpartitioned space.

Partition Magic (7.0?) cand do all the job for you - freeing up space for new partitions, formatting in linux formats - not sure about the extfs3 though.

Good luck - and maybe you can find the time to post your procedure.

[MikeDaMan]

Well< I gave it a try and used partition magic to create a Linux partition. Then I had to restart the computer and while it was booting up it went inot some "scan disk" page but instead of scandisk it was partitioning so I let it do it's job. Then about 15 minutes into it it stayed at 39% complete then ten minutes later it was still at 39%. I gave it a half an hour before concluding that the computer froze, so I restarted and I couldnt boot into windows. It had set up 4 partitions and none of them were able to boot to my usual XP. I tried many things to get it to work but just couldn't. I gave up and reinstalled XP (good thing I backed everything up). Now I'm just a little sketchy about doing it again.

One more thing anyone planning on doing this it's almost a must to defragment your hard drive and make sure you run a scan disk or you will run into a ton of errors. I'm going to try and find a huge tutorial on installing it on Windows XP and see how that goes.

[MikeDaMan]

Originally posted by merry
The Red Hat distribution of the moment (7.0 I think) claimed that it would install auto in free unpartitioned space, but I couldn't find RH at the time and gave Mandrake 8.0 a go... When it came to partitioning, the install program pulled a dialogue saying 'erase all data?' and the sole button OK.

The newest version of Redhat is 7.3 which is the one I used. If you want ot try it and if you have a pretty fast connection you can get the ISO's off there site although thier rather slow so I used all these mirrors and download accelerator. Heres a link thanks to ZenPirate http://www.linuxiso.org/distro.php?distro=7 just click on the more mirrors for faster FTP's.

[merry]

I'm sorry. PM *does* take a lot of time whenever you create partitions - I get a DOS screen with some (text mode) progress indication. Guess it cannot do HDD funny works from within windows, so it has to reboot in DOS mode. It didn't freeze up on me up to now, and I played with it on several machines.

I think it does some kind of defrag automatically, but I'm not sure about XP. Defrag in XP is also not that useful, it doesn't bring all data in 'front' of the partition - at least I don't know how to set it up for this.

Thanks for the tip, I already have 7.3 (the 7.0 reference was on the current version at the time I tried the stuff I was talking about - and it worked flawlessly. I have a new rig now and just can't find the time to put everything in order.

Just for my curiosity - what version of PM did you use? The current version is 7.0 I think.

[MikeDaMan]

I used version 7 of partition magic, Partition magic did the job correctly it was just my computer locked up. Now that I've reformatted my computer I'm going to give it another shot. Maybe now it wont take so long since I currently am using only 5GB versus 26GB from before. I'll let you know how that goes. I'm going to creat a linux partition in partition magic and when I install Redhat 7.3 I will keep existing partitions and use free space to make it. Does that sound right? I'll back up a few more things like the SP1105 and some others before I give this another shot.

[merry]

I'm not sure I get this - english isn't my primary language.

I'm going to creat a linux partition in partition magic and when I install Redhat 7.3 I will keep existing partitions and use free space to make it.

The point was to install linux in the - linux - partitions you created with partition magic. If you leave unpartitioned space, linux - atleast RedHat - is supposed to use it by default, at least this was written in the 7.0 documentation, I didn't check it, and it wasn't true for mandrake 8.0.

You can leave unpartitioned space even with fdisk - but it's complicated, that is you can't do something like 'ntfs-free-fat32' in that order, or if you can, it's not easy.

Another thing. I remember trying unsuccesfully to install some linux (I had an unsupported sound card that I needed, but that's another story). One attempt resulted in linux 'trashing' my HDD (the partition table). It seems that linux supports a more relaxed 'numbering' of partitions than windows (the partition table can point 'forward' to a partition that is physically 'before'), which resulted in serious trouble with win98 (partitions not visible) that partition magic couldn't fix, not even in DOS mode. I spent a whole night writing down cryptic numbers that I could read with the utilities supplied with partition magic (partinfo and such). But I could finally recover from that - by manually 'writing' to the HDD the partition data I had computed also 'manually', and I didn't lose any data!

Read thoroughly the documentation that comes with pm (the pdfs), there is more info that I can handle, but it helps.

There are some back-up utilities, like Norton Ghost (I think pm also) that can copy a whole partition at a time. I never tried this. If you make a copy of the XP partition on a separate HDD you could restore your system a lot faster. Even if you make that backup on the same HDD, but it's more risky.

If you're not comfortable with what you already know on partitions, there's lots of info in the pm pdfs. You can also make the emergency disks with pm - most partition 'editing' won't affect physical data, just 'pointers' like partition tables, boot records etc. and the emergency disks will contain some of this 'pointer' data.

I hope this helps.

Good luck

[fornicatarachnid]

Try this ..... Dual boot XP and Linux

[MikeDaMan]

Originally posted by fornicatarachnid
Try this ..... Dual boot XP and Linux

Thank you sooo much, thats exactly what I was looking for! And I wrote a pretty big post right after merrys so I'm guessing it was deleted?

[fornicatarachnid]

Originally posted by MikeDaMan
Thank you sooo much, thats exactly what I was looking for! And I wrote a pretty big post right after merrys so I'm guessing it was deleted?

It was deleted cos I read it and then sent you the link but that got deleted too so I had to send it again. Glad it helped anyway

[merry]

I finally lost patience on Saturday and installed RH7.3 on the partitions I had prepared for it...

I disabled BootMagic (but didn't uninstall) and booted from the RH install CD. Everything went smooth enough, I chose 'manually partition with Disk Druid' and chose the boot, root and swap partitions, and I chose to install Grub in the boot partition (not MBR). Reboot...

Into windows XP, no Grub window, nothing. Having kept pqboot (which is a very handy util that comes with Partition Magic, lets you select the active partition for your next boot) I tried booting 98 (just to see - it worked) then Linux.

I now got the Grub window, chose linux (to see, it worked), then rebooted and chose xp - no go! Just something like 'enter the path to the command interpreter'. Same with 98.

Same when booting from a windows boot disk - I could reach the 'common' fat32 partition though, where I fortunately kept handy some setup kits - Norton Utilities. I used the diskeditor they provide and found up that in the partition table the linux-boot was marked 'bootable' and 'linux fs' (or something like that), the 'common' was marked 'not bootable' and 'fat32x', while the 98 and xp partitions were not only not bootable (which is the way it should be) but there was no indication of the filesystem type!

I have no idea how this came up - maybe it's my choice to install Grub in the boot partition - not the MBR. It sounded logical to leave the - sensitive - windows xp loader alone... and I didn't read carefully the portion concerning bootloader instal in the article provided by fornicatarachnid... I subsequently found another article - a bit older, I think, but recommending the same thing for lilo: MBR install.

So, now I use bootmagic - it was easy to setup the linux option for booting.

But this is definitely not the way to go.

When I find the time, I will reinstall RH7.3 with Grub on the MBR - but I need to 'lose' some of the data on the ntfs partition, in case it doesn't work.

[merry]

On second thought, the partition table should allow for only one primary partition to be operable at one time, so it's not surprising that the win98 and xp partitions looked funny in the partition table.

On the other hand, I still don't understand how can Grub be used when installed in the boot partition (not in the MBR) - but I guess I'll have to read the man page for that

[stdly]

I use System Commander to tripple boot Mandrake, WinXP and Win98se works with out a hitch. A good program for the novist.

[uf4]

Originally posted by merry

On the other hand, I still don't understand how can Grub be used when installed in the boot partition (not in the MBR) - but I guess I'll have to read the man page for that

1.GRUB is the GNU GRand Unified Bootloader and it is like a program andyou need to install it.
2.Lilo or LILO - The Linux Loader(usually called LILO). Lilo is a versatile boot loader for Linux
3.BootMagic is a boot manager program made by PQ
4.NT's boot loader.. from WinXP
as i can see you have 4 choices that you can use to boot your machine to either 98, XP or linux. depending on which one you want to put it @ the MBR. and i'm not sure that how you got "GRUB" when you alredy use the BootMagic. pls advise whether or not you are now using both of it, then i will try to explain it to you.
may be you've already found out for what you needed. anyway pls help me clear up somes.

ps. i never use GRUB only think that i can manage it.

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[merry]

Originally posted by uf4
1.GRUB is the GNU GRand Unified Bootloader and it is like a program andyou need to install it.
2.Lilo or LILO - The Linux Loader(usually called LILO). Lilo is a versatile boot loader for Linux
3.BootMagic is a boot manager program made by PQ
4.NT's boot loader.. from WinXP
as i can see you have 4 choices that you can use to boot your machine to either 98, XP or linux. depending on which one you want to put it @ the MBR. and i'm not sure that how you got "GRUB" when you alredy use the BootMagic. pls advise whether or not you are now using both of it, then i will try to explain it to you.
may be you've already found out for what you needed. anyway pls help me clear up somes.

ps. i never use GRUB only think that i can manage it.

;

OK, here's what I know - mind that my english sucks, hope I can get through:

To boot an OS - ANY OS - you need a loader. Win 98 has it's own loader, no name, it is a code sequence referenced by a 'jump' instruction in the MBR. GRUB, LILO and NTLoader all have boot !managing! capabilities, that is, they can load other OS-s than the one they come with.

Like BootMagic, GRUB was not designed to load a specific OS - the first version was for BSD, I think - but to manage the loading of much any OS. Unlike BootMagic, it does load Linux without another bootloader - but not MS OS-s, they still need their own loaders.

So the booting sequence is: boot manager -> OS loader -> OS, and for me: BootMagic -> GRUB -> Linux (the linux branch). This is why I not only can, but need, both BootMagic and GRUB, which I use as a linux loader.

Strange enough, GRUB is still presenting a menu including Win98 and XP as options - only they don't work - if I choose either of them the machine hangs and I have to do funny stuff with diskeditors and such.

I wished I used GRUB also as the bootmanager - it looks cooler than BootMagic. But then I probably need to install it in the MBR (the 'jump' would then be in the MBR, not the Linux 'boot' fs bootrecord). I was wondering if I could use it as bootmanager (besides linux loader) in this latter situation - I'm not willing to mess with the MBR untill I get to buy the 10-12 cdrs I need to back-up some stuff I have on the NTFS partition.

I guess it's the same thing with LiLo: can you install it in the linux 'boot' partition (this is an option you get while installing RedHat), not in the MBR, and still be able to use it for loading MS OS-s?

(edit) Maybe the linux 'boot' partition shouldn't be a primary partition?

[uf4]

re: "OK, here's what I know - mind that my english sucks, hope I can get through:"

- me too
-------------------------
re: "So the booting sequence is: boot manager -> OS loader -> OS, and for me: BootMagic -> GRUB -> Linux (the linux branch). This is why I not only can, but need, both BootMagic and GRUB, which I use as a linux loader."

- i dont think you need GRUB to boot to linux(unless you want to), only the bootmagic will do.
--------------------------
re: "Strange enough, GRUB is still presenting a menu including Win98 and XP as options - only they don't work - if I choose either of them the machine hangs and I have to do funny stuff with diskeditors and such."

- that may be becoz of you use PQ PartitionMagic to prepare and partitioning your HDD and also could be becoz of the BootMagic had replaced your MBR with its own custom boot record. i wud say it may work if you remove Bootmagic and install GRUB onto the MBR ISO using it off a floppy disk. i dont think you'r going to try this.
----------------------------
re: "I guess it's the same thing with LiLo: can you install it in the linux 'boot' partition (this is an option you get while installing RedHat), not in the MBR, and still be able to use it for loading MS OS-s?"

- No, without the help of BootMagic you can not just install Lilo to the root partition (ISO the MBR) and use it as a boot manager for your system. when your computer start.. it's bios will look at the MBR(1st sector of the HDD) for instuctions on how to load an OS., bios will not see Lilo when its in root partition,
if you do not use the BootMagic or you willing to remove it, your next Linux installation you can just insatll Lilo onto the MBR as you saw it at the last time when you first install Linux, the install program usually steps you through the process of automatically generating a lilo.conf file. It works well most of the time.

;

[merry]

Thanks. I think you're right about PM modifying the MBR - guess I'll uninstall it and see.

I'll definitely try to use GRUB instead, not only it looks a lot better, but it seems to have a whole bunch of options one can experiment with. But this will take a while...

Thanks again

[uf4]

i'm glad.
and if you still having prob. re unable to remove the BootMagic with add/remove pls let me know. and also i'm sure i'll get some good tip & tricks about the GRUB from you soon. good luck

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