hello exeryone,
I am new to installing linux on a dual boot sytem and am having truble installing it on my system

This is what i have

Present configuration

Harddisk 1:

size :70 GB with windows XP installed and available space of about 5GB . filesystem is ntfs.


Hard disk 2:

3 partitions of 100 GB each of which 2 partitions are ntfs and one FAT32



How can i install fedora or redhat linux on the 2nd hard disk fat32 partition.

Please help

First of all welcome to the world of linux.

Now to what you want to know.

When you go through the install process it will ask you where you want to install to. Provided that your hardware gets recognised it will see the harddrives and ask you some questions about it. Like which one to use and how much of it.

Point it to the partition that you want to use. At a guess I would say it would be hdb3. This means that it is on the primary IDE bus as a slave (the hdb bit) and it is the third primary partition (the 3 bit). In this case the one which is currently formatted with fat32 filesystem. But as linux does not install on fat32 fs it will need to be reformatted with something that will work, like ext2, ext3 or reiserfs. These are the most commonly used filesystems, there are more out there, but for now stick to one of these.

The most important thing to remember is that when you play around with formatting and changing partition tables you can lose all the information on the disk or disks. There are ways of getting it back but these can be very complicated and sometimes costly.

BACKUP ALL IMPORTANT STUFF BEFORE YOU MAKE CHANGES.

Alternatively use a different machine if possible. Or remove the current drives and put one in that does not contain anything with wish to keep.

Please don't let this scare you off, once you begin using linux you will enjoy it.

Fedora Core 4 Install

This by all means may not work for everybody.

I run an Intel D865perl motherboard with 2.6 gig Intel processor with 1 gig of ram. Two 250 gig
hard drives. The first hard drive is for Windows XP. Second hard drive is for Fedora and data
backups.

Drive 2 the first 40 gig is Fedora and the second 210 gig is for files backups and Norton ghost 2003
images. Which I never doing anything without a current image file it will save your butt.

Install Fedora Core 4 on the second hard drive and use the automatic partitioning tool but don't
put grub on your Master MBR put it on the first sector on your second drive. When you get to the
Boot Loader Configuration screen make sure you check the Configure advanced boot loader
options. The next screen will give the option where to put Grub Boot Loader. It should say like
hda or hdb. Hda is usually your XP Drive. From their finish loading. Put it on hdb.

Now duel booting using XP boot manager (My Preference. I don't like third party boot managers.)

Use your rescue CD to boot to Fedora.
Hit enter at the boot prompt.
Hit enter for English
Hit enter for us
Setup network select no
At the rescue screen select continue
At the next rescue screen hit enter
Now you have a prompt sh-3.00#
At the prompt type in chroot /mnt/sysimage
If hdb2 is Not your boot partition, change it as appropriate. Type: df then determine which hda#
Run the command dd if=/dev/hdb2 of=boot.lnx bs=512 count=1
You should see
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
Type ls and you should see a file named boot.lnx
Put a blank floppy disk in your a: drive
Type mcopy boot.lnx a:
It should have copied the file to your a: drive

Now reboot to Windows

Copy boot.lnx to your root directory
Right click on your boot.ini file select properties and uncheck read only click ok
Double click your boot.ini file and add one line at the end it should read
C:\boot.lnx="Fedora Core 3". Then save it. When you reboot your XP boot
manager will come up and you can chose Fedora it jumps to the Grub Boot manager on your
second drive.

My file looks like this

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(0)(1)\windows
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(0)(1)\windows="Microsoft Windows XP Pro SP2"
/fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
c:\boot.lnx="RedHat Fedora Core 3 Project"

You call it anything you want

hi i was able to install redhat atlast but for some reason, all my usb ports are not being recognized. i hooked up my mouse to to a couple of slots while installing nad after installing and only one of them works? anything i am missing. also i am using airlink pci card for my wireless and it works fine on win xp but how do i make it to wrk on linux.plz help