A little help for a newbie - Dual Boot
 

I'm sure this has probably been addressed before, so someone can hopefully help me out.

I have been running WinXP Home for a while now on my 120GB hard drive. I have recently decided to dive into the world that is Linux, and I downloaded Redhat 7.3 last night.

I would like to install RH 7.3 on my second hard drive, a 12.7GB Maxtor. My wish is to of course be able to dual boot and decide at startup which I want to use.

Everytime I go to install Linux from the CDs I burned, I chicken out at the disk partition options screen. I don't want to hose up my WinXP system, because I've got WAY too much stuff to lose on there. Can someone give me some guidance?

Thank you very much.

Yes, this has been done by many (if not most people) on this forum. Consequently there are many, many threads which can be searched for this precise topic. Use the search facility like a local google engine. Oh, and use http://www.google.com/linux too.

Bert

Okay I think I'm in trouble now. I'm posting here from my RH 7.3 system (obviously the install went ok), but at startup I wasn't given the option to select WinXP. I installed the lilo at the MBR as instructed. Can someone help me out please?

Please post your /etc/lilo.conf file here so we can see what went wrong.

Your Windoze space is not gone, and it is not hosed up. The only problem is that lilo, for some reason, does not know where it is.

Here you go. Thanks for the quick reply. I have to fix this before the fiancee gets home!!!!


prompt
timeout=50
default=linux
boot=/dev/hde
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
message=/boot/message
linear

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-3
label=linux
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.18-3.img
read-only
root=/dev/hdf2
append="hdc=ide-scsi"

add these lines
other = /dev/hda
label = dos

run lilo and make sure you get o/p like.
added linux*
added dos

I assumed you have winxp in /dev/hda -- primary master. If it does not work, delete the newly added lines and run lilo again so that you have atleast linux. man lilo.conf gives a lot of details on all these.
--Sarin

Nice quick and to the point Sarin, I would change a few things myself, and add a bit, here's my suggestion:
other = /dev/hda1
table = /dev/hda
label = winbloze

And then to rerun lilo:
/sbin/lilo -v
The -v will give you more verbose updating of Lilo, which I like verbose.

Where you stationed at USN d00d? Navy d00ds rule!

And if you could also post the output of:
fdisk -l (FDISK -L lowercase) that would help to us to identify drive placement, and things like that.

Cool

I got the answer over at linuxnewbie.org:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Try adding this to the end of /etc/lilo.conf and run /sbin/lilo after.




other = /dev/hdeX
label = WinXP
table = /dev/hde

*(where x is the actual partition win is on

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Right now, I'm stationed in VA. I did my first 3 years in Hawaii, and have been in VA for the last 5.

Do you like VA? Are you on a ship or what?

I am a Corpsman. I went straight from Boot to corps school (both in Great Mistakes), then to Field Med School (with the marines in Camp Legune, NC) and then onto Pharmacy Tech school (C School in Portsmouth, VA) and did some OJT during 3 months before class up at Scott's Center Pharmacy in Portsmouth, and finally to here, where I've been for ~2.5 years. I have about a year left in the Navy, then I gotta decide whether to re-up (Decent SRB for Pharmacy Techs) for 3 years and go somewhere cool overseas, or get out and live the Civilian life :)

Cool, another Navy dude here :)

VA is cool up here. I didn't care for Norfolk. Too much traffic and too many squids. I've been in since '93 and I'm a CTO1. I've got about 16 months left in. Even with an SRB they can't match what I'd make on the outside.

So did you get it fixed? If so could you tell us what you did, Was XP on hda or hde?

USAF since 1988

Yup it got fixed, see 4 posts up. Someone over at linuxnewbie.org told me what to put in the lilo.conf. Yes, my XP is on hde1. For some reason, my drives are set up like this:

hde = 120 GB (3 40GB partitions) WinXP drive
hdf = 12.7GB Linux drive

Ok gotcha, the hde thing confused me for a min.
You must have one of those new Mobo's with the 4 ide controllers on them :)
Built in raid controllers?

Not that I'm aware of. Had this CPU since October of 2000, and it's nothing special. I don't know why I've got hde and hdf.

what does fdisk -l give you?