Dual Booting, Partitioning, Boot Loader, Misc Stuff
 

Well, I've been browsing here for the past week now, looking over posts to find out what would be the best way to dual boot Win 2000 Pro and Slackware. I want to dual boot both OSes, however I'm a tad chicken since all my work is stored on this computer. So, I thought I'd ask for some help.

1). The boot loader I will be using is OSLoader2000. It has worked good thus far...will I be able to boot Slackware with this?

2). I have Partition Magic 8. So, all I need to do is click “Install another operating system?” If I do, will I be able to choose said partition when I install Slack?

3). Once I set my CD-ROM to boot via the Windows bios, and after Slack is installed, will my computer reboot and detect the CD ROM again? Or will my boot loader load before booting the CD? Or, do I just boot windows and enter the bios and set everythin back to norm?

4). What is a mount point? Will I have to mount the Linux Partition to my Windows Partition?

5). After installing Slack, will I need to specify my hardware or will it detect my hardware on it’s own? Will it detect my cable modem? Let me know what I need to find out…

I appreciate this so much. If anyone can help…please don’t use complicated stuffs. I’m a newbie to Linux. Mamma always said life is like Windows 95. You never know when it’s gonna crash.

1. Dunno
2. Dunno
3. After the install, I'd reboot, reset my BIOS to the hard drive, and it'd go right on through to your new boot process.
4. Linux has a single file system. So, rather than having a A: drive and a C: drive and a D: drive and so on, these are separate file systems that have to be 'mounted' into the root file system. A mount point is a directory that serves as a place holder, sort of. Like /mnt/floppy is the place where you might mount the files on a floppy into the floppy directory - which is part of the mnt directory - which is on your / (root) directory.

You don't *have* to mount it, but you can't access files on that partition without mounting it. Then again, if you've got NTFS, all you can get is read-only access. If it's any other MS filesystem, you can read and write more or less like it's all one drive and system.

5. Dunno specifically - most distros do a fair amount of auto-detection and, if youve got normal hardware, it might catch all of it. If you've got weird stuff, you'll have to specify details.

Hope that gives you a little something and somebody else can add more. :)

Re: Dual Booting, Partitioning, Boot Loader, Misc Stuff
 

I don't know OSLoader2000, however I do know that with either Lilo or Grub you shouldn't have any problems (both come with slack I think)

During the installation you'll be confronted with the question where you want to install and be offered options. Slack should also offer a partition tool to create boot, root and swap partitions and you could also use that to free up space if you'd want to.

First of all, the bios has nothing to do with Microsoft (fortunately, I could not deal with a crashing bios) and is not part of Windows. you switch on the power, bios is activated and starts the boot sequence and only then windows starts booting.
I have my bios set to boot to cdrom first then floppy then hdd as default. Doesn't cause any problems whatsoever.

In linux you have to mount devices to have acces to them (because of safety reasons the microsoft chose to ignore). e.g. you mount the cdrom (mount /dev/cdrom) and you mount it to a folder (typically /mnt/cdrom) that folder is the mount point. You can mount windows in linux to have acces to your windows partition, but not vice versa (ask microsoft why not)

Most distro's autodetect hardware, don't know about slack though since it's not quite a newbie distro. I'm sure someone else can tell you more on this.

For most things you'll be able to find the info you need searching this forum of google. If you can't figgure it out you're always welcome to post the question here. Try not to post too many questions in one post though. Each questions requires a different expertise (person who answers it) and it's kind of a long process answering all questions in such posts (especially for those of us who do this illegaly at work ;) )

Good luck
Anne

Okay, cool. I think I'm starting to understand this somewhat. (Thanks for the fast replies!)

I understand what mounting is now, I just don't know how to achieve it...

I don't wanna mount it to my Windows Partition, so what is the main mount point? I do like keeping files on my puter. =D

Edit: Ohh. Is /root already mounted?

mount /dev/hda1 -t vfat /mnt/hd

for instance - if what you were trying to mount was the first partition of the first drive (hda1) and it was a vfat type filesystem, (-t vfat) mounted on '/mnt/hd'. 'man mount' will give you information.

/ is mounted - or it'd better be *g* - and would be handled, along with any other filesystems you had to have, in /etc/fstab. Any optional or removable drives, you'd probably add at the command line like above.

I don't understand this part. You wouldn't mount anything to Windows, because it doesn't really mount. You'd mount Windows to Linux if you wanted. And the mount point is optional - any *empty* directory that you choose as a mount point, though it's usually a subdirectory of /mnt.

Okay, so mounting isn't really needed eh? I can still access my files without a mount? ( Please please please pardon my blatant newbieishness. =( )

the root partition (the main partition where you installed linux) is already -automatically- mounted.

You have to mount:
floppy (dev/fd0) to acces it typically to /mnt/floppy
cdrom (dev/cdrom) to acces it typically to /mnt/cdrom
any other partition apart from root partition ( / ) where you put data on for example
you have windows on hda1
boot on hdc1
root (for linux) on hdc2
a empy partition on hdc3
and a swap partition on hdc4

Then to acces data on hdc3 or hda1 from linux you'd have to mount them.

you could have them mount automatically for you (as windows does for any non-linux partition), but that poses the danger of you accidently wiping them out, so be carefull with that.

If you want a partition where you can put data that both windows and linux can have acces to, you'd have to create a fat partition.

Hoping that I'm making things clearer,
Anne

That did help a lot! Thanks sooo much!