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-   -   Dual Booting XP and Red Hat (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/dual-booting-xp-and-red-hat-230153/)

jackp 09-13-2004 02:31 PM

Dual Booting XP and Red Hat
 
I have a specific problem and am hopeful someone can point out what I'm doing wrong...

My System: Pentium 4, 2.6 ghz with 2 Maxtor hd's: 40 gb and 60 gb.

My 60 gb hd is primary and has 2 partitions: C: and D: (C: has XP on it and D: is for programs and data) The file system is NTFS. I do not want to touch this primary drive at all for my Linux installation.

My other 40 gb hd is where I want to put Linux (formerly drive E: under Windows).

Here is what I did:

I used Partition Magic to repartition this drive into 2 ext2 drives: one 500mb for SWAP and the other 38gb for the main Linux install.

I then set up Boot Magic for the dual boot, making XP my default boot.

Next, as per Partition Magic's instruction, I booted to the Red Hat Cd1 and started the Linux installation. Unfortunately, the installation stops at the partitioning part, giving a message that it can't create the root partition. I am picking the hdc drive because I'm assuming that's the old Drive E: that I've converted specifically for the Linux installation.

Based on what I've read on this forum, I should be able to install Linux on my second hard drive (which I assume is hdc). But apparently I can't. I've tried both automatic partitioning and the manual one (Disk Druid). Both give the same error msg of not being able to create the root partition.

I'm probably doing something simple wrong but, of course, being new to Linux, I don't have a clue as to what that may be. If anyone has any ideas here, it would be greatly appreciated. (And yes, I have read extensively on this site to try and find my own solution. The problem is that I do not want to install Linux on my primary drive and most instructions here involve re-sizing my primary partition on hda. I don't want to touch my NTFS system on windows drives c: and d: and I don't plan on accessing these logical drives when in Linux, so there's no need to convert them to FAT32.

Other instructions assume a new installation of XP to go along with Linux. My XP setup is "mature" and I simply don't want to mess with it.)

Thanks to anyone who offers some help...

- Jack

codecruncher 09-13-2004 02:54 PM

A quick first pointer:

hda - master drive ide channel 0
hdb - slave drive ide channel 0
hdc - maser drive ide channel 1
hdd - slave drive ide channel 1

If all those were build in they would be in order C: D: E: F:.

But a safe bet is to remove the existing ext2 partitions and leave the space blank. Then tell the RedHat install only to use free disk space and leave the rest alone. Use grub or lilo (grub beeing the default on RH) and kick the PartitionMagic guy.

I never used Boot Magic. Never had a need for it.

Just my 2 cents..

regards
Klaus

berkay 09-13-2004 02:56 PM

Maybe you can re-format your 40gb hd without partition magic... You can use fdisk... Usage of fdisk may seem difficult, but believe me it isn't... My advice is, boot your system with a bootable cd which could be knoppix or maybe gentoo live cds... When you get in to linux environment (linux console :)) you can simply 'fdisk -l /dev/hdc' to see how your hd looks like... before making any changes, read fdisk's man (man fdisk) carefully.

Maybe fdisk could solve your hd problem [by saying solving, you can reformat hdc(40gb) with fdisk]. Then you could be able to install red hat with your fresh formatted hdc :)

PS: That's only my advice :)

jackp 09-14-2004 01:43 PM

Thanks for dual boot help - now out of range problem
 
Thanks for the help. I managed to get Red Hat installed. Now I need to be able to see it!!! My LCD Viewsonic reports "out of range" when the graphical interface boots up. I need to be able to get into "text mode" (if there is such a thing) and I need to be able to edit some configuration file (/etc/lilo.conf?) somewhere to change vga=791 to vga=795, and vertrefresh=60 (according to what I've read).

This is perplexing to me however, as I set the h and v frequencies to 60 during installation, well within my monitor's operating parameters.

Any further help on this would be greatly appreciated...

- Jack

berkay 09-15-2004 01:09 AM

You can go into text mode by ctrl+alt+F1 (from F1 to F6) ... Then you can edit lilo.conf and other settings as well...

rm6990 09-15-2004 04:53 AM

What type of video card do you have?

jackp 09-15-2004 01:36 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by rm6990
What type of video card do you have?
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600

- Jack

nchauhan 12-22-2004 11:34 PM

Hi Jack,

How did u manage to intall RedHat? Did you do any formatting for RedHat?

I have resized NTFS with 35GB for Linux but I get error when I hit "partition option: automatically or manually using Disk Druid". It cannot find 'device' to install RedHat (9.0). I am not formatting it to anything just leaving 35GB unformatted and rest is NTFS.


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