Mandriva and win XP in a new PC
 

I'm planning to install Mandriva 2007 and windows XP in a new PC computer. The old doubts come back. Which steps I must to execute in what order? Partitioning a 40 GB for Ext3 and NTFS. Is it true that Mandriva 2007 read and write NTFS? Which partition sizes I select for linux and/or windows?
Do I begin booting from Mandriva 2007 disk and create the partitions, format the extf3 and swap and install linux first? Is LILO installed automatically? What will happen when I'll try to install win XP? Do I boot from win XP installation disk? How would LILO acts in this case?

I think I'm needing a HOWTO. Is there someone somewhere?

Have someone a "pie receipt" about this?

Greetings from Sao Paulo - Brazil

Ricardo

P.S.: I swear this time I'll write down the steps I do.

Make sure you install Windows first. Leave enough space after you've installed Windows to install Mandriva. Once Windows is installed, do Mandriva and follow the instructions. It really is that simple.

Obviously, when it comes to installing Mandriva and where on the HDD choose the option that doesn't overwrite Windows. ;)

Once you've installed Mandriva, grub will give you the choice to boot into Windows or Linux.

I believe Linux can now write to NTFS partitions as well as read from them.

The partition sizes I think would depend on what you want to install on the two systems. 20G is, in truth, plenty big enough for Mandriva if you're not storing big video files. I find that 6-8G for / 4G for swap and the rest for /home works.

I wouldn't get too worried about it all though, it's all very straightforward. :)

im using an xp/mandriva system right now... my laptop... 40gb hard drive too :P

do this:

install windows (dont worry about exact partitioning or anything... just install to the whole drive)

reboot to the mandriva cd/dvd

follow all the prompts to install mandriva (its all pretty easy to follow. when you get to the partitioning part, choose the option that resizes the windows partition but does not erase it)

i did mine like this... 25gb for windows (big programs are installed), 14gb reiserfs for linux (was originally 8gb for root and 6gb for /usr, but i ran out of space in root a few times so just combined them for ease of use), and 1gb for swap... the partitioning tool used durring mandriva install is very good and also fast and stable so it shouldnt corrupt windows (although the next time you start xp it will run chkdisk to make sure everything is all good)

as for lilo, durring install you get a choice to use either lilo or grub as well as some basic configuration options for them.

currently mandriva CAN read/write ntfs, BUT you need to know how to set that up since it is not the default configuration.... i think it uses ntfs-3g but it may be a similar driver... i havnt tried setting it up yet since i can read ntfs without it and have no need to write to ntfs from mandriva personally

btw: i did it on a laptop, mandriva is my best experience so far on my laptop due to its ease of set up and good assortment of features and its stability

have fun :P you should be able to do it all in a couple hours (if you pick all your packages individually like me, otherwise you can be done quicker by using one of the default package options

How I do it...
 

All of my machines that are running Linux also run some version of Windoze. Please note, this works with Windoze NT, 2000, and XP. According to legend, Vista requires a different set up steps in order to make things work. I haven't tried dual boot with Vista as I think it's a crappy system.

As with all things I post here, this is my experience. There may be better ways out there to do things, but my method does work, and the system on which I am typing stands as proof. It's a Toshiba Satellite 1005-S157, just a bit modified from original (bigger hard drive).

1) Start with a blank hard drive, or one with data you are willing to sacrifice.
2) Insert the Windoze install CD (Win2K and XP), or the boot floppies (NT 3.5 or 4.0).
3) Create two separate partitions; the first FAT, the second NTFS. I will discuss my logic later.
4) Format these partitions and install Windoze.
5) Install Linux install CD.
6) create a native Linux partition and a swap partition as well.
7) Take note of the way the partitions fall using the Linux fdisk program. If the Linux partitions fall after the last Windoze partition, consider yourself lucky. If they fall before it, or between the FAT and NTFS partitions, you may have to play with your Windoze boot.ini file. See example below:
In order to get windoze to boot, you may have to change the number that appears in parentheses after the word "partition". I had to with this machine. Two other dual boot systems required no fiddling with the boot.ini file.
8) Install Linux into its native partition, and install either lilo or grub, depending on your distro, or the option you desire. When installing lilo, install it to the MBR. Do the same with grub. It makes killing off your Linux partition as easy as typing fdisk/mbr.

Now for the logic behind this set up. I first began playing with Linux in 1994, soon after Linus Torvalds first created the Linux kernel. At that time, the best, and really the only way to dual boot was to partition the drive as above. Now, even though Linux has come a long way, and is more forgiving of certain sins, I prefer to set things up in a way that is time tested and true.

While you might be able to do some nifty things with partition sizing software, I much prefer to set it and forget it when it comes to partition sizing. I have had bad luck with partition sizers in the past. However, I have never nuked a Windoze machine using my particular set up.

Setting up the first partition as FAT allows you to pass files between Linux and Windoze without having to use an intermediary, such as a network server. While you can compile the abilty to write to NTFS into the kernel, you also need a secondary program to allow you use that write access. Having the FAT partition eliminates this problem. Also, Linux supports writing to FAT32 as well as FAT16 without a secondary program, so it makes sense to have this.

Now, as I said above, this is only one of many ways that others have shared with you. I set up my machines this way because I want the most stability I can get on the Linux side of things. While the steps I take may not give me total stability, at least I know I have done the basics properly.

Good luck, however you make it happen...

Blessed be!
Pappy

Mandriva and XP
 

When I got my new computer a couple of years back I first of all installed windows XP and used its partioning system to create two primary partitions, the first one an NTFS of 20Gb and the second one a FAT 32 of 10Gb. The logic being that I believed Windows is a strange beast in seeming to want to be on the first partition of a hard drive. The second partition as FAT 32 was to allow me to dump files from Linux into it and then pick them up in Windows or vice versa. This worked well as long as I remembered to use the appropriate tools for DOS files in Linux. This was on a 120 Gb hard drive. Every thing worked well until about two months ago when that disk developed a fault and crashed. Seeing that I had decided to change over to Ubuntu 6.06 after installing a 250 Gb hard drive I decided to have a go at setting up VirtualBox and running XP in a virtual machine under Linux. That is now working fine except that I have not yet learned the trick of getting my USB printers installed in Windows XP. The strange thing about the hard drive that crashed was that although it would not boot the day after the crash I was able to get it going about a month later with a judicious tap with the handle of my battery driven screwdriver in the right place.
Every now and then I unplug my new 250 Gb hard drive and plug the old drive in and it still works fine although the crash seemed to corrupt some of the files on it, especially on the Linux partition.

Done
 

Last weekend I do the job.

1. Create a new NTFS partition using the entire HD and install the windows XP;

2. Boot from Mandriva 2006(Mandriva 2007 multi CD version wasn't released by Mandriva. At least I read about in some place in the Mandriva site) and resize the NTFS partition to 25 GB, create a swap partition with 1 GB and a ext3 partition with remaining of the HD space.

The unique trouble I have is that I must boot XP and defrag the HD recently formatted. It's ridiculous because I had recently formatted and only installed the operating system... Initially Mandriva reports that the NTFS was corrupted. After the defrag everything is OK. Mandriva recognize all my hardware items... I was thinking now: And about the fax modem? I think it wasn't recognized, but I'm not sure. Nothing strange at all. Even windows XP has trouble to recognize fax modems...

Thanks for everybody that give me help

Ricardo

P.S.: If someone have singular questions, please, be my guest.