LinuxQuestions.org - SWL & WIN on 1 HDD with no Boot disk for SW! HELP!!!!!! :(

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SWL & WIN on 1 HDD with no Boot disk for SW! HELP!!!!!! :(

I bought a sweet new notebook from SAGER and it has a 3.2 Ghz. CPU, 1 GB of RAM, ATi Mobility Radeon 9700 video card, 17" Minitor... ETC... :)... But the thing that is missing is a floppy drive... :(... So I'm running Microsoft Windows XP Media Center on it at the moment. I would like to install Slackware Linux 10.0 onto it aswell without destroying my WINDOWS OS. So if I can set something like this up so maybe I can boot up my laptop and choose to start with Slackware or Windows.. But I installed slackware onto my other PC but it needed a damn floppy disk to boot up Slackware.. So it didnt work out. Now I'm woundering if I can install Slackware onto my laptop without demaging my WINDOWS OS. But have Both WINDOWS and Linux on one HDD. So when I turn on my laptop it will give me a option that I can start with Linux or Windows, maybe soemthing liek a dual-boot... And if I choose to go with start up with Slackware Linux it would not ask me for a damn floppy boot disk shit, it should just start. SO I HOPE that you ~pros~ can understand me and help me out with this. IF you can't help out but know links that tell you how, I WOULD LOVE THAT TOO... So.. Please help.. :)

slackware with no floppy

Hello GR33NF00T

You are in the perfect place. On one of the 4 cd's that come with Slackware is "parted" you can use that or my favorite "Partition Magic" to shrink up the XP partition to make room for Slackware.

You should not need any floppy stuff. I have only needed floppys to load older systems with Slack.

I Have a P4 2.4ghz Sony laptop running Slack and there is no floppy drive in that unit either. And the loading process never asked to use one other than to make a emergency root/boot disk. Because I don't have a floppy drive I just skip that activity and continue with the loading process. If you ever need a recovery disk, you may want to use something like a Knoppix od Damm Small Linux CD.

Your machine should be perfect for what you are planning.

Slack uses Lilo as a boot loader, so after the bios loads, you will be looking at a nice clean display asking you to select which OS you want to boot.

Good Luck.

Re: slackware with no floppy

Quote:

Originally posted by guzzi
Slack uses Lilo as a boot loader

Will LILO correctly boot windows xp? I currently have XP and slack 10 on my machine (just installed slack 10 minutes ago) and I am now using a floppy to boot slack. Is it OK to configure LILO?

Quote:

Will LILO correctly boot windows xp? I currently have XP and slack 10 on my machine (just installed slack 10 minutes ago) and I am now using a floppy to boot slack. Is it OK to configure LILO?

Lilo works perfectly with windows xp. I use it all the time. :) (Not like windows works perfectly with linux...)

If you want to have windows and slack dual booted with lilo, you can make a file called /etc/lilo.conf and paste the following text:

Code:

boot=/dev/hda

install=/boot/boot.b

prompt

timeout=150

message=/boot/message

lba32

default=Linux



image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.28

        label=Linux

        append="root=LABEL=/"

        read-only

        initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.28.img



other=/dev/hda2

        table=/dev/hda

        label=Windows

This assumes that you have linux kernel 2.4.28, and windows on the second partition of the first harddrive. Change it to suit your needs. So, lilo will wait 15 seconds before it boots into linux.

Well I set something up with LILO but when I boot up my machine its just a black screen and in the top left corner it says 'GRUB'... So I have no idea what the hell that means and I wasited about 5 minutes and it did not boot up slackware... It just said "GRUB".. So I thought it needed a boot disk for it to boot up.. I also want to be very careful this time when I install slackware 10.0 onto my laptop because last time i did it it killed my windows OS and i had a hard time fixing the master boot record to install back windows. But now I have it all fixed and I only have Windows XP MC on my laptop now. Before I install SLACKWARE onto my machine and set up some duel-boot with LILO or whatever you call it. I would like to learn as muh as posible about it before doing it again..

You must first run /sbin/lilo

Well I'm a n00b at this so I don't know how to run that because all I see is a blank screen that says GRUB on it.. It wont even let me type... But that is what happend before, now I'm focusing on how to install SLackware with setting up a dual-boot without no floopy crap. I still don't quite under stand that part..

Oh, you have to get into slackware linux to run /sbin/lilo. Have you made an emergency bootdisk? If not, boot into your distro cd, select rescue mode, and then run /sbin/lilo.