After much consideration, I thought about a multiple boot system on a 40 GB HD, with XP Pro, Slack 9.1, and saving room/partition space for an unknown distro to toy with.

Result, why "toy" with another Linux distro when I think Slack is right up there with, well ................... a cold one. After playing with Slack 9.0 since it's release, I am SOLD. I am committed to having only a dual boot with XP and Slack 9.1.

After reading thread after thread on partitioning, and multi-booting, etc., I am left a little .......... muttled, to be absolutely truthful. I can appreciate how the proverbial SEARCH can leave one feeling less knowledgeable and confident in being able to successfully do anything ......... that I bring this to your attention.

What is the simpliest way of dual booting? I have read a number of times to set aside about 50MB for a Boot partition to allow multi-booting. Is this where lilo or grub will "live"? Versus just using lilo or grub within /? I am committed to partitioning for /home, since this will lead to easier upgrading in the future, how does adding /usr/local to /home make my life easier in the long run?

I hope, with out asking, this is not perceived as a grub vs lilo thread, not knowing ALL the pros and cons of either, I am just looking for the easiest method with the HD I am about to partition.

With due respect and awe for your insightful knowledge! (Was that come-on to thick?)

Justaguy

Personally, I would just go ahead and install LILO to the MBR and then configure LILO to use your windows partition as a possible boot option.

Going off of limited knowledge and my Running Linux 4th Edition (O'Reilly) you would do this by editing /etc/lilo.conf and include the following

Of course the location of the partition and partition table can vary depending on what device your harddrive is referenced to.

AFAIK this is all that needs to be done to have lilo dual boot ready for windows on the same partition as linux.

Then again... I am only a linux novice.

You're describing the exact same setup I have on my home machine. I've also always left 50 Mb or so for /boot at the very beginning of the disk, but after switching from RH8.0 to Slackware 9.1, /boot actually is part of /, which is on /dev/hda2.

My partition scheme looks like this:

/dev/hda1 Linux (50 Mb, more or less)
/dev/hda2 NTFS (Windows XP Pro, ~40 Gb)
/dev/hda3 Linux (Slackware 9.1, ~40 Gb)
/dev/hda4 Linux swap (1 Gb)

Grub/Lilo live in /boot, as far as I know. If you have a newer motherboard, you can boot off any partition you want; older mbs have problems booting from above the 1024th cylinder.

I'd recommend Grub over Lilo. It's more difficult to make a machine un-bootable with Grub.

I think the least headache way to do it is probably the most time consuming, but I've done it dual booting on a few desktops and a laptop.

Step 1. Back up whatever you want to keep to CD.

Step 2. Insert Windows CD when you boot to reinstall windows. Use windows to configure the partitions. You don't want to format any part of the HD where windows tossed files and try to use windows.

Step 3. Partition your harddrive using the windows installer. Pick how much you want to give to Win, and how much to give to Linux. Remember you can read NTFS with linux and there is expiramental NTFS write support. If you leave room for your mp3s and whatnot on the windows partition you can use them in either OS. So essentially you'll come out of windows with 2 big partions, one for Win, one for slack.

Step 4. Load windows on its partition.

Step 5. Reboot and install slack on the other partition. Use the slack installer to partition for your root and swap partitions. Some people like to keep boot as a separate partition and you can save that if you switch distros or reinstall later. So you'll break down your slack partition into at least 2 pieces. Most people say twice your RAM up to 1 GB is a good swap. The more RAM you have, the less you'll need SWAP. I have 1 GB of RAM and 1 GB of swap on 120 GB HD.

In the slack installer have it install LILO or Grub into MBR. I haven't ever had it screw up the MBR. Using LILO you will have to add an entry for windows.

I think the entry is (someone can correct me if I'm wrong)

other=/dev/hdX where X is the name of the partition windows is on ex. hda1
label = Whatever (Windows, XP, whatever you want to name it).

then run lilo (/sbin/lilo) again and it should say added Whatever. If so, you're all set to dual boot. If lilo comes back with an error, then you didn't provide the right path to the windows partition.

Reboot.. and you can dual boot.

I don't know how GRUB works, don't use it.

Thanks for all the help and support! I have a dual boot system at this time, I thought it would be the simpliest way to configure while installing, rather than having to "go back to do anything"! Inexperience tells me that unless it is done correctly the first time, I lose confidence that I may jeopardize the "whole works!"

May I ask, how I go about symlinking /home to /usr/local/home? I have absolutely NO EXPERIENCE in symlinking, it sounds simple enough, but thought I would let the experts reccommend the correct and proper method. Confidence is building!

Thanks again, EVERYBODY!


justaguy

> May I ask, how I go about symlinking /home to /usr/local/home? I have absolutely NO EXPERIENCE in
> symlinking, it sounds simple enough, but thought I would let the experts reccommend the correct and
> proper method.

Nothing easier: as root, type

% ln -s /usr/local/home /home

The ln command has the operands switched from the order you'd naturally expect. Read this as "make a symbolic link to /usr/local/home, and call it /home. The "-s" makes the link symbolic. If you want, you can make a hard link (which looks like a regular directory) simply by leaving off the "-s" option.

i use system commander. it works awesome. it partitions and controls what OS to boot. its also easier when you have seperate drives, XP on one and Linux on another.

can i ask two questions though? what is the benefit of symlinking and why do it?