Dual Booting - Need Some Help
 

Alright.

I've been playing with Linux for some time, off and on, and because I've recently joined a BIT program at my Uni, I've been told that I need to have a Linux instal, and Slackware was recommended.

I have a bit of history with Mandrake from several years ago, although I ditched it for 98se (damn the evil empire, and all that jazz). I did a ninja install of SuSE 9.0 on all the local YMCA lab computers (blaster virus didn't affect them after that... go me). At work, I use several variations of Linux/UNIX on some SUN towers.

I've started playing with using Linux Live CDs with DSL and SLAX, but they're just not cutting it. Since I have a good deal of things that I want/need to keep in the Windows XP setup I have now, but still need to use Linux, I want to do a Dual Boot, and as I hear nothing but good things about Slackware, I figured this'd be my go.

Would someone be so kind as to give me a hand with the process? My system specs are as follows:

HP Pavilion
AMD Athalon XP 3200+
2.20 GHz, 512 MB of RAM

Have a DVD-ROM drive, CD-RW, six USB ports, four card readers of various sorts, a C: and D: embedded drive.

To be honest, I am pretty clueless when it comes to partitioning and whatnot. In my last several installs of SuSE and Mandrake, it eradicated Windows from the systems altogether, so I want to be very careful.

Thanks for the help... if you want to give me a holler via IMs:
AIM: NekoNoMaru
YIM: Cryptotechint
MSN: mayjamesr@hotmail.com

-James

Hey James.

Well. partitioning isnt very hard. you said you have a c and a d harddisk. if you dont need them both for windows the easiest thing to do would be to save all the stuff you want to keep from D: onto C: and use the D: disk for your slackware os.
Otherwise you can just partition off a part of the disk you want to use. best to get a windows partition application for this and cut away the partition you want before you start the install you dont need to worry about the filesystem type or anything at this stage.

Then... using the slackware install cds you will run the cfdisk or fdisk applications (i prefer cfdisk) and partition off the parts you need. all you have to do here is find the D: disk or the partition you cut out of the disk and make a bootable partition for your / root in the linux filesystem type(88 in the menu i think) and a swap partition (somthing like 87 in the menu). and I ususally make a third linux partition for /home/.

after you run cfdisk or fdisk you will need to reboot after that the partitionng is done.
hope that helps or even makes sense.


Cheers,
Ben.

GRUB and LILO always conflict with Windows. And GNU GRUB is not so robust, causing many problems during boot.

So try GRUB for DOS please. It is a cross-platform boot loader based on GNU GRUB. The GRUB.EXE can be started from DOS/Win9x; and GRLDR can be started from BOOT.INI of Windows NT/2K/XP/2003; and even more, the GRUB.EXE can be started from LINUX via the KEXEC tool.

By using GRUB.EXE or GRLDR, you don't have to touch your MBR. It is the safest way coexisting with DOS/Windows.

You needn't install GRUB for DOS. Just run GRUB.EXE from DOS, or append a line of "C:\GRLDR=START GRUB" into your BOOT.INI(restart and select the "START GRUB" menu item), that will do.

Download GRUB for DOS here: http://freshmeat.net/projects/grub4dos/

There is a fat12grldr.img file with the GRUB for DOS release. You can create a GRUB bootable floppy with this fat12grldr.img file.

Or, you can just copy GRUB.EXE to your DOS floppy and run GRUB.EXE to enter the GRUB environment.

I can't seem to find any partitioning tools. :(

If you want to stay on the opensource side, you'll probably want to use ntfsresize and some partitioning tool like fdisk, cfdisk, parted, qtparted, gparted.
If you're novice with this, I would recommend you to use Partition Magic, it's commercial, but it's very easy to use. You may also want to try qtparted which is similar to Partition Magic but free.
I did something similar to what you want to do some days ago using this live cd: http://www.tux.org/pub/people/kent-r...looplinux/rip/ (read the README there for more details).

If you can, make a backup of your data before trying this.

If you are new to partitioning then I empathize with you that the idea is somewhat asphyxiating the first few times. Nobody wants to lose data. Here is what I did several years ago to prepare for multi-booting:

1. Run a disk defragger. I had already owned an old copy of Symantec's Speed Disk for my NT4 box. I usually kept my NT4 partitions defragged, but I ran a few passes manually before thinking about resizing my partitions.

2. I then performed a full backup.

3. I found a nice graphical partitioning tool on the web called Bootit NG. The product is closed source and commercial, but available for downloading for free with no trial periods. Just use the product. You'll be thankful for the nice graphical interface so you can see what you are doing. If you use the product only once then you probably do not want to pay, but you also can pay if the product helps you and it will. Burn the program to CD. I don't know why nothing this elegant exists in the free and open source world.

4. After I had resized my NT4 partitions, I then booted into Windows to test that everything still worked as before.

5. I then used fdisk or cfdisk to add ext2/ext3/swap partitions. You can use Bootit NG to physically create ext2/ext3 partitions, but realize that creating the physical partition is not the same as creating the file system. Thus, you might as well use fdisk or cfdisk for this. Then when running the Slackware setup, let that program do the final formatting too.

6. I installed GRUB. I installed GRUB to the MBR. GRUB works great for me. By placing GRUB there I then created a boot option to boot into NT4. When GRUB passes the boot request to NT4, the NT4 boot loader then takes over, but the NT4 boot loader is none the wiser.

Bear in mind that counting partitions is a wee different when you use an extended partition. Usually one creates four primary partitions with the fourth being the extended partition in which to place logical partitions. But when you count the partitions, you skip hda4 (hdb4, hdc4, etc.). So when you use fdisk, cfdisk, or the Slack setup, you won't find an option for partition 4.

I hope this helps.

Ok, so, after painstakingly looking about for a good free partitioning tool (didn't notice the post immediately preceding this one until just now), I finally just settled for using the XP Disk Manager utility native to window.

Now we see if my install works.


One question though - Does Slackware come with a boot swapper packaged, or do i have to find one from somewhere else? (Somewhat lame when it comes to this sort of thing, really.)

What do you mean by "bootswapper?" If you mean "bootloader," then, yes. It's called "lilo." I prefer installing it in the MBR.

And unless that e-mail address is a throwaway account, you should edit it out of your original post, or spam bots will make your life a spam-filled hell. We can safely e-mail you through LQ if we need to.

Ok, so... LILo is good.

Have XP and Slack both running.


Problem I am having now is finding info for my modem, so I can try to get it to pick up my wireless connection.

edit: KWifimanager shows a card with a big '?' on it.

Any clues as to a fix?

Looking at other threads, i noticed one that addresses my issue:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...postid=1630630

Problem is, i can't get the dang thing to install. >_<



I feel like such a noob. :(