Need to install FC6, on a machine having two bootable Hard Disks
My problem is very tricky one and really need ur sincere help to get over it. Following is the situation explained.
I have two Hard Disks in my machine (which i will call HD1 and HD2) with mulitiple partitions in them. In the C drive of the HD1 there is a WIN XP installed which i have abandoned using as some system files are missing. On the first partition of the HD2 i have the WIN XP installed, and which i am actively using. I have to install the third OS Fedora Core 6 and still need the XP on HD2 to be usable. (when the sys boots it still gives me option to choose from both the XPs) Now pls tell me, can i install FC6 in: 1. C drive of HD1, and still i want the XP in HD2 to be usable.(i doubt if it formats the C drive the boot.ini will go for a toss) 2. Any other partion of the HD1 and still i want the XP in HD2 to be usable 3. Or, I am forced to insatll FC6 in any other partition of the HD2? ** boot.ini file is in C drive of HD1. Pls let me know whcih of the options are correct, let me know in case more than one is correct. I know this problem is little weired, but pls get me out of it. Sys Hardware: Intel Pentium 4, 2.6 GHz Processor Intel845 GVSR chipset 512 MB RAM Also pls be elaborate as i am new to the LINUX World |
Hello vsjha18,
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Since you seem very edgy about your main XP system, I recommend two things in particular to minimize risk to your main XP system:
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another option.....
what I did was disable one drive in the BIOS, then install Fedora. It can't possibly harm my C: (WinXP) drive that way. I put Fed on what was the D: drive. When I boot XP, I just reenable the C: drive. The Linux install is safe as XP can't read the file system anyway.
and I sleep real well at night. ;) |
Hi vsjha18...here are some addon ideas to the above suggestions.
For a time I had difficulty installing some distros with two IDE drives. I seem to remember Fedora being one of those. If one of the drives is SATA then it seems to be okay for all the install programs I've come across. Working with two IDE drives I found I had to unplug the drive and make the install. Then use a floppy for each new distro. Later if there is an adjustment needed to the boot menu you can easily do this from another distro. Another option that I found worked well in some situations was using the Ultimate Boot CD. This is a live cd with many tools. In one of the menus...I believe file tools there is a program called gujin which scans your hard drives for bootable images and often you can then boot from their selection. I haven't used it in a year or so.. there was only support for ext2 and 3 not reiserfs which may have changed by now. As well if there was an initrd it picked up on this may hang the puter too but you can always delete that one ;) Anyways good luck. |
Hello Stoat,
Thanks a ton for the guidance,but i have few doubts here, 1. When you say "Install Boot Loader record on first sector of boot partition" ; Do u mean the C drive or the drive in which i am installing the fedora. 2. Also rather than installing in the free space on the disk, as u have said, i am comfortable installing it in the D drive which is free (because i dont dont know how to free space which is already allocated to the drive). Can I do so, if yes , the where should i install the GRUB in this case. 3. Also u told "make changes in the XP boot loader". What those changes are? |
Hello again vsjha18,
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So, there you have it for now. If you still want to proceed, I remain at your service. If you want to try something else, I will not be insulted. If you have further questions, please ask. P.S.: Those suggestions by others above that involve unplugging the XP drive to more safely install Fedora don't really apply well in your case. You have the XP boot loader on one drive and the XP system on the other. If you were to unplug the drive with the working XP system thinking you were protecting it while you install a Linux system on the other drive, I promise that you will very likely blow out the XP boot loader files, volume boot record and master boot record that function to boot the XP system on the other drive. You could probably repair it after-the-fact, but why create a mess like that if you don't have to? |
Hi Stoat,
Thanks a lot I have decided to follow the way which u have expalined for the FC6 installation, i.e using the XP boot loader. But again i have some doubts here.(I am sorry that i am asking so many question, but i have never did any LINUX installation). 1. Is using the FREE SPACE mandatory for the installation? Cant i just format any drive say (E,F,G) and do the installation on it (While installation i will recognize the drive by its size). If this is possible then it will save my effort in creating unpartioned space. 2. can u pls elaborate this "After Fedora is successfully installed, you copy GRUB stage1 from the first sector of the Fedora boot partition to a binary file in the XP root directory" Is it not sufficient to simply write c:\grldr="Start Linux" in the boot.ini file as the last line. (Will this not avoid the use of BOOTPART) |
Hello again vsjha18,
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But you may select other partitioning options. The Fedora installer has a feature called the Disk Druid which can delete or reformat existing partitions during the installation process. See section 10.2 of the guide about that. In fact, I recommend that you read the entire installation guide. It will give you a good understanding and preview of what you are in for when you install Fedora Core 6. Note: Did you know that you can also use the Disk Management utility in Windows XP to delete an existing partition and create free space? However, the XP utility will not resize a partition... Code:
Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management Quote:
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bootpart.exe 4 c:\fc6.bin "Fedora Core 6" Quote:
My opinion: GRUB4DOS will complicate, not simplify, the booting of Fedora compared to just configuring the XP boot loader to boot it. |
Thanks a lot Stoat, for all the help.
It seems that now i should give it a try to install the FC6, I am very confident that all the suggestions will be very useful during the installation. I will read the installation guide before going ahead as you have recommended. |
Hi Stoat,
Need ur help again. I started the FC 6 installation exactly as u explained above. Everything was going fine, but at a palce "Resoving Package Dependencies ..." it got hung for many hours. The media is in the good condition as i have installed using the same media on other systems. Do u have any clues, what could be the probable reason. Is there any way to skip this stage of the installation. |
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