3 systems in one machine?

grannyratte · 08-25-2003, 05:25 PM

I want to install red hat 9.0 on my computer but I don't want to lose the other operating systems I already have...currently have a dual boot with win2k & win98. My question is if its possible to have three operating systems on one computer without having alternate partitioning programs installed (ex.system commander, etc.) Thanks.

sorrodos · 08-25-2003, 05:26 PM

Do you have any empty partitions that you could install Linux to?

grannyratte · 08-25-2003, 05:28 PM

yes, I have about 3-4 gigs of empty space.

trickykid · 08-25-2003, 05:40 PM

If that is the total amount of space you have, I would consider getting another hard drive to install Linux on. Unless you did a minimal install, your not going to be leaving much space for any of your OS's.

That's just my personal opinion though.. You could install Linux, creating a partition for it after using a program like Partition Magic to split up your drive without losing any data on them.

sorrodos · 08-25-2003, 05:43 PM

What trickykid said is probably the best route to go, but you could actually get by with a pretty decent system on that much space. Wouldn't have much room to install large applications to, but 3-4 gigs may be enough to handle Gnome with accompanying apps or KDE and its respective apps... Or you could go even lighter and ditch both those to go with a lighter window manager. Or you could even just go with a console.

As trickkid said though, its probably best to get a new hard drive, or resizing your current partitions (if they are not NTFS, as resizing those can be very dangerous).

grannyratte · 08-25-2003, 06:20 PM

I guess it's my fault for not mentioning ths in the first place, but I already have win2k & win98 installed on a 20 gig hardrive. I have an empty partition of about 3-4 gigs. I have used system commander to manage these systems but somehow I made a mistake in deleting this partioning program which later resulted in reinstallation of the operating systems because I wan't able to boot into any of them. I really would like to avoid this from reoccurring again if I install redhat. Would redhat recognize the other partitions even if one of them is of NTFS format? My last question is if its possible for redhat to display 2 other operating systems to choose from?

for example at the first screen where the option is given to choose which systems to boot:

win98
win2k
redhat 9.0

any help is greatly appreciated,

thanks.

sorrodos · 08-25-2003, 07:11 PM

I am not sure if RedHat recognizes NTFS partitions by default... what version of RedHat is it? You should check that out before installing.

My SuSE system recognizes my NTFS partitions just fine. Its not possible to write to an NTFS partition from within Linux, so I use a FAT32 partition as a go-between. And since you will be putting Win98 on again, you can use its partition as the go between.

So just check into seeing if your version of RH supports reading NTFS volumes. If not, SuSE 8.2 works great for that.

Be sure to install Linux LAST though, as Windows bootloaders don't allow to boot into Linux and will overwrite any Linux-installed bootloader.

EDIT: I just checked, and it seems that NTFS support is NOT enabled by default in RedHat 9. However, this site says if you install an RPM provided on it, NTFS support is enabled without a kernel recompile.

GT_Onizuka · 08-25-2003, 08:25 PM

when i installed RH 9 (i was also using WinXP) my grub bootloader had no problem booting up winxp. i didn't really have to do anything. however you won't be able to see the windows partitions (if they are NTFS) unless you install what the guy above me said. i installed that and now i am able to mount both my windows drives (both of which are NTFS) and i can read off of them no problem. hope this helps ^_^

grannyratte · 08-25-2003, 08:45 PM

this is very good info people....that's what great forums are all about. i'm gonna check out the site that sorrodos recommended and let you guys know how it turned out. thanks again....

grannyratte · 08-26-2003, 08:17 PM

I installed redhat 9 on my system yesterday and after the install, I ran into a "hopefully simple" problem. When I try to boot into Win2k I receive the following message:

Booting 'Win2k'
rootnoverify (hd0,2)
chainloader +1

NTLDR is Missing
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

I know that now I have to modify the boot.ini file in order to use the windows boot loader to also include linux. The problem is how am I supposed to access win2k to change the file, if I can't log on to it? Any thoughtd or advise?

Greg2 · 08-26-2003, 09:02 PM

I'm assuming that message is after your lilo or grub bootloader?

You will have to boot off your 2K cd, type repair at the prompt and try to repair the win bootloader on the mbr sector. If that doesn't work you have a problem.

Try it and get back,

Good luck

Greg2 · 08-27-2003, 08:37 AM

I'm just guessing you are having problems?

Here's a link to the installation that I have used succesfuly with Mandrake and larger partitions. This should work with RedHat.

http://www.mandrakeuser.org/docs/install/i3boot.html

Greg

grannyratte · 08-29-2003, 05:23 PM

I was having a little bit of trouble at first because Win2k was not booting from from lilo. Everything worked out perfectly in the end. Now I have three working operating systems in my terminal, each with its own partition. The way I fixed the problem is really simple, but it was giving me a headache to figure out in the beginning. What I did was I modified the boot.ini in win2k, and also reinstalled ntldr from the manual console repair option. The boot.ini modification took a little time of trial and error (had to boot-up like 15 times) before I matched up the coresponding partition number for win2k which in my case was hda3. I guess the best way to learn these things are actually thru trial & error. Thank you all for helping me out.