any windows OS
 

greetings,

Ok L install RH 9 and i love it,
though
now i want to add windows OS win98/2000
how do i make a dos partition?
what tool? fdisk? from linux command line?
can i first install linux and than win
i know everythin' is posible,
though i didnt find anythin' explaining
how to install win after linux
most documentation exlain how
to install win and than linux.

pls help.

spirits
louie

I think Windows wants/has to be in the first partition of the first drive, so you might have a problem with having already installed linux. You could get a second small harddrive for windows, get linux working when connected as the second drive (update fstab, lilo.conf ...), and then actually install windows on the first.

Well, you're in luck. A program called GNU PARTED can resize ext3 and reiserfs partitions, but only the ends of the partition, not the beginning.

So you could resize your partition to make room for Windows at the end of your drive.

Then be sure to install Windows in that Free space. With WIndows98, you will have to get a bootdisk, but 2000 can partition from the CD. Read the Windows install carefully, so not to format your linux partitions.

When you install WIndows, it will overtake the MBR (Master Boot Record), making you lose LILO or GRUB.

So make sure you make a boot disk before for linux before installing Windows. You may be able to boot from the RH9 CD, im not sure. Once you boot back into Linux, you can reinstall your boot loader.


A few suggestions:

sharing between Linux and Windows can be tricky sometimes. Linux/Windows can both write to FAT32, so I suggest you make at least one FAT32 partition when you are installing Windows, so you can transfer back and forth.

Redhat cant read NTFS out of the box, but you can grab an RPM from linux-ntfs.sf.net


GNU Parted is a commandline tools thats somewhat hard to use. I suggest you look at QTPARTED. Its a GUI frontend for PARTED and its very easy to use.

Now, you cant resize an active partition, so you have to download a special utitlity boot CD, like KNOPPIX. I believe KNOPPIX comes with QTParted. So download the latest version of Knoppix.

There are others as well, a search of freshmeat for "recovery CD" should give you some options.


Of course, BACKUP before resizing, any partitioning is risky, and you dont want to lose any data.

thanks,
proud, contrasutra,

best,
louie.

Yes its possible to install windows after linux. If you didn't leave free space on the drive it might be a little difficult to resize. You should also be able to run parted from the rescue mode of the install CD.

Windows 98 needs to be installed on a primary partition but it doesn't have to be the first. Make sure the boot flag is set for that partition.

I do believe that W2k can be installed on any type of partition but don't take my word for it.

Yes windows will overwrite the bootloader if installed to the MBR. Use the 1st install CD to boot to a rescue mode and then reinstall.
If using grub - grub-install
If using lilo - /sbin/lilo

Windows can only install in the primary partition, but you can have about four primary partitions. However, only one primary partition can be active.

parted only works with ext2 and ext3 partitions so louie055 if you have reiserfs,jfs, xfs, or any other filesystems, you have to copy the files or use the filesystem's utilities for the filesystem and put to another hard drive.

Parted - http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/

Its easier if you buy another hard drive and put Windows on that.

it works fine on ReiserFS.