I want to dual boot windows xp Pro and Mandrake 9.2
 

Hi, guys am a real linux newbie, but I really want to give mandrake 9.2 a Try, My question is how to step by step dual boot windows xp pro and mandrake 9.2, PC HP pavilion 8670C with the original components, except for the memory upgrade, am doing this in my work, because in the future we would like to do this transition. This pc is part of a network, and ICS client. am not sure if mandrake 9.2 can also integrate into this network and still be an ICS client.

About the dual booting. Mandrake will configure a dual boot automatically.

dude, I apreciate your help, but, that's all?, can you give me at least a link with the detailed procedure, thanks

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d+mandrake+9.2

98 hits that should answer most generic questions.

About the ICS issue...


I presume your gateway (the PC sharing the inet connection) is a windows box? From what I know the windows ICS is using a rudimentary DHCP service. This means any other box in the network will ask this gateway for an IP address and which gateway and DNS server to use. So you'd have to install and configure the DHCP client when you install Mandrake. This is essentially the same as the "determine the IP address automatically"-option in the windows networking configuration. In theory it should work fine but I have never tried it that way; only the other round with a Linux box sharing its connection.

If you cannot get it to work with a DHCP client then you can always try to do the configuration manually. For example if the gateway's IP address is 192.168.0.1, then try configuring your own IP (an example is 192.168.0.200, ask your network admin which IP you may use) and configuring 192.168.0.1 as your default gateway and DNS server. This should work in any case, even if the DHCP-way fails.


Good luck!

thanks for the info gundelgauk but am still stuck in to the dual boot thing, am not getting a lot of help, but am sure it will help later.

Dual booting linux and windows/dos has never been a problem for me with lilo. Other people may suggest grub as a boot manager, I don't know about this one as I have never used it.

In any way I suggest you install NO boot loader during the installation. Then after your system is installed and running (you should be able to boot it from CDROM), you write your own custom configuration file (/etc/lilo.conf). That way you can adjust it specifically to your needs and have more control over what happens.

As an example I will post and explain my configuration file(warning, long post ahead). You need to have an understanding of how different hard disks and their partitions are named in Linux:

My setup is like this:
I have two physical hard disks: /dev/hda and /dev/hdb. hda is partitioned in /dev/hda1 (this is where Windows lies) and a few more (which we won't need here. hdb has two partitions, /dev/hdb1 (this is where my Linux root / lies) and /dev/hdb2 (my Linux swap partition).

Now to the above config file:
In the global section, boot= specifies the harddisk that lilo will be installed onto (the one, the BIOS is configured to boot from). default= specifies by label the OS that should be booted after the timeout (in miliseconds) runs out and the user didn't select a OS to be booted. Ie, after three seconds Linux.23 should be booted in my case.
Now to the OS sections (of which I have three, Linux.23, Linux.test and Win). In any Linux section you need to specify a kernel image that is to be booted. This is what image= does. The images lie in /boot normally. If you do not want to compile your own kernel, you can specify a kernel that came with your distribution. root= specifies which partition should be your root directory / - this is /dev/hdb1 in my case.
In a Windows/Dos section you cannot have image= nor root=. Instead you specify other= with the appropriate partition where the OS is installed. This is /dev/hda1 (or C: if you want) for me as this is where my windows is installed. The loader entry refers to a boot loader file for other OSs than Linux. It is normally named /boot/chain.b and should come with lilo.

Phew, I hope this gives you a concept with which you can work. ;)

One more thing. For more detailed descriptions of the options I used and others, refer to the lilo documentation (man lilo and man lilo.conf).

Another thing. You may have noticed that I have two entries for my Linux system. The only difference is that they boot a different kernel. You should also do this if you ever compile your own kernel, ie leave the old one in place in case anything goes wrong with the new one so you can still boot the old kernel and recompile.


Good luck!

am very sorry gundelgauk shame on me, I feel really stupid because I don't understand anything of what you posted above, the thing is am a complete newbie in this linux thing and still don't know how to start am alredy using windows xp pro, I downloaded the mandrake isos, and am saying now what?, so this lilo, grub, etc. Don't know anything about them except that they are bootloaders, so as I was saying am about to give up, because maybe I need to put more time in this (wich I don't have) later, everything seems too complex, if someone just tell me what exactly step by step do, or just give me a link where this is, It would be very cool.
Thank you very much, but maybe am not ready yet.

Hmm, I'm sorry that I intimidated you. Somehow I seem to have gotten the impression that you already have some of the knowledge you need to understand my example. So it was rather my mistake.

Don't give up, it is true that you will have to do quite some reading to understand how a Linux system works. Because it has in some aspects majorly different concepts than windows, you cannot expect to just install the system and learn by doing. At least I sure as hell couldn't. ;)

My advice is to buy a book about Linux in general, ie how the system works. A lot of concepts will be explained, like how harddisks and partitions are named, how the file system is organized, etc. These are things that you need to understand to even get a system installed in a sensible way.

Or - if you really cannot afford the time - download the latest Knoppix image. This is a one-CD-distribution which is built to boot from CDROM. This means you won't have to install it, just flip the CD in, reboot, enter some boot parameters (which will be explained if you press F2 at the boot prompt) and you'll have a nice little Linux system running! Maybe this is better for learning the very basics of Linux because you can simply try out things without having to worry about making your system unbootable. Still be carefull though... :D

When you have grasped some knowledge and get comfortable working with this system, I guess you can come back to this post and will (hopefully) say "Ah sure, I think I understand".

# Edit
Ah and as you asked for a link:
If you do get Knoppix and get it running, you can try opening a terminal and type in the command 'man lilo' and/or 'man lilo.conf' (both without the quotes). The command man displays the manual pages, kinda like the windows help to a specific command. You can try it with every command and even with some config files, as with lilo.conf. After you have read these, you might already be able to understand how the boot concept works!


It is worth the effort. :cool: