Installing Redhat 7.2 on Windows XP machine

susyq78 · 03-02-2004, 10:21 PM

Hi

I've just purchased a new HP pavilion a340a computer and want to install redhat 7.2 linux on it as a dual boot system.

I've been reading up about partitioning and am pretty confused. The hard drive is already partitioned into C drive which contains Windows XP and is 31.87GB with 25.66GB of free space and it is a NTFS drive and D drive which is the HP Recovery drive and it has 5.38GB with 937.51MB free and it is a FAT32 drive.

I can make a recovery CD with the info in D drive and therefore could free the space. Would it be possible to install Linux on this drive and have it work as a dual boot system?? How would I do this? Otherwise what would be the best solution when it comes to partitioning??

Thanks for your help

Susan

jkobrien · 03-03-2004, 05:58 AM

Hi,

You might think about installing RH9 rather than 7.2.

I have a dual boot (MS-Win2k and RH9) on a single hard disk and have partitioned it as follows...

Code:

C:	Windows and Programs	NTFS		4Gb
D:	Data			FAT32		5Gb
/boot	Linux boot partion	ext2		48Mb
/	Linux software and data	ext3		6Gb
swap	swap space		linux swap	258Mb (2x RAM)

There's lots of different opinion about partition schemes, the above works for me and hasn't caused any problems. You should adapt it according to your setup, if you have lots of different users on the system you may want to have separate partitions for the 'core' linux programs and for user programs and data.

John

johns123 · 03-03-2004, 11:10 AM

DON'T DO IT WITH RED HAT 7 !!!!!!!!!!! Go get Red Hat 9.0
right now, and it will autodetect your hardware with no
problems. You will NEVER get 7 to detect your video, and
the boot up will fail. If you don't have enough space on
your hard drive left for Linux, I advise getting a much
larger hard drive, and buy PowerQuest Disk Image which
will completely and safely dupe your present drive to
the slaved BIG drive, and thereby gain you the room
you need for Linux. Then just do a straight forward but
custom install of RH 9.0 with partitions /boot 100 fixed,
/ 20 gig fixed, and swap 2 gig fixed ... you will get a nice
dual boot using the Grub boot loader to either OS with
no problems other than maybe a little tweaking of the
video vertical refresh to 75 hz. That will give you a full
screen. Also Rclick on the KDE desktop and permanently
mount your cdrom and zip ( both cdrom ). That is it.

johns

sara · 03-04-2004, 05:13 PM

hi susyq78,
what you need to do it resize your c drive which will leave you space to create a new partition to install redhat on. thing is windows XP wont let you resize your c drive so you'd have to buy a program to do it.
or if your win XP isn't built into your PC then you can reinstall it again using your bootable Windows XP CD and create partitions from there.

it'll show you how to do which ever option you want to take on this site.
http://www.theeldergeek.com/hard_drives.htm