Hello!

I have a 3-HD system where hda is to be a W2K/RH9 dual boot.

While installing W2K, I partitioned this drive so that Windows gets 50 GB, and 26 or so GB are left "free" for RH9.

Now, I am an absolute newbie (still!), so I am afraid of installing Linux on that free space, for fear that I may do something that will prevent me from booting up Windows again!

Can anyone with experience offer some tips?

Thanks!

In the installation it does ask you if you would like to delete any partitions to make room for linux. I remember it having something like "delete linux partitions", "delete all partitions", and "use free space".

If this is unpartitioned space we're talking about here, all you need to do is choose "use free space". It will use the remaining space to create all neccesary partitions for linux. Make sure to uncheck your other hard drives where it asks you what hard drives to use.

If you're really concerned about losing windows, just make a bootable floppy with fdisk on it (Bootdisk.com) and if the unspeakable happens, all you have to do is type 'fdisk /mbr' at the a: prompt.

If any problems arise, GRUB (the boot loader) is usually pretty easy to fix if it won't boot an OS.

Best of luck!

Thanks for your reply!

(As you see I am just sitting here hitting F5 all night...)

You mention GRUB, which I have heard others mention, but I don't know how to invoke it.

At what point during the boot process does one call up GRUB, and how?

Dear OEB,

Do you know any good links or documentation on how GRUB works?

I'm having a problem with a very simple dual-boot setup - Win98 on hda and Red Hat Linux 7.2 on hdb. I already have Win98 installed and working on hda. I install Red Hat Linux 72 on hdb, select GRUB as the boot loader, select to install this on the MBR, and everything appears to install flawlessly. However, when I reboot for the first time, I get the error "GRUB hard disk error". I can boot from the Linux rescue diskette, but where do I go from there?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Grub is the bootloader, it will automatically load when u get past the bios checks at startup. From there you can choose which operating system to boot to. From there you can choose to go to windows or load linux.

Everytime you add a new kernel to your linux system, it will appear as an entry in grub.

[Bix]
If you are really afraid of repartitioning, may i suggest using partition magic from windows to create the ext2 and swap drives in advance, then simply select them in disk druid. This way allows you to have them ready to rock when u install. A lot easier, but at some point you'll have to work out how to use cfdisk. Do your research prior and you should be confident in doing this again.

@jtwhitehead:
If you could post your grub.conf file here, I'll take a look at it and see what's wrong. A friend of mine had trouble setting up his 2-HD system. Is this showing when GRUB just starts or when you try to boot an OS? To pull up grub.conf:

# gedit /boot/grub/grub.conf

Gedit should make it pretty easy to copy & paste here.
You could also try installing grub again which goes something like:

# /sbin/grub

grub> root (hd0,1)
grub> setup (hd0)

but I wouldn't try this until we confirm there's a real problem

Here's the RH official doc page for it. You'll also find a different way to install grub in there.

OEB,

I've been trying a different approach to dual-booting with two hard drives in order to not mess with the MBR. I've followed instructions in a couple of user manuals and online to install the boot manager (GRUB or LILO) in the first Linux partition (instead of the MBR). Then, after booting to Linux, copy the first 512Bytes of the boot partition to a floppy (e.g. "bootsect.lnx"), reboot to Windows, then copy from floppy to c:\. Then just modify the boot.ini file (Win2k or WinXP) to include the path - c:\bootsect.lnx="Linux".
It sounds simple and safe, but I encounter the SAME errors as when I tried to load GRUB or LILO to the MBR.
When I use GRUB, I get "GRUB hard disk error" just after rebooting and the BIOS checks (before I get a choice of OS's). With LILO, I get "L" on the screen or a bunch of "L"'s all running down the leftmost column.

Here is the GRUB file that I used with this method:

boot=/dev/hdb1
default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd1,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.7-10)
root (hd1,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.7-10 ro root=/dev/hdb2 hdc=ide-scsi
initrd /initrd-2.4.7-10.img
title DOS
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1


And here is the LILO file that I used:

prompt
timeout=50
default=linux
boot=/dev/hdb1
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
message=/boot/message
# linear #I tried with and without this line.

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.7-10
label=linux
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.7-10.img
read-only
root=/dev/hdb2
append="hdc=ide-scsi"

other=/dev/hda1
optional
label=DOS

Thanks!
jtwhitehead