Setting up dual boot Linux/Win2K
 

Hi,

At the moment I have Win2K as my primary OS, booting from the first partition on the first hdd.

I've installed Debian (woody) on the second hdd, but during the install I chose 'make a boot floppy' as I didn't know what would happen if I chose the default 'make system boot into Linux'. I didn't want to end up booting straight into Linux and not able to choose Win2K.

I've read on a few pages that it's possible to set up the NT boot loader NTLDR to boot linux by doing dd if=/dev/hdb1 of=bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1, copying bootsect.lnx to c:\ and editing boot.ini.

As I created a boot floppy, will this method still work?

If not, how can I set up dual booting without having to use a floppy?

Thanks,

kiltie.

Yes, it will work. The only thing is that you need to install the bootloader to /dev/hdb1 (floppy will still work, don't worry). The modification is quite simple. If you're using lilo, eidt /etc/lilo.conf. Somewhere at the beginning you should have:
Change it to
And then run 'lilo'. Lilo will install on /dev/hdb1. Now you can use the 'dd' command.

Cool, thanks very much :)

One daft followup question: how do I know if I'm using lilo?

When you're booting your system, after memory test and such things, it starts reading your boot floppy and then prints bootloader message. If you run LILO, it should print 'LILO" somewhere. If I remember correctly Debian uses LILO as default boot loader, but check it.

Hmm. The boot message says 'SYSLINUX', no mention of lilo anywhere.

I tried running lilo, and got the message 'lilo.conf: no such file or directory'

I guess that means I'll need to install/configure lilo?

Syslinux is a bootloader similar to the loadlin for DOS. You'll have to configure lilo yourself. Since you ran lilo and it gave an error, it's already installed. You just need to make the /etc/lilo.conf file . Check out the lilo.conf manual page for help on this (man lilo.conf). There is a program in KDE the will automatically generate a working lilo.conf. Just be sure to change the 'boot=/de...' to what you want it to be. Try looking in th KDE control center for it (kcontrol).

Magic :)

Thanks both of you, I now have a working dual boot setup :)