Okay, I'm completely new to this but here goes. I have a 20GB HDD (ATA66) that I want both RH 7.0 and 98SE running on. I shrank the original partition to 13 GB (this already has 98SE on it) and created 2 partitions for Linux ( / and a swap partition) with Disk Druid (booted off a CD). All seemed to go well with the install itself (installed Lilo to the MBR), but at the end of the whole nine yards I briefly see a message complaining about the HDD size being greater than 1024 cylinders. Upon rebooting the machine, it just loads straight into 98 as if I had never installed Linux. Am I correct in thinking that I should receive some sort of dual boot option? I've tried to reinstall several times all with the same effect. It simply doesn't recognize Linux's existence. I'm sure this is some simple oversight, but any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

I remember reading where you need to install your boot secter below the 1024 cylinder mark.

I understood this to be a problem with older versions of lilo, but could be wrong. Does this mean I cannot install RH 7 without killing my 13 GB Win98 partition?

Ok, I read another post that made a comment to the effect that there may be a newer version of lilo that actually will boot up Linux if it's installed on a drive past the 1024 cylinder limit. Is it possible to use this newer version of lilo? If so, where would I find something of this nature and how would I go about incorporating it into my current install?

The newer versions of LILO will let you boot past the 1024 cylinder limit. See:

http://freshmeat.net/projects/lilo/?highlight=lilo
(this is also where you can get the latest copy)

http://sdb.suse.de/sdb/en/html/new_lilo.html
(has a good explanation, even though you are running RH7)

In your lilo.conf file you need to put the argument "lba32" (without quotations) prior to your boot images.

You'll likely have to boot off of your boot floppy to download and install the latest LILO as well as making changes to your lilo.conf file. Remember to rerun lilo prior to rebooting.

HTH.

When in disk druid, try creating a small /boot partition (100MB)and install LILO there. Use the rest of the partition for /root and <SWAP>. See if that works, it worked for me.

Johnnyd is correct, you stated you put Lilo on the MBR which you should not have. Put Lilo on the Linux boot section.

Instead of druid, I used boot magic from partition magic to bring up the boot option.

As the above suggestions mentioned, I personally think that putting LILO into the boot sector of the linux native partition is better than putting into MBR; unless u want to use LILO as a boot option menu to choose linux and win98.

besides, RH7 already supports /boot section beyond 1024 cylinders, and remember to put lba32 in the lilo.conf as well; and remember to run "lilo" (without quote) to see whether the updated lilo.conf works.

It looks like to me that either LILO wasn't configured properly in the MBR (or even not in the MBR), or you have to somehow use some other program (dos fdisk or linux fdisk maybe?) other than boot magic to set the linux native partition to be active (instead of the win98 partition) to see if ur linux parition really works and can be booted.

Good Luck and have fun.

Actually I have faced similar problem. I have a 20 gb hard disk.
I have partitioned it as 14000 mb for win98 and kept rest for linux. I have done this through a dos bootable floppy.
Now afetr doing that I have succesfully installed win98 on 14000 mb
But the problem is that when I have tried to install linux and choosing fdisk or disk druid and tring to create a /boot partition for linux it is saying
" Unallocated partition reaso is " Boot partition too big" "
If I don't choose /boot it thrughs same error on / partition.
So uptill now I am now unable to install linux.
I have seen the warning that magic number 1024 in case of no of cylinder.
What to do I don't know?
Will all these problem will be removed if I choose rh 7.1 ?
I have no chance to install lilo bacause I have not yet got linux installed.
I want lilo to place in /mbr so that I boot my machine with lilo.
If anybody can.............

souvik,

when you get to the disk druid section of the linux 7.1 install, take the partition you saved for Linux and make about a 64MB boot partition (/boot) about a 128 MB <SWAP> partition, and put the rest on / that's what I did and I had no problems installing and getting it up a running. Put LILO on the /boot partition and use some second party software to boot from a DOS MBR to LILO. I have NT 4, 98 and RedHat on one 20 GB hard drive working fairly harmoneuosly.

I got that warning "Boot partition too big" even if I have given /boot 1 MB.
But I have tried with
Will all these be removed by using RedHat Linux 7.1