I've held off installing Slack 10-2 for the last while. My Cely 1.7 was in need of some TLC, and now I have a gig of RAM and a nice new video card. Much better, in partial compensation for that 128 KB L2 cache. Meantime, I acquired an alleyway P-1 (i.e. Intel Inside a Dumpster) and I've brought it into nice offline shape. The advantage to this exercise is that I can take real chances with this P-1, and, because it doesn't matter at all if I mess up, it is a great learning tool.

I've muddled around this multiboot issue for years, and I've carried it off once with Mandrake on one of the Linux loaders. Now at last I can experiment, because first I'm gonna put Slackware onto the little P-1. At least, I hope I will. Can I do that without using the internet? I have internet access a few feet away on my other computer, and I can easily move floppeis and CDs between them.

I want to compare the Windows loader, NTLDR, with the Linux loaders. But I won't be able to do that, because the P-1 is on ME and 98. So, first question: in deciding between LILO and Grub, what do I base my preferences on?

Question 2: After I've experimented on the P-1, I want to fix up my real-life computer, the Cely, with Slackware 10-2, XP Pro, and ME. I have two drives, both Maxtor 7200s: 30 GB + 80 GB. I usually have them divided into about 10 partitions. I enjoy partitioning and formatting, and I guess I'll set up XP Pro all over again so I can do a low-level format again. So, on THAT system, I guess my sequence would be

(1) ME
(2) XP
(3) Linux
. . . if I want to end up with a Linux bootloader, or else

(1) ME
(2) Linux
(3) XP
. . . if I want to end up with NTLDR chaining to the Linux loader. Am I right?

I could easily put XP onto the little P-1 to experiment. Maybe I should.

Now, that P-1, I should emphasize, is JUST for learning. So it doesn't matter at all what kind of mess I get into. On the other hand, the Celeron is a really sweet, highly refined system, and, no matter how I eventually have it set up, it is meant to be in super-spiff shape; no fooling around. So I have to be more careful with it.

The P-1 has an ancient little monitor, a Voxon II. Voxons were unheard of even when they were around! So what will Linux do? Just set it up as a generic noname?

All ideas welcome. I am not really trying to get from A to B so much as I am trying to LEARN about things. But I would like that triple OS multiboot on my Celeron when the dist clears. ;-)
Thanks.

Well I can tell you this much. Whether or not you use GRUB or LILO, it dosen't matter what order you put your OSes in. They will boot XP by default if you want, or they'll boot ME by default if you want. (it goes without saying they boot Linux by default)

To setup your monitor, assuming you know the capabilites of it, just do a manual X server config. It will ask you everything it needs to make the monitor work. If you don't know it capabilites, just guess till you get it right. Though I'm betting if you Google you might be able to find them.

Thank you, Mr. Penguin. I am resuming tomorrow. I have a couple of easy questions for anyone who might see this overnight (overnight in Vancouver, Canada). I tried a first attempt earlier, which fizzled on these basics. If no reply, I'll search in the morning:

1. On my "test" computer, I have ME in the primary master. I have a 4.7 drive as primary slave, and that is where Linux is to go. So I did an fdisk on that drive and left it as one partition in FAT32.

2. My Slackware 10.2 CD shows me just my Windows ME drive, though. I don't want to touch that one. I need to set up the second drive for Linux, but I haven't found a place to say to Linux, "THAT one." Slackware does tell me to get out of my Install process and go format the drive, but after that I'm left looking around.

3. I should be able to figure that out. While I'm wondering, I'm thinking, "Hmm. How should I partition this little 4.7 gig hard drive for Linux? What sizes do YOU suggest for my swap file et al?

4. Then, deciding to get right out of my Linux attempt, I ran into another minor detail: get out HOW? "Exit" doesn't work, nor anything I could guess at. What is the way of saying, "Thanks but no thanks; catch ya later"? I finally did a pushbutton restart to kill the thing. I remembered that happening a few years ago, too. In my humble opinion, it's always a good idea to tell someone where the brakes are before you show him how to turn the ignition.

So, in recap: Tomorrow I'm looking for:
—Suggested sizes for partitions on my 4.7 GB disk
—How to tell Slackware to please leave hd1a or whatever it is alone, and to show me hd1b, or hd2a, or whatever it wants to call it. (It can call it Fred, for all I care; but by whatever designation, I need Linux to let me go ahead and reformat what Windows calls (D): Slackware, 4.7 GB.
—How to abort totally, get rid of the Linux # prompt altogether, and close down the computer gracefully

As I said earlier, this is all an experiment. I'll learn on this computer and then I'll set up my "proper" computer. It is nice not to have to worry about messing up. Thanks lots.

Hi,

As for question 1;
You should create a swap partition and a primary partition for your / on the primary slave (this will be /dev/hdb). You could create the / as /dev/hdb1 and the swap as /dev/hdb2. You can do this by;

You will then create the swap and / partitions with the fdisk.
The norm for the swap would be 2X your RAM and I would give all the rest of the /dev/hdb to the /.

You could read;
http://www.slackbook.org/html/book.h...N-PARTITIONING

This is a straight forward explaination guide! Check out some of the other references in my sig for some background.

As for the reason you did not show your /dev/hdb when the Slackware cd1 was booted. You stated that you had format the primary slave with fat32 and that is what you were showed.

As stated you should create the swap and / on /dev/hdb. The filesystem would be ext2, ext3 or reiserfs format. That will have to be a choice made by you. The slackware default is reiserfs. I like to create my partitions then write the partition table and reboot the install cd1 to then format the partitions before the setup.

After partition creation and reboot;

You would then run your setup for the install. At this point I would suggest a full install. You could then trim the install once you have some experience.

As for the /dev/hda1 the ME primary master. The install will ask you to use a mount point for the device. This will allow a fstab entry for the device to allow a mount. You would be able to access the device through the mount point.
The mount could be;

The filesystem would be the recognized filetype. Probably FAT32 as I believe that is the default type for ME.

For the problem with exiting the install at the CLI prompt #. Just do a three finger salute ctl-alt-del! This will reboot the computer, no harm.

If you are in a cli command just do a ctl-c to exit the process.

Man alive! You Slackers are the greatest! I posted my problems, had a good night's sleep, checked my thread in the morning, and just look—succinct, precise, excellent advice! Well, thank you very much indeed. It is not 7 o'clock in the morning yet, and you've already made my day!

I'll report back as I follow through. :-)

Well, I am now in the middle of things. Um, still pre-setup. Following your advice, Gary, and using the book (Slackware Linux Essentials, 3.3 Partitioning, page 22), I'm watching my little computer screen checking for bad blocks.

One item above was skewed. What I had intended to mean was that I had formatted my second hard drive ready for Linux, and didn't want Linux to touch ME on my first hard drive. You got that right. But at that time, Linux didn't show me what I had done; it showed me only my first (ME) drive. I confused you there. And the reason was because I had forgotten, from a couple of years ago, the all-important designation "hdb", which you supplied.

I've had some confusion about just when the partitions were formatted or were just ready to be formatted. I THINK everything is going well at this moment. I'm combining your good advice with what I see in the book. Because I tend to be a partitions-geek, I'm following his suggestion (which he does say is arguable) of setting up 4, not 2, Linux partitions. Well, I usually have 10 to 15 Windows partitions, so why not 4 Linux partitions?

Also, because I am an English geek, I decided that the swap file belongs out the back. "Swap" is a slang expression, as opposed to "Linux Slackware 10.2", which is a very presentable expression. So my main Linux partition is to be hdb1, and my swapfile is to be hdb4.

The book doesn't really recommend 4 partitions. It recommends 2. But he says he personally likes to set up
/
/home = data
/usr/local = custom
swap

Sounds irresistable to me. Weird names, after my Windows partitions, which include
Crystal
Music
Tea Kettle
Back Alley
. . . but, whatever turns your crank. I met a family of Linux users once. The father, whose name was fuf1, introduced me to his kids, who were fud1, fud2, and fus1. I know all you Linux gee-pardon me; I mean you Linux users, will know exactly what those names mean, just as soon as I suggest, where hd = hard drive, so fu = family unit. The rest is obvious, right? ;-) j/k

I have 96 megs of RAM on this little 4.7 hard drive. I wanted even numbers, and when I doubled the RAM size to 192 to get my swapfile size, it didn't come up with an even number; so I increased it to 250. Linux told me I was working with 9924 sectors, and 256 for swap would occupy 1 to 497. I told it to write that, but seconds too late I came up with my great idea of putting swap out at the back by the alley, where it belongs. (Probably swap is ideally located at the beginning, but you must remember that I am clueless.)

So I killed my brand new arrangement, and I decided to set up my 4 partitions as
main program = hdb1 = 1 to 7441 (total should be close to 3584 MB = about 3.5 GB)
/home = hdb2 = 7442 to 8434 (total 512 MB)
/usr/local = hdb3 = 8435 to 9427 (total 512 MB)
swap = hdb4 = 9428 to 9924 (total 256 MB)

I put this here for everyone to have a good laugh, because, if it looks like I don't have any idea what I'm up to, that is indeed the case. Pure guesswork, except for the swapfile. And now I see that my other computer has finished writing superblocks and accounting for the new file system. Did I ask it to do that? Very decent of it, I must say.

I wonder what it means. I wonder what any of it means.

To be continued.

Hmm . . . trouble. I got exactly as far as putting in these 2 requests:
#mkswap -c /dev/hdb4
#mke2fs -c /dev/hdb1
Oh, and then I thought I'd do the other 2 little partitions, so:
#mke2fs -c /dev/hdb2
In each case Linux showed me a whole lot of complicated stuff while it checked my blocks. Then I asked for:
#mke2fs -c /dev/hdb3
which would be the last one, and, if I remember right, it gave me some sort of "bad command" message which I ignored. I thought I could pick that up later.

But, Gary, your instructions want me to also do:
#dev/hdb2 type 82
I think it was there that it said, "Permission denied."
So I tried your other command:
#dev/hdb1 type 83 and boot
and didn't get permission for that, either.

Hmm.
So I restarted. But now, even though the start is via the Slackware 10.2 disk, it comes up into Windows ME (which, after all, is on the Primary Master) and—very strangely, I think—ME shows me a modified collection of drives, with Windows having relettered them as it always does. But what is strange is that WINDOWS ME does, indeed, show me a drive it calls
(E Slk102d1
which contains several TXT files regarding How Tos and Install. I am now making a floppy with those on it, which I'll transfer to my main computer and refer to, or else print out.

I think I have located myself squarely in the middle of limbo.

OOPS! Sorry. Blunder. I had been moving too fast in and out of my BIOS, I guess, and I hadn't set the defaults properly. That little computer has a primitive BIOS start in which I'm not able to have it do a nice quick "If not Floppy, CD; if not CD; C" kind of thing. I have to change it manually.

I'm back into Slack again. Now to untangle myself.

My hangup had been in my failure to designate a type 82 swapdisk. I knew I hadn't pressed the "t" in time, but I couldn't find my way back for another chance at it. I have now done that and I've pressed "w" for write, and all looks good. It's coming back up for my setup, I hope.

I've been running multi-boot systems like what you describe for several years.

First, to keep Windows happy:
Install mulitple versions of windows in the order they were released, e.g you have ME installed, so next install WinXP, using the winxp installer to create the primary partition for it on hdb1. Leave empty space for creating more parititions using winxp -an extended partition for the rest of the drive. Then create at least one logical drive. Since you want several of both linux and DOS type, make the first logical drive a FAT, then create the partitions you want for linux(type 83) and swap(type(82) *as* FAT or NTFS partitions. As the very last logical drive, leave one DOS/Win type drive -however small, say an 8MB FAT. Something like this

hdb1 5-10 GB for WinXP
hdb2 extended partition
hdb5 FAT
hdb6 logical drive for swap (256-512MB)
hdb7 logical drive for / (5-?GB)
hdb8 FAT


After the above, boot with the slackware installer and use fdisk to change the partition types for hb6 to 82 and hdb7 to 83. Then *reboot* the machine with the CD and just run 'setup' which will guide you through formatting the swap and rootfs partition.

Nothing wrong with using lilo or GRUB, though windows setup and some windows installer programs which require reboot are kept happiest if you let NTLDR boot linux, instead. Windows XP is especially delicate in this regard.

If you can stand it, install your Windows NT/XP/W2k on a FAT, instead of NTFS -especially if you plan to share files between the OS's.

Gnashley, that is superb advice! Things are looking very good indeed! On my little "test" computer, Slack 10.2 is heavily into the packages installations, so I feel that will be a success. (I used menu mode.)

Now, my soon-to-be install on my "proper" computer will want a setup exactly as you have described. I don't mind using NTLDR at all, although I know many Linuxians don't like it. I am suspicious, though, that a lot of folk are remembering back pre-XP to much less cognitive Windows boot loaders. I've had up to 25 partitions on my hard drives, all done beautifully by NTLDR, and yet I've heard that NTLDR "limits the number" of partitions. Well, yes, in that I tried but couldn't add a 26th, because Windows needed a virtual drive to carry things out. But, main point is, I'll be very, very happy to follow your advice.

My XP is over 6 months old on this install, and I feel XP loses its vitality after a time. I want my new Slackware system to be really spiff, so I may re-format and re-install. I've done low-level (Maxtor Power Max) formats before, and I love doing them—you get a complete check on your hard drive, and, if all is well, the format gives it back to you as good as it was when it was brand new.

For me, the Linux install process has always been a barrier. This time I can run through most things on this "test" computer, so I know what to expect when it counts. Thank you very much. I am rapidly discovering friendly, knowledgable help is one of Slackware's BIG (HUGE) assets!
:-)

Well, it took ages and ages to set up all that stuff. Finally, when it was all finished, it told me to restart. With baited breath. I pressed the buttons.

Up came Windows ME. Linux? What Linux?

So I'm using the floppy I made along the way. At the moment it's "generating a public/private dsa key pair." It has been working on that for some time.

When I was asked where to install LILO, of the three choices given, I suggested the, um, what's it called? The superwhatever. Oh, look. The floppy has come through for me. It says (in text) "Welcome to Linux. Darkstar login:"

Hmm. Too bad I don't have the faintest idea what it wants me to say. I tried [enter] which did nothing, and I tried my own name, which then caused it to ask for a password. I distinctly remember choosing to set no password on the install. But [enter] doesn't work.

Oh well. I still have ME. Wonder what went wrong?

Well, I reformatted my disk to get rid of all the Slackware on it. Once that was done, so I was back to a completely bare 4.7 GB primary slave, I decided to try an Ubuntu CD that I have. My intention is to check things out with Ubuntu, and then to return to Slackware.

The CD install is pretty scary, because it continues for at least 5 minutes, maybe longer, before it says anything at all about just WHERE it is going to set up Ubuntu. I took a chance. Sure enough, after what seemed a very long time, it asked me where I'd like Ubuntu on my system. Good! It didn't just dump them on top of ME on the primary master drive.

Then it returned to its very blue screen with red progress bars. It is kind of a loner, doing everything by itself. I expect to hear it whistling anytime. So far it frowned a bit when it realized it had no future internet expectations, but this is a distro I think your pet cat could set up.

On the other hand, I have yet to see whether it will be successful. If it is, I still don't know if it will let me use it. After all, I had nothing to do with its installation. It might just say, "Who do YOU think you are? Hands off, Buddy."

Ubuntu wasn't exactly created for the "do it yourself" kind of user. Its more for the "you do it so i don't have to" kind of user. Its not for everyone, but it is for many. I don't like it either for that reason. I always feel kinda stupid when I use it, so dido on Ubuntu, but it IS very good at what it does.

When you go back to Slackware, install lilo on the MBR on the first HDD(hda). Putting it on the superblock of the Linux install means you need the floppy.

At the login (CLI), type "root" and whatever you used for the password.

After that, you're into the wonderful world of configuring. (xorgsetup or xorgconfig)

An additional reccomendation: Do a FULL INSTALL, that is fine for a newb, at least until you know what you really need, and what you can do without. If you leave out some of the compilers by accident, for example, you won't be able to install some programs (Just a suggestion. If you want to use menu mode, go for it. But don't be too suprised...)