Hi !
There were several questions asked about multiple OS on a PC. I have W95
and Linux running and they have all their partitions on the same harddrive,
i'm booting with LILO.I recommend the following steps.
PS: I answered the questions in this mail too, scroll down if you are only
interested in my answers.
1.) Check propper hardware installation (cable, master/slave settings etc)
and register drive correctly in the BIOS (do harddrive autodetect if
available).
2.) Boot W9x from a bootdisk or from CD-ROM and start the fdisk from
Microsoft(TM).
3.) Think about how much space the systems need. I have it installed on a
6.4 GB drive and thought 50/50 would be oke for each system.
4.) I personally tend to several partitions and not one big fat partition,
more drives lower the cluster size of partitions and make the system easier
to overview (I have a 500 MB system partition where i put W95 on and files
that have to be on the boot partition, then i have several pertitions with
app. 300 to 400 MB size, and one with 700 MB where i can copy a whole CD
to). Think about how to devide the harddrive before you start with playing
around with fdisk - well, it will work if you only play around, but
thinking before working makes some sense, hehe.
5.) Create a primary DOS partition with the MS fdisk, DON'T give it all
the available space, but only the amount of disc space that is
wanted/necessary. There has to be space left for optional DOS partitions
and the Linux partitions.
6.) Create an extended DOS partition, DON'T give it all available space
either. The space that is left free will be available to the Linux system.
7.) Create logical drives within the extended DOS partition, it has to be
at least one logical drive !!!!! If you like to have more drives (as i
recommend) then give the amount of diskspace to the logical drives one
after another until all space in the extended DOS partition is used.
8.) Activate the primary DOS partition. That is important, because only
then W9x (or any other OS) can boot. The BIOS checks for active partitions
when the puter is switched on and boots whatever is written in the first
block on the drive, the so called master boot record (MBR).
9.) Exit MS fdisk, reboot (only then the drives can be formatted), format
the drives one after another, install W9x.
10.) After W9x installation reboot, the W9x system should now boot and run
without any problems. Create a W9x bootdisk and copy the MS fdisk on it !!!
11.) Put in the Linux CD. Either have Linux be booted from CD-ROM or
create boot disks. The Linux bootdisks can be created under W9x using the
rawrite program. I have a SuSE 6.0 and it came with a setup program on the
CD that guides the user through the process of creating bootable disks and
rescue disks for later use.
I tested both RedHat 5.2 and SuSE 6.0 and i have to say, SuSE 6.0 is far
easier to install, to setup and to administrate than RedHat. So if there is
someone having tremendous problems installing Linux ask around if there is
someone who may lend you a SuSE distribution. The software coming along
with RedHat can be used under SuSE and can be installed from the RedHat CDs
(works well for me). Installing additional software is another topic.
12.) Boot Linux (from CD or the created floppy disks).
13.) The installation guide should start automatically, SuSE Linux takes
over the partitioning so that you don't have to deal with the Linux fdisk.
But here is a short description how to do it with fdisk.
14.) Start the Linux fdisk if it isn't started automatically by the
installation guide, afaik type fdisk and press enter and it should start.
15.) Linux uses a different filesystem, that is pretty more "intelligent"
than the MS filesystems (V)FAT(32). Create first the swap partition, it
should have double the size of the RAM of your system. I made good
experience with a 120 MB swap partition.
16.) Create the Linux partition itself. If you are asked for a mount point
then put in the / . It is the main directory (in W9x it is c:/). Give all
space left on the harddrive to the Linux partition.
17.) Normally a setup program guides the user through the installation, it
creates the Linux filesystem (ext2), lets you choose what software packages
you want and installs lilo.
18.) To setup LILO you have to create two (or more, depends on how many OS
are installed to the system) boot entries. Name them for example linux and
win, use short names coz when booting with linux u probably have to type
them in, so a name like thisismyfancydandywindowsninetyeightpartition may
be annoying after a while, hehehe.
You have to tell LILO where to boot the systems. Afaik it knows by itself
where the linux system files are, so you only have to choose "boot linux"
from the list. For the W9x system you have to specify that LILO should load
a Windows system and it is resident on /dev/hda1 if you followed this
instructions. LILO asks at last which system should be the default system
and you can setup a timne how long LILO should wait with a prompt before
booting the default system. Normally the defauklt boot is automatically set
to linux. Let LILO write the settings to the MBR, if you are not quite sure
what you did and don't want to ruin anything you can have LILO write the
multiple boot settings to a floppy disk. This doesn't override the MBR
written by MS W9x, but you have to boot from floppy disk (takes 2 seconds
longer and makes some more noise, hehe).
19.) Reboot. After the BIOS messages appeared a prompt with "lilo:"
should show on, either press here enter and the default system will be
booted, type in whatever system you want (following my example it would be
win or linux) or press the TAB key and a list with all available names is
shown. After specifying what you like LILO will boot the right system.
20.) If everything works against you, boot from a MS W9x bootdisk where
you put fdisk on and type in fdisk /mbr. Then the MBR is rewritten by W9x
and it will only boot W9x, the LILO settings are then overwritten and it
should be possible to boot W9x as if there is no LILO or Linux or whatever
else on the harddrive. With the MS fdisk you can delete NON-DOS partitions,
this will destroy the Linux installation and give free the harddrive space,
so you can start over with Linux and LILO installation.
I hope this helps a bit, i have no experience with a W9x /W NT / Linux
combination. If you like me to descrive this too, buy a W NT version and
send it to me, hehehehe.
If you have already a W9x system running taking all the harddrive space,
then use PartitionMagic (u have to buy or "organize" it) or the program
FIPS (dunno if it is shareware or PD or freeware or what name they invented
for such software). These programs can change partiton sizes without any
data loss - haven't tried them out yet.
Another possible way is to work with two or three harddrives. Install each
OS seperately on one harddrive that you put in as single drives while
installation. Modern BIOS allow to boot from other drives than only from
"C", that means in this case the first harddrive on the first IDE port. So
you just enter the BIOS setup, change the drive to boot from, save the BIOS
settings and let the puter boot. It should work, but this version i haven't
tried out yet also.
I want to add that i wrote this all "out of my head" and hope that it is
all right, if not then maybe someone may correct my instructions or mail me
personally. Besides that don't be too picky with my english, it is a
foreign language for me.
Now i want to answer the questions below in some quick words.
> Few question to ask here:
>
> 1. PC HD can have only 4 primary partiton, but unlimited extended
>partition?
Nes (means yes and no). It is possible to put maximum four primary
(bootable) partitions on one harddrive unit, i'm not quite sure about the
extended partitons. But on the other hand who really needs more than two
(oke oke, with NT it would be three) OS on one puter system ?
Taking MS-DOS based systems, there you can create only one primary
partiton per harddrive unit. Maybe NT comes along with a multiboot program
like Linux has LILO. But there are also multiboot programs available,
search the net or ask your friends if someone knows sth about that.
>
> 2. In Dos/Windows fdisk, I am able to create Primary and extended
>partition, but the extended partition show in Dos/Windows fdisk is same
>with the linux extended partition?
Nes (again!). In my version both Linux (the system partition and the swap
partition) show are identified as NON-DOS partitions. But it is true that
the Linux swap partition uses the MS-DOS filesystem, so it is possible that
it is identified as MS-DOS partition. The Linux partition itself is
normally not an MSDOS partition (there are ways to install Linux on an
MSDOS filesystems, but that makes not so much sense, just for testing).
Afaik Linux filesystem doesn't use primary / extended partitons and
logical drives, it is just a partition that will be mounted to a directory.
Correct me someone if i'm wrong, i only use one Linux partition and dnver
set up a second one.
>
> 3. If I already use up two partition for my Windows system, am I able
>to create another three partition(1 for linux system, 1 for user data, 1
>for swap) for linux since PC HD support only 4 primary partition.
Your Windows system only uses one primary partition (you may have a second
one, but this will then be on a second harddrive unit!!!), any other
partition is a logical drive in an extended partition. The Linux swap
partition is not a primary partition. You don't need necessarily an own
partition for user data under Linux, you will see it only as another
directory under Linux anyways. So in daily use it doesn't matter if this
directory is a "real" directory or if it is an own partition mounted to a
directory.
>
> 4. max size for linux swap partition is 16, and max no of linux swap
>partiton is 8. Kernal 2.0 and 2.2 still having this limit?
16 what ? 16 MB ? I doubt that. My swap is 128 MB actually and to me i see
not so much sense to create more than one swap partition. I remember that
while setting up RedHat it said that the swap space is limited to 100 MB, i
haven't noticed this limitation under SuSE 6.0.
Afaik it doesn't have to do anything with the kernel anyways.
>
> Thanks.
You are welcome ! I hope that this loooooong mail helps you to fix your
problems.
