[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Just purchased Macmillan Linux which of course uses Mandrake Linux. It came
> with partition magic and boot magic. Just wondering how hard it is going to be
> to set up a dual boot? Do people usually run into any problems creating a new
> partition on the fly?
>
> Thanks,
> Jason
I have two machines that dual boot Linux and Win95. One runs Mandrake 7.0. The
other runs RedHat 5.2. Both machines are setup as follows.
A /boot partition of 10 to 20 meg is setup as the first partition of the first
drive using Linux fdisk. Make sure to set this partition to be bootable. The rest
of the first drive is setup with a DOS partition using DOS fdisk. I format the DOS
partition with the DOS6.2 format program. Then I use EZ-DRIVE's advanced features
to transfer a previously installed Win95 partition from another (spare) drive.
NOTE: don't install EZ-DRIVE, just use the advance partition transfer feature. Of
course that previously installed Win95 partition needs to have been installed for
the computer being setup as a dual boot system. I think it is safer to transfer
the Win95 system than to install Win95 in the normal way. I have never tried to
install Win95 on a drive that has the first partition setup for Linux, so I don't
know how that would work. The partition transfer method works.
Then I add the second drive that will hold all of the Linux system (except for
/boot) and do a custom intall of Linux. I opt to install LILO on the first boot
sector NOT the MBR.
Once done, the system reboots to the Linux prompt where it can be interrupted with
the TAB key to allow booting the Win95 partition. Or it can be allowed to timeout
and it will boot Linux. The LILO configuration file can also be modified to boot
Win95 as default with Linux selected as an alternative with the TAB key.
I usually put the Linux swap partition as the first partition of the second drive.
With this setup, if Linux ever ends up crashing because of a bad choice while
logged in as root, and there is no way to recover even with a rescue disk, the
sytem can still be used under Win95. Just boot DOS from disk, run the DOS fdisk,
and set the Win95 partition to be the active partition.
I'm sure there are other ways to setup a dual boot system, but this method has
worked for me and is simple. Simple meaning that I understand it and it has worked
more than once.
Frank Kamp
