> Hi,
>
> Although I use Linux for my work
> and quite a lot at home, I would like
> to have the best of both worlds.
>
> I have a nice shiny new 20G disk drive
> and want to repartition it so that I can
> install RH Linux 6.1 and Windows '98 on
> it.
>
> I have been going back and forth from
> the two fdisks and making a complete dogs
> breakfast of my disk.
>
> Can anyone offer any hints, general
> principles or straight-out instructions
> to help me get through this?
Hi Peter,
The easiest way that i have found [so far];
create 2 DOS primary partitions, taking up the whole HD & only initilize /
format the first one.
Install WinX
Windows doesn't seem to pick up a non initilized partition, so your CD drive
is in the right place.
Start the Linux install, re-partition the 2nd DOS partition to be linux
primary & swap (& any others...)
install linux.
Done.
Depending upon your version of LILO, you may need a different boot manager.
> - Bill's format command on my tiny 2G primary partition
> is formatting all 19G of my disk, so it is evidently
> ignoring the partition table, I guess because the old
> Windows '98 FAT tables are still present. How can I
> stop it doing this?
If you completely remover all partitions, reboot (you need a boot disk),
then repartition.
Did you reboot, between fdisk & format.
> - Can I get Bill's fdisk to work around my Linux
> partitions without stomping on them?
I never had any real problems with this, (i dont know much about DOS's
fdisk), but i could never see how to change partition type (DOS / Linux /
BSD...)
I avoided this by simply never using it (except for the occasional fdisk
/mbr )
> - Can I make a floppy which boots to a single user shell
> without a Linux installation already on the disk? I
> hate having to go through RedHat's installation screens
> to run little things like fdisk.
A diferent disto...
I am assuming that RH6.1 is similar to 6.2...
Just smack left CTRL + left ALT + F2 after RH has nicely booted...
should give you a shell with a few basic commands.
> - How do you format a hard disk in Linux? (other than
> having RedHat do it for you)
dunno
> - It would be nice to have only one huge C: drive
> at the end of the whole process, but Lilo (at least
> with RH6.1) doesn't seem to be able to cope with
> Linux starting so high up, so having a C: and a D:
> drive may be inevitable
>
> - It would be nice to have both the C: and the D:
> drive initialized before Win98 is installed, to
> avoid the CDROM moving from D: to E: and confusing
> Windows immensely later
See above...
Although i must admit that it was a while since i had to do all this..
> - During Windows '98 installation, if checkdisk detects
> a non-dos partition, it suggests that you leave it alone
> to prevent you from stomping on some other OS. However,
> it still regards this as an error, and quits from the
> installation process
try
[CD-DRIVE}\win98\setup.exe /?
there is an option to skip this, just cant remember what it is..
Cheerio, & hope it helped
Arthur
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