On Tue, 31 Aug 1999, you wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I just purchased a nice computer with a large HD. I also purchased
> System Commander for the purpose of dual booting between Win 98 and
> Linux. I have Caldera 2.2, RedHat 6.0, and Mandrake 6. I have not had
> very good luck setting any of them up in a dual boot environment. I
> have managed to set them all up but they destroy my Win98 setup in the
> process (4 different times). Actually the Partitions are still there
> but they have been converted to "non-dos" partitions.
>
What kind of install did you select? Since you have System Commander
(and Mandrake 6) you may also have Partition Magic. If so, use that
to "squeeze" down your Windows partition, then create two more
partitions (at least): 1 partition of around 50-100 megs for "swap"
space, and the rest for Linux.
Once you've done the re-partitioning, choose "custom" install. For
custom, installing "everything" except the foreign-language "how-to"
files, I found the drivespace requirements to be right at 1 GB. If
you choose to install less, of course, you will use less space.
Also, you should choose something OTHER than the primary Windows
partition for your Linux install. Choose the other large partition
for Linux (again, at least a GIG of drivespace would be highly
adviseable.) You may also want to squeeze a partition in BEFORE
Windows of about 10-25 megs for "/boot" (more about that later.) My
experience has been with RedHat and Mandrake (which is essentially
RedHat with some "extras") so I can only give you advice on those two
versions of Linux.
Now, if you want to use LILO, your /boot directory MUST be within the
first 1025 cylinders, which is why I suggest a small partition at the
head of your hard drive for the "/boot" directory. The rest of the
install can go AFTER Windows. I would also strongly advise a full
system backup BEFORE you do any of this...just in case. :-)
>
> Also, System commander says something about using root super block
> and not the MBR. It also says this is chosen during setup, but
> I've missed it each time somewhere.
>
Hm.....not sure what this is about unless it's about having the /boot
within the first 1024 cylinders...
Good luck!
John
