Shashi wrote:
>> So my problem is how do I install to have both Linux and Windows
working on my system? What is the problem I am having? <<
I can't answer that. However, I can tell you what I did to get a
perfectly functioning dual boot between Windows 98SE and Mandrake 8. It
took me four tries, by the way, because I wasn't sure what I was doing
in setting up this dual boot and if I didn't like the results of my
experiments, I just blew away Linux and started over until I got what I
wanted.
Pre-Linux, I had 98SE in an 8 gig primary and 22 gig extended partition,
both of them FAT32, on a 30 gig IBM Desktar 7200 rpm hard drive. I
wanted to have Windows totally ignorant of Linux's existence and have no
Linux files showing in Windows Explorer. Above all, I didn't want my
Windows installation to be damaged in any way.
First I moved the less than 2 gigs of stuff on my Drive D and Drive E
onto Drive C in the primary partition. I created directories on Drive C
called MovedFromD and MovedFromE to hold the stuff (which I later moved
back after I recreated the drives). After I got everything onto my 8 gig
C, I ran a full backup that I burned onto CD-R. After D and E were
empty, I used FDISK to delete the extended partition. Then I used FDISK
to create a FAT32 extended partition that left 7.5 gigs of the drive
empty. I would be recreating logical drives D and E in the extended
partition and putting Linux in the 7.5 gigs that were simply empty, not
part of a partition.
Now I installed Mandrake 8 from the CDs. When I got to the disk
partitioning part of the installation, I did *not* let it do it
automatically. Instead, I created my own partitions. I first set up a
Linux swap partition of 256 megs. Then I created one ext2fs partition
for everything else from all the remaining disk space. I finished the
installation and set up LILO for my boot manager, with a default boot
into Windows and five seconds to decide.
This has worked extremely well. Windows doesn't see Linux, Linux
automatically mounted my Windows drives C, D,and E. I think I'm going to
unmount Drive C because I don't like to have my primary Windows drive
exposed in any way. I never use any of the data on my Windows drives in
Linux. When I install Wine, though, I may want Linux to see Windows.
I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
A couple of comments: you now have two partitions on your drive--a
primary and an extended. Strictly, your drive letters after C aren't
partitions, but volumes (logical drives) in the extended partition.
FDISK destroys everything on a partition, so if you let FDISK loose on
your extended partition, you'll lose everything but Drive C, which is a
primary. I don't know why you have all your drives on FAT16. You are
limited to 2 gigs per drive under FAT16, which gets to be a pain. You
can't move everything to Drive C the way I did unless you have the
space. If you want to resize a partition without losing data, you would
need to convert your C to FAT32 and use a tool like Partition Magic. Or
you could move the stuff on D, E, etc., to CD-R or Zip disks or tape or
a network drive. Then you can delete the extended partition and make a
new extended that leaves enough space for Linux.
Be extremely careful with FDISK and the Linux partitioning tool to leave
your primary Drive C absolutely untouched. You DON'T want to take a
chance of destroying it, so double check before you do any step at all
that involves partitioning or formatting. Well, if you don't mind
reinstalling Windows or you're completely confident of your backups, you
can be more daring.<g> But I absolutely did not want to reinstall
Windows and my vast number of programs, most of them patched, updated,
and customized.
I would have preferred having another partition for /usr, rather than
having all of Linux on one partition (plus the swap partition). However,
I couldn't remember the "rules" for numbers of partitions and I didn't
feel like looking them up. I do know that you can have just one extended
partition and there is a limit of four primary partitions, one of which
can be active. What I couldn't remember was whether that was four
primaries plus an extended, or a total of four (one extended plus three
primaries). Partition information from FDISK shows that I have one
primary (Drive C), one extended divided into logical D and E, and two
non-DOS primaries (Linux swap and Linux). By default, the Windows
primary is the active primary. I expect that LILO switches the primary
to the Linux partition when I boot into Linux. If you have Linux use an
extended partition, it will use that Lin4Win thing to carve out a Linux
image on your Windows extended partition, which you'll see in Windows
Explorer.
>> Why LILO gives DOS option for booting instead of WINDOWS? Can I
consider DOS option same as WINDOWS option? <<
I don't know. LILO calls it Windows on my system, not DOS. By the way,
you can boot into Windows Safe Mode by highlighting the word Windows in
LILO and holding down Shift and F8 while you hit Enter. To get rid of
LILO you boot with a Windows startup disk and at a DOS prompt, type
FDISK /MBR. But since you can boot into regular Windows and into Safe
Mode Windows, there should seldom be a need to run FDISK /MBR.
>> If I install in the extended partition without deleting it before
installation then also is Linux going to destroy my Windows? <<
I don't think so, but be sure your Windows stuff is backed up first. It
seems that you'll get a Lin4Win image file for Linux in your Windows
drive-whatever. That's what happened on one of the Linux installations I
wiped out. The documents advise against using a Windows extended
partition this way. Mainly, it's intended for people who want to see
what Linux is like without messing with their Windows partitions. It's
supposed to be slower and is not recommended for "real" use of Linux.
I don't know if this helps, but it's one person's experience anyway. If
everything else in my Linux worked as well as the dual boot, I'd be a
much happier camper than I am.<g> Today I was fighting the font thing
and making a little progress, but not out of the woods yet.
Good luck!
--Judy Miner
