Yes, what you want to do can be done and without much trouble.
andy wrote:
I had a single 8.4gb hard drive, partioned with W98 in 6 gb, Linux in the
remainder..Lilo worked just fine...
I installed a 20gb h/d in addition to this this week-I've kept the original
as master and the new one as slave.
My plan was to put a completely clean install of W98 onto the new drive,
make an image file using Norton Ghost, burn that onto a CD (Makes
re-installing windows a brze!!), then drag all my personal files
over and re-install the apps onto the new drive, then allow Linux to take
over the entire original 8.4 gb by re-sizing the partitons.
Fine..on paper (Or in my head!!)
If you want to resize the Linux configuration without losing everything you
have on it, then you'ld want to use a tool like Partition Magic, that is, if
there are any alternatives to PM. PM has the capability of resizing partitions
without losing anything, especially when increasing the size of partitions (not
sure what PM does when you try to resize a partition to smaller than what's on
it takes up, though).
However, if you're going to have such large HDDs, then PM is probably something
you should seriously consider getting. I heard that there were some problems
with the 5.x version; therefore, you should do some research on this. You
could check the zdnet, pcmag, cnet and such web sites:
http://www.zdnet.com
http://www.pcmag.com
etcetera
Those problems were reported last fall or earlier last year, though, so these
have probably been fixed.
When I'd done the fresh install of W98 on the new drive, I lost access to my
original hard drive, so the only thing I could boot into was the new copy of
W98.. I think I remember reading that, if you install Windows AFTER Linux,
it over-writes the boot records so Lilo boesn't function any more. Is that
right?
Yep.
The t*t that I am..I didn't make a boot floppy on my last Linux
install (.hangs head in shame and stands in the corner!!)
Look at it as learning.
To cut this short then..I've finished up fdisk-ing the lot, installing Linux
first onto the slave h/d in a 6 gb partition (Should be enough, shouldn't
it??)
Should be. If you eventually run out of space, then you can always create
additional filesystems later, or manage differently. There are definitely ways
of expanding later on without needing to redo everything just to gain more
space.
Might depend on what you plan to do, but 6GB would definitely be sufficient for
many purposes. As per above, you can always create and add more filesystems
later on.
For example, say you created a /home filesystem of 1GB and you eventually run
out of space, but this would still be adequate for /home. You could create a
separate 1GB or large filesystem and move /home to that, while reassigning the
space previously taken up by /home to another filesystem requiring more space
that it's current size, only needing to modify the fstab configuration file.
This isn't a great example, but it's an example of what could be done;
although, if /home happened to be next to the filesystem requiring more space
and following that filesystem, then you could delete the old /home filesystem
or partition and expand the other one by the additional 1GB freed up in moving
/home. The filesystem numbering would end up with a gap, if the new /home
filesystem or partition was placed further on the same hdd, but this shouldn't
be a problem (could in some cases, for PM, but think this example wouldn't be a
problem for PM, albeit I still use PM 3.0).
and I'll put W98 on the original 8.4 gb drive. Now, when I re-install
W98 tonight, that mean that lilo will disappear again, won't it?
Yep.
So the
question is..how do I boot into Linux without it (i've created a floppy disc
this time, that will probably help) and once I've managed to get into Linux,
can I then re-install Lilo at all?
Make sure your boot floppy works before re-installing Win98. As long as the bf
works correctly, then you should be able to do as you describe, being able to
reinstall lilo and the works.
You might prefer to use linuxconf or drakconf or drak?conf (not sure of the
exact spelling and letter casing) for the lilo configuration, unless you know
that the lilo.conf file is still accurate. If you're not sure, then use
linuxconf or drakconf to make sure. (linuxconf will work, but I read earlier
today that drakconf is or may be better.)
mike
