> Greetings all.
>
> I currently use a dual booting system with Win95 and Mandrake 6, hda
> Windows, hdb Linux. I have decided that I no longer wish to have my
> system
> defiled by Windows and would like my main machine Linux only. I am
> intending to remove the windows hard drive and use it for other, more
> sinister purposes. Now if I can help it I don't want to do a reinstall,
> instead I would just like to make hdb (where Linux is) into hda. I am
> guessing that this can be done by modifying my fstab and lilo.conf files.
> Are there any other files i would need to change?
>
> So that I don't come up with an unuseable system i thought I'd run my
> proposed changes by the list first - see if there are any obvious mistakes
> in my plans.
>
> Here is my current fstab file - it looks a bit strange but I have opened
> it
> using MS Notepad as I am at work. It didn't seem to translate that well -
> I've fixed it up best i can.
>
> /dev/hdb6 / ext2 defaults 1
> 1
> /dev/hdb5 swap swap defaults 0
> 0
> /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto
> sync,user,noauto,nosuid,nodev,unhide 0 0
> /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom auto
> user,noauto,nosuid,exec,nodev,ro 0 0
> none /proc proc defaults 0
> 0
> none /dev/pts devpts mode=0622 0
> 0
> /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows msdos
> user,exec,dev,suid,rw,usrquota,grpquota,conv=auto,uid=501,gid=501,umask=66
> 6
> 1 1
> /dev/hdd /mnt/zip auto user,noexec,nodev,nosuid,rw,noauto
> 1 1
>
>
> Now I don't know why my original partitions hdb1 and hdb2 were turned into
> 5
> & 6, but I'm sure Linux knew what it was doing. My intention is to delete
> the /dev/hda1 line and modify /dev/hdb5 to /dev/hda5 and /dev/hdb6 to
> /dev/hda6. Does that sound okay?
>
> Here is lilo.conf (again I apologise if it looks strange)
>
> boot=/dev/hda
> map=/boot/map
> install=/boot/boot.b
> prompt
> linear
> timeout=50
> image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.9-27mdk
> label=linux
> root=/dev/hdb6
> read-only
> other=/dev/hda1
> label=dos
> table=/dev/hda
>
> I believe that in the image section root=/dev/hdb6 can be changed to
> root=/dev/hda6.
>
> Obviously the other section can be removed and I would run /sbin/lilo {as
> I
> write this my mind has just thought of a problem}
>
> I am also curoius as to how lilo will know where the /boot partition is.
> I
> am sure that when I installed mandrake I included a separate /boot
> partition
> on hdb. It doesn't appear in fstab or lilo, so how will it find the
> correct
> device to use? IS there another file?
>
> I am guessing that if I boot up, make the necessary changes to the files,
> shutdown, change the drives around and reboot everything should work okay
> -
> except one thing I can't write to the MBR of the linux drive (the
> aforementioned problem). If I use my startup floppy can I pass arguments
> to
> lilo at the prompt to boot successfully to linux - or am I stuffed?
>
> Or can I pass an argument to /sbin/lilo (no lilo man pages at work to
> check
> I'm afraid) so that it will write to the MBR of the linux drive (at this
> point still hdb) with the information so that it will boot correctly from
> the linux drive as hda?
>
>
> A second query out of interest:
>
> In my current setup Windows is installed on a standard hard drive, while
> Linux uses a DMA33 capable drive. The bios has DMA/33 enabled however my
> understanding is that if the master device on an ide port is not DMA/33
> capable then the slave cannot operate DMA/33. What I would like to know
> is
> - after I change my system around and remove Windows, will Linux take
> advantage of the DMA/33. During boot up I see that the kernel makes
> certain
> optimisations for the various hard drives so does the kernel do some sort
> of
> probe during boot to determine if DMA/33 is present, or is there some
> other
> initialisation script that contains that information?
>
Actually it would seem this info has been answered in another thread (i
think). I would still like to know if you can optimise a slave drive for
DMA/33 while having the master at standard.
> If anyone can tell me if what i am proposing to do is correct (or more
> importantly incorrect) then hopefully this coming weekend will run nice
> and
> smoothly.
>
> Thanks in advance
>
> Aaron
>
> ***When it comes to computer failures - prevention is better than a
> cure***
