I need some clarification on a dual boot installation.
I have XP installed and have a partition ready for Knoppmyth on hdb
So far:
Boot with CD
Manual install
Load default setting, change it in seperate window, save it
Run through installation
Files are copied to /mnt/hdinstall
Now...
I still haven't made the partitions. Will the next boot do this or is it manual?
Next boot with CD, what do I answer when it boots?
When can I play with Lilo? Now, or after next boot?
Thanks

Hi,
I have been down this road..

How are your hd partitions setup? how big is the drive? desktop / laptop? lilo.conf needs to be editted before install. There are lots of notes on the forum, recent too. Try a search for some of those notes so I don't have to retype them

Mike

I've been through it and am still grasping.
I have a single 80 GB virtual partition

Hi arnonm,

Virtual partition?

Be warned that this is not for the faint of heart and you may actually hose your windows install. Suggest you make a bootable floppy and have fdisk on the floppy, the format command also is good to have available.

Here is summary of what I did / do, I boot the cd, choose manual install, do the partition (no virtual bs for me) assuming ide do your self a heart attack, get the partition id, then delete all partitions in hda, make a new partition hda1 6~8 gig for windows( it only moves a pointer), make a hda2 ~2 gig as a shared partition (fat32) hda3 512 meg for swap and then make hda5 (logical) ~5gig for / and finally remainder hda6 for /myth set up the id for each and write it. When you exit, do install, it will ask where (hda5) and when it finishes, drops you to a prompt. at the prompt you make the swap hda3, swapon, format hda 6 to be /myth, mount hda5, chroot so you can edit the lilo.conf to remove the Part:..., save and run lilo -v then edit the fstab to show the mounting of hda6 as /myth auto (remove the no from auto)

There are other detailed steps needed but I have posted that several times already so a search would be good thing to do. If things go accordingly, a reboot should give you a lilo boot menu.

Again, you are going to really shake up the drive and if not done correctly, you will loose the M$ system

Enjoy
Mike

I highly recommend getting another hard drive.

_________________
Skill level: 10^-3

Following Mike's advice and posting I have read and tried everything.
Summary:
I have two drives - windows on hda, Linux partitions on hdb
Booted with KM, created the partitions, formated, installed manually
Chrooted into new root hdb6 and make lilo and fstab changes
installed lilo (tried lilo -v and lilo -M ) and copied to c: in Windrive

Lilo loads now but when I select Linux I get a NO ACTIVE PARTITION FOUND

hdb partitions are there, first one is marked to boot. Any suggestions?

Arnon

Hi,

Quick note as it is a labor day, check you settings in lilo.conf. You are not telling it where to find the boot files which are on hd?. $ man lilo may give a few tips of where to tell it the root drive is located.

Mike

I could be wrong but wasn't mikes suggestion for everything on a single drive? I belive in his description linux boot info is on hda5. You say you have 2 drives now? I have a dual boot with 2 drives. Linux is on HDA and win on HDB. I followed this method,
http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... =dual+boot
please note that on the first post hdb* is written instead of hda*. The later posts in that thread explain it kinda.

_________________
Skill level: 10^-3

Thanks..

I have followed all the posts to a latter. Never had one disk. Layout is as follows:

/dev/hda1 - MSFT
/dev/hdb1 - MSFT
/dev/hdb5 - Linux (/ )
/dev/hdb6 - Linux (/myth )

Went through Lilo and copying the cnf to MSFT.
Lilo completes (ie doesn't get stuck on L or LI) and comes up with NO ACTIVE PARTITION FOUND

could it be that lilo cannot access /dev/hdb5 since it is beyond the 1024 mark?

Arnon

Hi arnonm,

You are leaving a lot of information out of the picture and things are changing.


Don't recall saying anything about two drives....


I did query about the "virtual partition"

Also I did say:
" There are other detailed steps needed but I have posted that several times already so a search would be good thing to do"

Mike

Could you post that small linux section of lilo.conf.
I kinda sorta get what you are doing. BTW why do you want 2 MSFT partitions? First, I think you should swap the hard drives so the one with linux is the master. Then, if possible put both MSFT partitions on hdb and dedicate hda to linux. If you do it like that you can use autoinstall. That will format all of HDA correctly. You'll still need to do a small edit in lilo documented here:
http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... =dual+boot

My setup:

hda1 /
hda2 swap
hda3 /myth

hdb1 WinXP
hdb2 WinME

_________________
Skill level: 10^-3