Help with Linux

I want to do a dual boot with linux and win 2k. But last time I tried it linux stole the boot sector and I couldn't get in to windows. And i'm wondering if anyone could help me.

information:

Red hat 7.1
got one 18 gig hd <-fat 32 on ide channel 1
one 12 gig hd <-fat 32 on ide channel 2

I would love for them to be on seperate drives, but That is what I did last time and, like I said, it stole the boot sector and I spent the next 12 hours in hell.

I could also stand having both oss' on the same drive and having the other drive for storage.

If you can provide any help, please let me know thank you

Here are some links to some of the Howtos that might help. 2000 is based off of NT, so the NT information should work.

Linux+WinNT
Linux+NT-Loader
Install-Strategies

Hope this helps
Happy Hacking

my friend had a similar problem.. but he was a freak, so he would run his computer without the case and just switch hard drives when he wanted to switch OS.. which, for him, wasnt too often..

there was also a period of time where he had both HD in but just disabled one in the bios settings (some of them let u do this.. not all).. and switched that way..

unless you enjoy doing that kinda stuff, read the howtos suggested by the prev poster... i would try to just put /boot and Win2k on one HD, the rest of / on the other HD, and install BootMagic on Win2k and use that to switch.. Partition Magic has a wizard that will help you do your linux partitioning and they both have a recovery feature if something does go wrong..

Darkmo0n

This is what I use for my dual boot system (although I've found that RH 7.0 and Win2k aren't happy campers no matter what). Also, I tend to use a DOS partition in front of everything (not for security reasons but for easy of troubleshooting -- You should be able to do this in the Win2K partition).

Now the instructions may seem really simple but I had written them for a security course for my technicians (not all of them are familar with Linux. In fact, few of them are).

First, for the installation location ensure that the lilo is set to the first partition of Linux and NOT the MBR (Master Boot Record). This will interfere with NT/2000 and will be more difficult to get around. By default, the installation will choose MBR. Just make sure you write down WHERE lilo ends up (should be something like /dev/hdax or /dev/hdbx)

Also, make sure you make a boot disk. It will be slower for the first time but once you get this setup it should be fine.

Log into the graphical system interface or text interface as root. Press ok to the warning about using root at the console. Close the windows that open up. Looking at the bottom you will see a picture that looks like a monitor. Hit that to open a console window.

Type cd /

Type dd if=/dev/hdax of=/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1 where /dev/hdax is the harddrive info you got in step 15 of the Linux setup. Insert the other blank diskette labelled bootsect.lnx (that is BOOTSECT.LNX in lower case) for the machine in question.

Type mcopy /bootsect.lnx a:

Close the console window. Hit the “footprint” on the bottom right of the screen and choose logout. You will then get a closing window. Choose save settings and reboot. Remove the boot disk and reboot.

When the system reboots, choose MS-DOS or Windows 2000. Get to a DOS prompt (cmd in Win2K). Get to your root partition of where Win2K is installed or DOS (usually C:)

Type attrib –s –r boot.ini

Type edit boot.ini and at the end enter the following:

C:\bootsect.lnx=”Linux”

Note the partition numbers. These may have to be changed if NT doesn’t boot properly. Initial lab tests showed that the partition numbering changes. The lab partitions went from partition(2)/partition(3) to partition(4)/ partition(5).

save and exit out. Type attrib +s +r boot.ini

type copy a:\bootsect.lnx c:\bootsect.lnx

Remove the disk out of the drive and reboot. Ensure that the system can boot into Linux and NT/2000 to ensure that the dual-boot works.


Hope this helps.

If you want to avoid tricky-tricky manipulations, you can also add a bootloader which is neither the linux one nor the win one.

If I remember correctly, you have one of them on the install disk of openBSD, and, of course, a search on google should bring you some results.

Jean-Francois

You can also take a look at this thread at Slashdot. It talkes about a bootloader, but many people post replies that state they didn't need it, because... etc, etc.

I've dual booted with w2k and many flavours of linux, all using lilo in the mbr and haven't had a problem yet - if your installing linux after windows than it should set it up automatically - if not, just edit lilo.conf to your desired way and type "lilo" as root at the console to write it to disk - no probs.