2nd hard drive for Linux

[mikebw at bilow.bilow.uu.ids.net (Mike Bilow)]

Gerald Feldman wrote in a message to Mike Bilow:

 GF> BTW: Don't use the OS2 dual boot manager. One person who was
 GF> at the  installfest today had that set up, and the boot
 GF> manager refused to  boot from the linux partition. We had to
 GF> boot from floppy.

Your terminology leaves me confused.  OS/2 provides two alternative methods for
booting multiple operating systems.

"Dual-Boot" is a system where both DOS and OS/2 reside on the same partition,
and a small utility actually copies the boot sector and some system files
(CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT) back and forth.  Dual-Boot is therefore specific
to DOS and OS/2, and only works in limited cases.  It is the default if you
install OS/2 onto a partition which already has DOS.

"Boot Manager" is a completely different arrangement where each operating
system resides on its own partition, something like LILO.  Boot Manager itself
resides in a minimal size primary partition of its own, and it is this
partition which is actually marked "active" (what Boot Manager calls
"startable") in the real Master Boot Record.  Boot Manager then maintains an
internal table of other "bootable" partitions, and it can chain to any of these
even across physical drives.  Boot Manager also manages partition hiding in
order to make sure that no more than one primary partition per physical drive
is visible at the same time.

Although Dual-Boot is not compatible with Linux (except through using it to
boot DOS and then to run LoadLin), Boot Manager should have no trouble booting
a Linux partition.
 
-- Mike