Win 2k and linux

[Mark J. Dulcey]

John Abreau wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 24 Oct 2000, Robert P. Sarao wrote:
> 
> > With this next Installfest coming up, I don't recall any discussion with
> > running Linux with Win2K..? Has it been done...?
> 
> I helped someone with this a couple weeks ago; he had Win2k Server on his
> system, and we added Redhat 7.0. It took a couple of tries to get it
> working, but it worked fine in the end. The main problem was he wanted to
> give Win2k an 8 gb partition, and lilo couldn't find the kernel when it
> was above that. I put /boot at the beginning of the disk and Win2k right
> after it, and everything worked fine. I did have to install Win2k before
> installing Linux.

You can also upgrade the system to a current version of lilo, and use
LBA32 mode; you can then put the kernel anywhere you want, and lilo will
still be able to load it. This does require that you have a system that
has LBA32 support in the BIOS.

Win2K doesn't really have to be installed before Linux. But I have had
the most success using Linux fdisk to partition the hard drive first,
and then installing all the operating systems I want. My laptop is
triple-boot; Win98SE, Win2K, and Linux, and I can boot any of them from
the lilo prompt. Win2K should be installed AFTER any other OS that uses
the FAT and/or NTFS file systems; changing the Windows-visible
partitions out from under it messes it up big-time. And Win2K puts its
boot loader in the first Win2K-visible partition, not its own partition,
so if you don't want it to pollute a Win98 partition, the Win2K
partition should be first on the disk.

That means the whole sequence goes like this:

1. Use Linux fdisk to partition the hard drive
2. Mark the Win98 partition active with fdisk. Install Win98. Make a
boot floppy.
3. Format any Windows data partitions you created.
4. Mark the Win2K partition active with fdisk. Install Win2K. Make a
recovery disk.
5. Install Linux. Make a boot floppy (IMPORTANT!!)
6. Install lilo with boot choices for all the partitions. You should now
have a working triple-boot system.

You should make floppies for all the operating systems, in case
something goes wrong. You can use the "boot installed system" feature of
the SuSE CD-ROM instead if you're using that distribution; other
distributions may now have a comparable feature.

My hard disk is layed out like this:

1. Win2K
2. Win98
3. Save-to-disk partition (special thing used by the Dell BIOS)
4. Extended partition...
   5. Linux
   6. Linux swap
   7. FAT32 data partition (all downloaded files are stored there,
because it's the only partition
      type that can be read and written by all three operating systems)

And yes, lilo can boot Linux out of a logical partition without any
trouble at all.
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