Red Hat Linux 9

jomotheman · May 11, 2003

I am new to Linux, I purchased Red Hat 9 yesterday, and after sorting out the partitions on my 2nd Hard Drive I have encountered another prob.

When installing from CD after partitioning a screen comes up with the option to change boot loader, the default is GRUB, which I have left alone, is this right?

If I use GRUB will I get to choose on Boot Up the option to use Win xp pro or Linnux9, the documentation is a little unclear, so any help would be most welcome

scarecrow · May 11, 2003

You can use either grub or lilo.
Putting the Linux loader at the harddisk mbr will override the XP boot loader, and offer you at startup the choice of booting ewither XP or Red Hat.
Nevertheless, I feel that the best solution is putting grub or lilo at the Linux root partition (typically / ). Now you will need a third party bootloader to be able to boot both, I can strongly recommend OSLoader (_www.osloader.com). It's shareware, but the only limitation is random naggers. There is also a way to boot Linux by using the NT loader, but it is a bit laborous.

Seb · May 11, 2003

Yup, grub will let u choose which one of winxp or linux to boot.

jomotheman · May 11, 2003

Thanx Guys for all your help

serjer · May 12, 2003

y not at /boot?

scarecrow · May 12, 2003

serjer said:
y not at /boot?

You can of course, but /boot is not usually a separate partition, just a directory of the root partition.

crater · May 12, 2003

@scarecrow
What's laborous about the NT loader?

Mine I have XP pro on the primary and Mandrake 9 on slave with Lilo as the bootloader at ./ on the primary.
but is this just a farce?
Booting the NT loader or is it that Linuxs bootloader can't see what "other" os 's you have? and the name them in Lilo or Grub ie:

select os you want to boot
Linux
NT
Failsafe
blaa blaa
OR
Linux
Win XP
Win ME
Blaa Blaa

scarecrow · May 12, 2003

crater:
I talk about using the NT Loader itself to boot both systems, not LILO or Grub.
You can use bootpart from Gilles Volant (Winimage developer):
http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm
... or do-it yourself, you can find several tuts on the net:
http://www.mattrope.com/computers/howtos/linux-ntloader.php
http://doc.rmplc.co.uk/linux/LDP/HOWTO/mini/Linux+NT-Loader.html

...and so on.

serjer · May 12, 2003

will the boot loader still work(grub /lilo) if the ./ partition u're saying is a logical drive?

scarecrow · May 12, 2003

serjer said:
will the boot loader still work(grub /lilo) if the ./ partition u're saying is a logical drive?

Yes, of course. The whole *nix installation can be done on logical volumes-only, no need for primary partitions. On some older systems the bootable partition should not cross the 8GB boundary- else the system bios would not be able to boot it (although some third party loaders made a workaround for this issue), but this problem does not exist in modern mobos, eg AMD KT 266 and later or Intel 81x and later.

serjer · May 12, 2003

thx scarecrow
but did u try 2 install 2 linux distros on the same pc/hd?say suse n RH

Seb · May 12, 2003

Y need 2 linux????

serjer · May 12, 2003

4 fun

1 distro complement the other

scarecrow · May 12, 2003

I had at some time Mandrake and Knoppix on the same puter, but not same HD. But I cannot see any good reason why it should not work on the same HD- you would simply decline using LILO or grub to boot the whole system (although grub may well work).
All Tux distros are more or less the same, what changes are the system tools and the included software packages. Once the tools are good and you know one thing or two, even buggy stuff like Mandrake can work great.