[techtalk] Yet Another Installation Question

coldfire rolick571 at duq.edu
Fri May 18 21:23:12 EST 2001


> LILO needs to write to the MBR of the first drive.  Bad thing to confuse it
> by swapping one drive in and out, IMO at least (I don't have first hand
> experience with it, just making a guess).

LILO doesn't have to be installed to the MBR .. as a matter of fact, this
is the less recommended installation.  installing to the superblock of the
linux partition and flagging that partition as bootable is the way to go.

> > Working on the basis that there really aren't any stupid questions, here
> > I go again...

and this isn't a stupid question hehe.

> > I have been cautioned to back up all of my data just in case, but why
> > could I not unplug the IDE cable to the Win98 HD and do the install on
> > the Linux HD?  Would I be opening a can of worms when I plug the cable
> > back into the Win98 drive?

if you are going to install windows and linux to the same drive, i
strongly urge you to backup important data on your windows partition.
then get a decent partition program (partition magic seems to be the most
popular).  it's able to resize a partition without losing the data on that
partition.  something like 'fdisk' in linux will only modify the partition
table.  i could elaborate on why you wouldn't want to do this .. but it'll
give you nightmares ;P

after you resize the windows partition, just create a linux partition
(type: ext2) and a linux swap partition roughly double the size of your
ram (the word on the street).  if you have a buttload of ram, i don't
think it'd be necessary to have 512MB or more of swap.  anyhow .. then
just procede with the linux installation.  all should go well.

if you decide you wanted to have 2 drives .. i may not be advisible to
pull the plug on one drive and install to the other.  it's important to
know the device that particular drive is (hda being the primary master,
hdb being the primary slave, hdc the secondary master, and so on).  if you
pull the plug on one and they're set to cable select .. you'll install
linux while it's hda and when you plug the other back in, the linux
install would then be on hdb .. not good.  try to avoid doing this.

sorry if this wasn't very clear at all .. kinda in a hurry at the moment.
if you need more help, there's plenty of others who will be able to
supplement the little advice i gave ;P


abe





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