[lug] More on NT/Linux dual boot setup

[Elyse M. Grasso]

Thaks for everyone's comments. After reading them, and the mini-howtos for 
Dos+Win95+OS2+Linux and WinNT+Linux, I think I have clarified my questions.

I have a hybrid IDE and SCSI system. My existing CD-ROM is SCSI, and so is the
new CD-RW I am adding to the system. There are two hard drive. One is an old 
1/2 gig IDE drive that is the boot drive and looks like this:

Disk /dev/hda: 16 heads, 63 sectors, 1057 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 bytes
 
   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1           301      1024    364896    5  Extended
/dev/hda2   *       260       262      1512    a  OS/2 Boot Manager
/dev/hda3             1       259    130504+   6  FAT16
/dev/hda4           263       300     19152   83  Linux
/dev/hda5   *       301       796    249952+   6  FAT16
/dev/hda6   *       797      1024    114880+   6  FAT16                 
	(/dev/hda6 was an HPFS partition mostly used as swap and spool space 
	for OS2 until I was having problems upgrading to KRUD 6.1 Linux)

The other existing drive is a SCSI drive that currently looks like this:

/dev/sda1             2       261   2088450    5  Extended
/dev/sda5   *         2        21    160618+  83  Linux
/dev/sda6   *        22        62    329301    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda7   *        63       138    610438+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda8   *       139       223    682731   83  Linux
/dev/sda9   *       224       228     40131   82  Linux swap
/dev/sda10          229       261    265041   83  Linux                         

It took a lot of playing with Partiton magic to put the Linux /boot and 
/ partitions early enough on the drives that they would boot. I had a lot of 
problems with the cylinder counts when I was first setting things up. That's 
also why there is some wasted space at the end of the 1/2 GIG ide.

I think that what I want to do is basically this:
1. open up the system
2. add the new 8 gig drive as IDE slave and use Partition Magic to set things 
up initially with space for:
	a. a small dos partition
	b. OS/2 Boot Manager
	c. Linux /boot partition
	d. partition for Windows NT (maybe a gig)
	e. space for Linux
3. SYS the dos partition and copy dos and Partition manager into it.
4. Reboot and swap mastership for the IDE drives
5. Install OS/2 Boot Manager
6. Install Windows NT (using a FAT partition and using )
7. Install Linux
8. Figure out what patterns of having drives invisible is needed to make the 
drive letters right in DOS and OS/2.

I think what I'm worried about is whether the NT install tends to be 'greedy' 
and step on things that already exist in the System, and whether there are 
problems getting it to cooperate with the boot manager.

Does anyone have experience with Boot Manager plus NT plus Linux?

Can NT go into an extended partition or does it want a primary one? Can the 
Linux /boot be in an extended partition?

Thanks

-- 
Elyse M. Grasso
emgrasso at data-raptors.com