[lug] Problem with LILO & WIn 2k

[DavidMorris at beldin.morris-clan.net]

I happen to have just spent a lot of time experimenting with exactly this
situation....only I was free to wipe my Win2k partition.  Below are notes I
took during my experiments....removing excess bagage, and modified slightly
to be applicable to this case.  These notes were taken installing
Debian/Win2k, but should be fairly generic.

First, you must have a /boot partition in the first 1024 cylinders of the
disk.  There is no getting around this as far as I could tell, and I
experimented with just about every solution I could think of.  Most clever
solutions destroyed the Win2k partition (not recommended! ;).  One solution
I did have luck with but did not use (needed NTFS), was:

- Use FAT32 or FAT16 for the first partition
- Install to the partition at the end of the disk
- When mounting partitions in the installer, go to the second console
  before continuing.  
- Move the existing /boot directory to /boot.old if it has anything in it,
  and create a new /boot directory.
- Mount your FAT16/FAT32 partition in the /boot directoryl, and modify
  /etc/fstab
- Copy over any files in /boot.
- Continue with normal installation.

Partition Magic, as mentioned below, is a great way to do get your /boot
partition at the start of the diskthis.  It will allow you to resize
partitions (NTFS, FAT16, or FAT32) either by shrinking them down at the
end.....or moving them over at the beginning.  There are other partitioning
programs that will do this, but if you need NTFS support there are no free
solutions....leastwise none that are trustworth for important data.
Partition Magic, last I heard, is the best available, but my knowledge is a
tad out of date..perhaps someone else can support/refute the best NTFS
partitioner with support for creating space at the beginning of the disk?

Ok, now once you have your /boot partition (5 MB if you are going to be
boring, 20 MB if you plan on doing a lot of playing around with custom
kernel compilations), everything should be much easier.  Here are the steps
I recommend based on my recent experimentation:

- Delete the second 10 GB partition (let LINUX re-create the partition
  structure after the Win2k partition)
- Create paritions for /boot, /, and /home.  /tmp too if you like (I always
  do).
- Make a note of what partition Win2k is on.
- Install LILO to the system MBR (not to a partition MBR!)
- Once linux is installed and setup, edit lilo.conf.  You can simply add:
    other=/dev/hda4
        alias=2
        other=Win2k
- Now, when you boot, you will get LILO, not the Win2k boot loader.  Simply
  press the "shift" key to get the boot prompt, and "tab" to list the
  options.  In this case, "2" will boot Win2k.  You can still change Win2k
  boot options by pressing "F8" quickly.

There you go, a dump of my recent findings.....hope this helps!

--David


On Tue, Nov 06, 2001 at 02:31:48PM -0500, John Karns wrote:
> On Tue, 6 Nov 2001, "Saltiel, Hernán Claudio" said:
> 
> > 	I didn't create a /boot partition on a cyl <1024, because my disc is
> > patitioned into two 10 Gb. partitions, and I have a lot of work on the Win2k
> > partition, so I cannot delete it!
> 
> Partition magic works very well in this kind of situation, allowing one to
> manipulate the partitions as desired to place them within desired
> boundaries, re-size, etc.  I guess now there are one or two open source
> pkgs which function in a similar manner.  Not sure how well any of them
> deal with NTFS formatted partitions, if at all, although I suspect that
> the later versions of PM would be capable.  These later versions also
> include a boot loader which may be your advantage.  I've been user of PM
> since version 1 when it came out for OS/2, and always had good results.
> Although I did hear of some problems with one of the early versions which
> included the boot loader.
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> John Karns                                        jkarns at csd.net
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Web Page:  http://lug.boulder.co.us
> Mailing List: http://lists.lug.boulder.co.us/mailman/listinfo/lug