Dual Boot Question

[Craig White]

On Tue, 2006-01-03 at 10:46 -0700, Mark Phillips wrote:
> On Tuesday 03 January 2006 10:20 am, Craig White wrote:
> > On Tue, 2006-01-03 at 10:13 -0700, Mark Phillips wrote:
> > > I have a machine running Windows 2000. I want to add a second hard drive 
> for 
> > > Linux so I can keep the Windows 2000 drive for games and do some real work 
> on 
> > > the Linux drive. :-). Actually, my daughter wants the games, and I want 
> her 
> > > to do some real work on the Linux drive. I tried running the games under 
> wine 
> > > and they do not work. 
> > > 
> > > I have setup dual boot drives when both Linux and Windows are on the same 
> > > drive with a common MBR (details are sketchy - it was a while ago). 
> However, 
> > > it went very smoothly and flawlessly, so I have a lot of confidence that I 
> > > can do it again! Where fools rush in.....
> > > 
> > > Can grub handle booting across drives? Is the solution to my problem as 
> simple 
> > > as (1) configuring the Windows drive as a secondary (slave) drive, (2) 
> adding 
> > > the new drive as the master drive, (3) installing Debian on the new drive, 
> > > and (4) telling Grub (when it asks me) that I also want the option to boot 
> > > off the Windows drive as well? 
> > ----
> > grub - Linux Win2K WinXP are indifferent to which drive they are started
> > from. The only issue with grub is that it must be installed into the
> > boot blocks which BIOS sees as the first drive - which on most systems
> > is going to be /dev/hda or the master drive on the first ATA controller.
> 
> That is why I thought I should put the new drive as the master and the Windows 
> drive as the slave. But you suggest leaving the Windows drive as the master. 
> Doesn't that mean grub will have to modify the boot sector on the Windows 
> machine to allow Debian to boot? 
----
It shouldn't matter...the boot blocks can be repaired by Windows if
necessary.
----
> 
> I thought it might be safer to leave the Windows drive alone (other than 
> changing the jumper on the physical drive from master to slave and the cable) 
> and do all the modifications/installation on the new drive, so if something 
> does go wrong, the Windows drive has not been compromised.
----
That might cause more confusion to the existing Windows setup - I don't
know but it won't be seen as the first drive any longer but it will
probably still remain the 'c:' drive - perhaps not, if you have any vfat
partitions on the first drive.

There should be some partitioning display - i.e. what the installer
intends to do and where it intends to install that you confirm prior to
saying go ahead and you do have to check to make sure that the Windows
drive is untouched. The only thing that should be touched on the drive
is for grub to write it's boot stuff into /dev/hda
----
> 
> > 
> > Probably the easiest thing to do would be to...
> > 
> > Install a second drive for Linux as the slave on the first controller
> > and have partitions on this drive for
> > /boot # approx 100 Megabytes
> > /swap # depends upon RAM
> > a vfat partition for swapping data back and forth between Linux and
> > Windows
> 
> On my laptop, I have both Windows 2000 and Debian (formatted as ext3). On the 
> Linux partition I just mount the Windows partition as vfat and move files 
> back and forth as I need to.  Am I doing something dangerous? So far, I have 
> not had any problems.  Why would I need an intermediate vfat partition on the 
> Linux drive? Perhaps I am not understanding your comment?? 
----
for Win2K and WinXP ntfs is the preferred format for Windows drives and
most vendors are shipping computers in that format now. You can confirm
whether it is a fat format or ntfs format. Linux writing to ntfs format
volumes is dicey at best
----
> 
> > /     # of course
> > 
> > Grub should automatically create the entry for booting Windows - of
> > course this depends upon the installer used
> 
> I planned to use the "vanilla" Debian network installer - boot from CD and let 
> it grab the latest packages from the 'net.
----
makes sense - use the latest network book cd

I am not familiar with Debian installer but I recall Hans talking about
it borrowing much from Red Hat's anaconda which is probably a good
thing.

Craig