Trying to set up dual boot with red hat 9.0 [Archive]

TheOmen

11-14-2003, 08:14 AM

I'm a complete newbie to linux but I want to setup a dual boot between Win XP (my current os) and red hat 9.0. The question I have is how do I need to setup the partitions so this will work with one hard drive. I have partition magic 8.0 and I see theres several different file systems involving linux which one do I need to use? I also read it takes 3 partitions? How big do these need to be? Thanks for your help and I'm sorry if I missed that part in the Red Hat guide.

hard candy

11-14-2003, 08:40 AM

Here's a good start:
How-to's (http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/categories.html)

Basically, you want 3 partitions- winxp, linux, and linux swap. Since WinXp is probably taking the whole disk, you'll want to shrink its partition. First run defrag on WinXP. Then shrink the partition. Sometimes it will not shrink. When you run defrag and there's a blue line to right by itself (representing files) and it will not move to the left that means you have a system restore file. It will not move. The way I got past it was to reinstall WinXp and before I installed anything else or downloaded any updates was to use gnu-parted (which is basically an open source Partition Magic) to resize the WinXp partition. I'm not sure if Redhat has gnu-parted or not but use Partition Magic to resize the WinXp partition. Then you can update WinXp and install any drivers,etc.
Then install Redhat and be sure you use the correct partition-probably /dev/hda2. hda3 will be the swap-it needs to be double the size of your RAM (i.e, 512 RAM= 1GB/1000MB swap). You can make it smaller or the same size as your RAM. But the "official" recommendation is 2x the size of RAM.
Also, make sure the WinXp and Redhat partitions are made bootable. MAKE A BOOTDISK, repeat, MAKE A BOOTDISK! And install GRUB when it asks- to the MBR (master boot record)
You may be able to go in system services in WinXP and disable system restore and delete the system restore file-but the time it takes to figure that out and do it- I figured I could have Win XP re-installed. I saved all my data, music, downloaded program install files to cd before wiping out WinXP. So it took maybe an hour to get it back but I have broadband and Windows update on a modem is agony. Your choice.
Good luck. Welcome.