Two hard drives....win98 and linux

[jackdeboe]

I currently have one hard drive installed on my new computer and Win98 is the o/s. I have a 8.2 GB HD from my old computer and can have it installed....I want to install linux on the second hard drive (slave). I have to keep win98 on the first drive because the rest of my family uses windows. I had a second drive installed in my old computer but erased everything on the fisrt drive because i didn't know how to install linux on a second drive...What do i do?....my father says that he doesn't want me to install linux on a second drive unless someone that knows what they're doing is helping me or if i know completely what i'm doing. I don't know anyone that knows how to install it...so i have to do it. The reason this was hard was because i was doing it on the second (SLAVE) drive. I easily installed linux twice...and erased all importand files...plus...when i install linux on the second drive (if al all possible) i want windows to boot up automatically on win98 everytime i turn on my computer and not linux unless i specify...my family doesn't understand dos at all and can't understand the boot process and which system to boot....i'm assuming i'd could set it up to boot win98 automatically and then pop in a floppy boot disk for linux when i want to boot linux....maybe i'm an idiot...just help me out...i want to learn linux...but i have to keep win98

[spacial_K]

It should be rather simple. In the install you'll have the option on what drive to install it. I'm not sure what designation it would be (hdb1 or whatever), but it's not the drive the the fat32 partitions.
As for the second part, all you have to do is choose not to install lilo to either of the hard drives. Just use a boot disk to get to linux.

[ds801]

Windows will be on the primary master drive (in Linux, that's hda). Install the second drive in the computer, and start the Linux install process. Hopefully you're using a Linux version that has a graphical installer and a graphical partitioning program... The second hard drive will be labled either hdb (primary slave), hdc (secondary master), or hdd (secondary slave), depending on how you set it up. Just make sure you don't touch the drive labled hda!

After you're done installing everything, you'll have the option to install LILO (or maybe GRUB). If you want to have a menu displayed at boot, install LILO to the MBR of the windows drive (hda). If you want to use a boot floppy everytime you want to bot linux (very slow and annoying) then make sure you create a boot floppy during the install. I think you still need to install LILO somewhere...I may be wrong. The mbr of the Linux drive should be fine for that.

If you decide to use the boot menu, you can set the amount of time the menu waits before it loads the default OS, which in your case will be Windows. That way, there's no extra steps involved, you just wait a few extra seconds.

[digital_spawn]

well, your first hard drive will be recognised as hda under linux. - windows goes in here. the second hard disk will be hdb - so plan to install linux there - most of the new distributions are easy enough to install - try linux mandrake 7.2 or redhat 7.0 - you will need to make one / (root) partition thats' hdb1 in your case - if i am not wrong , also make a linux swap partition in the second hard disk - that should be enough to get linux installed.
about booting linux - lilo now does not have that cilinder barrier - but to be on the safer side - install lilo on the ' first sector of the boot partition in linux ' not on the mbr. you can now use boot managers to boot linux - one of my personal favourite is xosl (www.xosl.org) - worth giving a try. that sould get your system proper installed with both linux and windows.
By the way, i am using the same configuration.
,,

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Bill, is there a kernel panic !!!!