Installing Red Hat 7.3 to Dual Boot on XP Box...pleae help..

[SolidPez]

I'm running an XP box with two harddrives a C drive with 16 gigs and a D drive with 60 gigs. Both the of drives use the NTFS file system.

Both of the drives are used by xp only.

I have 7 gigs of free space left on the C drive. The C drive is my drive with the windows directory so I guess it is the primary drive, I want to install Linux on these 7 gigs and let Linux use these 7 gigs.

I know I have to make a partion out of those 7 gigs with Partion Magic. I have Partion Magic 8.0. Anyone know how to make a partion that linux can use out of those 7 gigs on my c drive?

Also, I want to use the grub loader cause I heard it was the easiest to use. Will I have any problems with grub? How do I use grub?

Is this all that I do:

1. make a partion out of those 7 gigs with partion magic
2. install redhat 7.3 and choose during the installation to install linux on that partion
3. Choose the grub loader
4. reboot, and I can pic if I wanna boot into windows or linux?

Is that it? Do I have to do anything else to make this work? No problems.

My other drive (d drive) will still be for xp only and the rest of the c drive will be for xp only?

Thanks

[slapNUT]

Is this all that I do:

1. make a partion out of those 7 gigs with partion magic
2. install redhat 7.3 and choose during the installation to install linux on that partion
3. Choose the grub loader
4. reboot, and I can pic if I wanna boot into windows or linux?

Is that it? Do I have to do anything else to make this work? No problems.


Yes except that if you have a free partition then you don't need partition magic. Whatever Linux Distro you choose will be able to use that partition.

And while Grub is (someones opinion, not mine) easier to use, lilo is much more widely used and therefore much easier to get help with.

[SolidPez]

so I should use LILO? And that 7 gig isn't a partion it is just free space on my hd...Is that the same thing? Please explain. Thanks

[JohnT]

Originally posted by SolidPez
so I should use LILO? And that 7 gig isn't a partion it is just free space on my hd...Is that the same thing? Please explain. Thanks

I triple boot with LILO and use this config flawlessly.

http://www.linux.ncsu.edu/realmkit/usersguide-7.0/manualdual.html


Free space and partition are not the same thing.

[SolidPez]

That link suggest I install lilo on the first sector of the partion instead of the MBR. Should I do this or not? Will it cause problems?

[JohnT]

Originally posted by SolidPez
That link suggest I install lilo on the first sector of the partion instead of the MBR. Should I do this or not? Will it cause problems?

That is the first sector of the Linux partition.
Ihave done it the way you have before but find this to be the more favorable approach as it doesn't mess with your MBR. Read the documentation carefully and you'll begin to see the logic in this method. As with any Linux install make a recovery bootdisk.