help! winxp & knoppix

[predhator]

hello to all.i have 2 hard disks(40 giga, 20 giga).on the first i installed winxp. i want to install also knoppix because i like it and because i want to try to play with linux. the problem is: if i install knoppix i can access to winxp or the dualboot is not supported by knoppix? if with gag i can i install without problem. which boot loader knoppix has?
please help me.i want to be free by miscroshift.

[Corwyn2]

I haven't done an hdinstall of knoppix, but I do run another distro in this manner as dualboot with no modification to my Winxp drive's (hda1) Boot Sector.

It's a simple process with Lilo

Install Linux on your secondary hard drive (for the sake of arguement let's use HDC1 for this example, IDE channel 1 master)

1: install Linux as normal on hdc1

2: create your lilo.conf

3: run lilo

4: mount your floppy with a blank formatted diskette:
mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy

5: copy the Boot Sector from linux to a file:
dd if=/dev/hdc1 of=/mnt/floppy/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1

6: unmount your floppy drive
umount /mnt/floppy

7: remove the diskette and reboot to winxp

8: copy bootsect.lnx to the root directory of your C: drive

9: edit your boot.ini and add the following entry:
c:\bootsect.lnx="Knoppix"

This should go under the [operating systems] heading

note: don't forget to open a command prompt before editting and run the follow command: attrib -r -h -s boot.ini
Then run the following after editting: attrib +s +r +h boot.ini

When you reboot your computer you'll have a boot menu, one entry for Winxp and one for Linux

When you boot to the linux partition, you should get the lilo menu and all is working as normal. You can also make Linux your primary boot option in boot.ini simply by changing the default in boot.ini to: default=c:\bootsect.lnx

I did this with Redhat 9 and it works great, I've also heard you can do the above with grub instead of lilo, and I'd assume that you can do it with any Linux bootloader as long as the Boot Sector for Linux is 512 bytes in side (that's what the bs=512 is referring to)

Once you've done this, if ever you change something in your linux bootloader, such as installing a new kernel and have to update your bootloader (grub or lilo) all you have to do is edit your lilo.conf (I use this as example because that's what I use), then follow steps 3 thru 8 and reboot, and the new Boot Sector will take over properly.

If you ever remove your Linux drive, all you have to do is a minor edit to the boot.ini, no modification to your winxp MBR.

[oscar]

hello to all.i have 2 hard disks(40 giga, 20 giga).on the first i installed winxp. i want to install also knoppix because i like it and because i want to try to play with linux. the problem is: if i install knoppix i can access to winxp or the dualboot is not supported by knoppix? if with gag i can i install without problem. which boot loader knoppix has?
please help me.i want to be free by miscroshift.

After installation knoppix is a normal linux.
It has lilo and grub the standard linux multiboot loaders.
No problem at all to boot winxp.

[j.drake]

Worked for me with Mandrake also. Unfortunately, the installation program didn't ask me which disk to boot from, and I erroneously assumed that since I was installing to the second drive that it would insert the boot loader on that drive also. Wrong. I caught it later before finishing the install, but not before it screwed up the MBR on C: Anyway, I changed the boot order in BIOS, so all works OK now, and I just have to fix the C: drive boot partition in case I ever remove the second HD.

Thanks for the idea of booting from the second HD, and leaving the primary alone.

[Corwyn2]

The above instructions are a paraphrase of a document I found on RedHat's site regarding dualbooting with win2k and winxp. Those are the steps I followed, in order to get the system booting the way I wanted it. I did have the option of making the Linux drive the primary, as I do have an entry in Lilo to boot to WinXP, but I chose to leave the WinXP drive as primary boot and the linux secondary, and it all works great for me.

I'm sorry to hear you had a problem and overwrote your MBR, I've never installed Mandrake, but I'd assume the installation procedure is the same as RedHat, since Mandrake is a dirivative of RedHat, just as Knoppix is dirivative of Debian.

Good luck with your new setup.

[panarchy]

Seem to be a lot of people on this forum trying to preserve their Windows XP MBR..have I missed something? I triple boot XP/Mandrake/Knoppix using lilo on my MBR and it works beautifully....I'm pretty new to Linux- only seven months or so - but I find this desire to preserve the Windows MBR interesting. Won't a Linux bootloader do the same job with a lot less trouble?

Or is there an issue with multiple hard drives that I'm ignorant of? Just curious...

[Corwyn2]

It really is no trouble at all. As for the reason to preserve the WinXP MBR, I run programs under both OS's, and beta test software on both, for me it's a matter of preserving the hard drive installation, so when I make a bug report on a program under windows, there are no extraneous issues that the developers need to deal with other than a windows installation.

There shouldn't be any issues either way, but again, with testing, you have to eliminate any possible issues, having a different bootloader could add an unknown issue to a piece of software running, even after boot.

[panarchy]

OK - interesting. I see your point.

Thanks for the reply....

[j.drake]

Well, also, if you have a machine that's under warranty and it cr*ps on you (as mine did), you run the risk that tech support and warranty folks will use that as an excuse to hose you.

Fortunately, the fact that I loaded Mandrake on a second HD wasn't an issue with HP tech support (I chose Mandrake deliberately because: 1. not only is it reputed to be better for newbies to learn, but, 2. HP, itself, specs Mandrake for the PCs it ships with Linux, so there shouldn't be much for them to say about it). In fact, the tech seemed delighted, saying things like "it's a wonderful O/S, isn't it?".

Also, there's the spouse factor. If my experimentation with other OSes kept my wife from running her favorite Windows apps, I could find that my ability to tinker with an otherwise well working machine would be sharply curtailed. Fortunately, this last time, the box cr*pped because of a hardware problem, and I wasn't messing with hardware.