For Future Reference: Successful XP - Knoppix Dual Boot

[Wil]

For Future Reference: Successful XP - Knoppix Dual Boot [On one Physical Hard Drive]

This is what I did to install Knoppix as a dual boot with the already installed Windows XP on the same physical hard drive. And incase you are wondering, no you can't blame me if you totally mess up

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Step 1: Yea yea, backup as always. Prolly not going to loose data but it doesn't matter, unless your like me and all your data is useless

Step 2: Emergency Repair disk isn't needed if you got the XP cd because it's all good, but you shouldn't need it.

Step 3: Defrag, the standard Windows defrag should be ok, but shareware ones like O&O Software's Defrager will defrag a lot better, usually.

Step 4: I used Partition Magic because when I used the qtparted it complaned that I had data at the end of the drive. Partition Magic (please tell me if I am wrong) will actually make a new partition using the empty area's of your disk... that or moves all the data forward before hand because I don't have any data loss.

Now, you can do whatever you want for a partition, as long as you have a swap partition (256megs is good), and a EXT3 partition of atleast 2.5gigs. I did the following:

3 Gigs - / (root) - Ext3
500 megs - swap - Swap
2 Gigs - /home - Ext3
500 megs - OS Share - Fat32

The OS Share is used so I can share files between XP and Knoppix, I got the idea for that from a post on this forum, thanks for that

Step 5: Once you have partitioned (useing Partition Magic or otherwise) boot into Knoppix from the CD and start Konsole (console/terminal) and type in knx-hdinstall (yes that is the old one, just the one I used.)

Step 6: When it loads the partition program, write down the swap and root partition hdx# for future reffrence and then close it.

Knoppix will ask you if you want a swap partition, click yes, then select the swap partition.

Next it will ask you to select the root partition, select the one you want and then click next.

It will then begin to install Knoppix onto your hard drive.

Step 7: Once it asks you if you want to install Lilo into your MBR, some say to do it, the first try I said no hopeing to use XP's boot.ini, but the second time around I selected yes, as it will setup dual boot for you. (Later to have to remove my Shared OS partition from the boot list )

Step 8: Now, here is where nothing I read helped me. Knoppix asked me several questions about starting programs at boot. At first I clicked NO to everything, that was not such a good idea.

CUPS Server: This is the standard unix printing service, and as I said I selected no at first. Come to find out I want this, so if you are going to want to use printers then select YES.

DHCP Broadcast: Another one that confused me and I selected NO on at first. I still don't really know what this is but for my Cable model and LAN to work I had to select YES to this, so just select yes, again if someone would like to explain, please do.

The rest of the stuff is self explanitory, if you want to run SSH servers and such, click yes, but I selected no for the rest of them.

Step 9: Once all done, take out any floppy's and cd's and reboot, you will see an (icky) red screen asking you what OS to boot into, should say Linux and WindowsNT (I believe) and it will be counting down. Select WindowsNT (Actually XP) and press enter, if I loads Windows XP then be do a little happy dance.

Step 10: Reboot from XP and either wait the 15 seconds or press enter on the Lilo boot mananger screen, and Knoppix should load, and if it does, do another dance and go hug some people because it is now all good!

Step 11: For some reason it was already in US English when it booted, but if not I am sure you can figure out how to select American (give or take some accents) and US English and click the second button to the right (again again again, if I am wrong tell me).

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This is what I did, along with some tweaks to get it to my likeing. This is where I take my leave and goto bed, if any of this doc is wrong tell me, but this is what I did to the best of my memory. If you have any tweak questions I am sure I could tell ya or another of the SMART people here can.

Give credit where credit is due, I used (roughly) this doc here: http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4174

Remember, try stuff out, if it doesn't work out play around, the worst that can happen is your hard drive burns up and smoke comes out the back... kidding

Wil

[FlorianK]

Step 7: Once it asks you if you want to install Lilo into your MBR, some say to do it, the first try I said no hopeing to use XP's boot.ini, but the second time around I selected yes, as it will setup dual boot for you. (Later to have to remove my Shared OS partition from the boot list )

This is the bit that does worry me extremely - there's some horror stories around about putting LILO in the MBR, if I understand them correctly - I have an XP machine with no floppy drive, so I can't create a boot disk to follow the script you linked. I've tried the W32grub thing, couldn't get it to boot. Could anyone confirm that it is safe to put LILO in the MBR using the knoppix-installer? I have the script running at the moment, and it's asking me whether to put it in the MBR or on the root partition. And I'm scared of messing up my XP and all. Please help!!!

--EDIT: Well GRUB does boot, but then it can't find the file /boot/initrd - I've checked from Knoppix (CD boot), and the file appears not to have been created during the installation. I'm sorry if this is annoying newbie stuff, but I'm totally confused. Can anybody offer some help?

[FlorianK]

Right. Following advice from Kano on the German forum and several more or less ambiguous posts, I installed LILO to the Linux partition. Never heard of it again (doesn't appear in the NTbootloader or anywhere). Thought that was a Good Thing, because I wanted to use GRUB instead. Now that doesn't work, but that's a different story.

[micheles]

This is the bit that does worry me extremely - there's some horror stories around about putting LILO in the MBR, if I understand them correctly - I have an XP machine with no floppy drive, so I can't create a boot disk to follow the script you linked. I've tried the W32grub thing, couldn't get it to boot. Could anyone confirm that it is safe to put LILO in the MBR using the knoppix-installer? I have the script running at the moment, and it's asking me whether to put it in the MBR or on the root partition. And I'm scared of messing up my XP and all. Please help!!!

--EDIT: Well GRUB does boot, but then it can't find the file /boot/initrd - I've checked from Knoppix (CD boot), and the file appears not to have been created during the installation. I'm sorry if this is annoying newbie stuff, but I'm totally confused. Can anybody offer some help?

I installed LILO on the MBR and apparently nothing bad happened to
my XP (actually the DVD player started working well, maybe I
erased some virus hidden in the MBR

[bcalder]

I don't think you need worry ... if it refuses to boot into XP, you can always reinstall the Windows boot loader by using a Windows boot disk. At the prompt type fdisk /MBR, then try, try again.

[Kentaur]

Hi

I just struck me that the failiures could be due to NTFS formating of the harddrives. As there is a general danger letting linux write to NTFS....

Just my two cents.

[Coolnat2004]

I don't believe Linux will let you write to NTFS. Although somehow it will write to NTFS on another computer through an SMB share flawlessly.

Oh, and I used the knoppix-installer script on one somputer as well as the knx-hdinstall on another computer. I installed LILO in both's MBR and it works perfectly.

One thing..how do you remove the extra partitions from LILO? Because I have 2 extra ones that don't contain any OS (One is some 32MB Dell recovery storage thing, another is my 15GB FAT32 partition)