Converting Poor Man's install to dual boot

[gnarvaja]

I looked for articles in the Documentation and around the forum and couldn't find anything specific. Maybe I'm wrong and someone can point me to the right URL. Here is the situation:

1. Why I did what I did: My previous experience with dual boot Linux was always bad (~9y), Knoppix pivot_root HD install looked like a safe method and I did it. Anyway, now I am a Knoppix fan and dual boot would be the way to go (I have been unlucky with my choice of hardware and some peripherals only work under Windows).
2. My current partitions are:

/dev/hda - hda1: fat
/dev/hdb - hdb1 : fat, hdb2: swap and hdb3: ext2

3. I boot from CD, do the mkdir ...; mount ..., etc ... and I'm on Knoppix. I want to be able to choose at boot time which OS and go on with my life.
Question: Can someone provide me with the detail steps to get it done? I'm not afraid of backing up/modify boot sectors. I've done it before, I'll do it again (plus I have a removable HD to backup everything and restore in case of major disaster )

Thx,

--GN

[mr_ed]

You've done the hard parts, partitioning and installation - the rest should be a piece of cake for you!

What you want to do is install a bootloader that can boot various operating systems in the Master Boot Record on hda. By far the most common two in the Linux world are LILO and GrUB. Knoppix comes with both, LILO v. 22.6.1 and GNU GrUB v. 0.95.

Start by checking out the short manual pages of their installation programs:

• $ man liloconfig
  $ man grub-install

The more extensive documentation that's referred to in these pages isn't part of the Knoppix installation, though.

You'll probably want to tweak the configuration that LILO gives you by editing /etc/lilo.conf directly. You can fiddle with a GrUB installation interactively by just typing grub at a console prompt.

-- Ed

[Jansi]

I looked for articles in the Documentation and around the forum and couldn't find anything specific. Maybe I'm wrong and someone can point me to the right URL.

I came up with some instructions to dual boot Poor Man's Install with any flavor of Windows using GRUB, here:
http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Hd_Based...ing_GRUB_on_HD

The emphasis for me (for simplicity) was using the minimum number of partitions I could while also NOT using the Windows partition for KNOPPIX -- so I went ahead and put the persistent home, KNOPPIX image files, GRUB files, and even the saved configuration all on the same partition. Contrary to some opinions I've seen up here, KNOPPIX will allow the partition with the image file (i.e., "fromhd=" partition) to be writable if you have also designated it has the Persistent Home partition (i.e., "home=" partition). In fact, that part works great -- the only problem I am having is that KNOPPIX 3.7 doesn't seem to like me using "myconfig=" (i.e., the location of my saved configuration files) also point to that same partition. Still working on that -- I'd swear on a couple installations it does always work, but I can't figure out what the pattern is (maybe it only works with KNOPPIX 3.4 installations, or maybe it is something about what got saved in my config files -- still trying to figure it out). In the mean time, the benefits of having all of it together in one partition outweigh this nusisance; for now, I'm lazy (and stubborn -- I can just put the config files in another partition - that works!) and just put any stuff I want initialized (network, programs, etc.) in the KDE Autostart folder.

[CrashedAgain]

I would just try installing lilo to the MBR from your Knoppix install. You may have to edit /etc/lilo.conf to get everything to boot.
Here is my lilo.conf for an example:

boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
vga=normal
default="Linux(new)"
prompt
nowarn
timeout=100
#message=/boot/message
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
lba32

 
# Boot Kanotix on hda8
image=/boot/vmlinuz
 append="lang=us apm=power-off hda=scsi hdb=scsi hdc=scsi hdd=scsi hde=scsi hdf=scsi hdg=scsi hdh=scsi quiet BOOT_IMAGE=knoppix"
 root=/dev/hda8
 label="Linux(new)"
 read-only

# Boot Knoppix26 on hda5
image=/mnt/hda5/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.6
 label="Linux(old)"
 root=/dev/hda5
 initrd=/mnt/hda5/boot/initrd.img-2.6.6
 append="lang=us apm=power-off ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init nomce nofstab quiet wheelmouse"
 read-only
 
# Boot Knoppix24 on hda5
#image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.26
# label="Knoppix24"
# root=/dev/hda5
# initrd=/boot/initrd.img-2.4.26
# append="lang=us apm=power-off ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init nomce quiet nofstab wheelmouse"
# read-only


# Boot Kanotix console mode on hda8
image=/boot/vmlinuz
 append="knoppix 2 lang=us apm=power-off hda=scsi hdb=scsi hdc=scsi hdd=scsi hde=scsi hdf=scsi hdg=scsi hdh=scsi quiet BOOT_IMAGE=knoppix"
 root=/dev/hda8
 label="Konsole"
 read-only


# Boot Knoppix26 console mode on hda5
#image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.6
# label="Konsole"
# root=/dev/hda5
# initrd=/boot/initrd.img-2.6.6
# append="knoppix 2 lang=us apm=power-off ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init nomce nofstab wheelmouse"
# read-only


# chain boot Kanotix through grub on hda8
other =/dev/hda8
 label="Kanotix_"
 
# Boot Windows on hda1
other=/dev/hda1
 label="Windows"
 table=/dev/hda

# Boots Knoppix 'toHD' install on hda1
image=/mnt/hda1/bootlinux/isolinux/linux24
 label="backup"
 initrd=/mnt/hda1/bootlinux/isolinux/minirt24.gz
 append="home=scan myconfig=scan fromhd=/dev/hda1"