[NTLUG:Discuss] installing redhat 6.1 on 2nd hard drive

[MadHat]

Kyle_Davenport at compusa.com wrote:
> 
> >On Sun, Mar 26, 2000 at 01:15:44PM -0600, John M. Mauldin wrote:
> >> ok here is a rank beginner question.
> >>
> >> just got redhat 6.1 and want to know if i have one harddrive with
> >> windows 98 on it and another that is empty can i install without
> >> a whole lotta trouble the redhat on the second drive without
> >> disturbing my windows 98 system?
> >
> >Yes.  The RH6.1 installation will recognize the Win98 file system, and
> >offer to create a new Linux filesystem.  You will also get the option
> >along the way to boot either system ("dual booting") from your
> >existing Win98 drive.
> 
> >As always, it would be smart to back up anything important on your
> >Win98 disk.  Installing dual boot functionality will necessitate
> >writing to your "boot" disk, and  there is always a very small chance
> >something might go wrong...
> 
> I've got one for you:  I'm a linux old-timer, and I thought I'd seen it all, but
> a friend installed Redhat linux on another partition of his only hard drive
> shared with win98.  Everything worked after the install - he could boot into
> linux or win98, but he wanted to changed the default on boot back to windows and
> edited the /etc/lilo.conf file (incorrectly, I don't remember how).  On reboot,
> it still went into linux, but when he chose "dos", it couldn't find windows.
> (woops).  I had him do the "fdisk /mbr" from a win98 rescue disk boot,
> repeatedly, and it changed nothing (just comes up to "li" and hangs).  But that
> lost his boot into linux (his linux rescue disk couldn't find root???)  So he
> reinstalled linux, which apparently (not supposed to) wiped out /boot/boot.####
> - the original copy of the mbr.  That meant "lilo -u" no longer worked...  The
> really peculiar thing, is that I could boot with win98 diskette and see all the
> necessary files on c:.  I'm suspicious that window's fdisk says "Use LBA for
> windows98 drive..." when it starts up, and I can't "mount -t vfat..." from
> linux...  Finally, I was a little dismayed that I couldn't find any
> documentation on the web (_anywhere_) on this problem.

To fix the problem, you will need to boot with a rescue disk (hopefully
you made one when you went through the setup).  Once the system is
loaded, mount the device that have the /etc directory and the /boot
under /mnt, so you would have what you would normally see as / as /mnt
(I hope that makes sence).  If you don't know which partition is which,
you can do a 'fdisk -l' to see what partitions are available and might
give you a clue which one is which (if you find the one with /etc, you
can look at the /etc/fstab to see how linux is expecting to mount the
devices).  Otherwise mount each one and see which one have the info you
need.  Once you get the right ones mounted, edit the /mnt/etc/lilo.conf
and make sure you have the right boot partitions assigned for each os. 
Once that is done, run 'lilo -r /mnt' to tell it that the "root"
partition is presently mounted on /mnt.  This should allow you to boot
properly.  It sounds like the problem is that the boot partition for
Linux is ioncorrect, which is why you only get the LI.  The first part
of LILO is stored in the MBR, but the second half is not, so if you just
get the LI, that means it is either not able to find the second half or
it is corrupted.

One of the more common mistakes I see is that people will say the Win or
default partition is /dev/hda (which is the drive itself) instead of
/dev/hda1 or /dev/hda6 which would be the partition.

-- 
%_=split';','2e;hac;40;not;64;ju;66; Perl ;68;st a;6f;ker;75;her';
print map $_{unpack "H2",$_}, split //,
'madhat at unspecific.com'
# aka Lee Heath, but don't tell anyone.