Help me, new at this!

[Dressler]

Hello!
I have RH 7.2 installed and WinXP (Call me a heretic!)

7.2 doesn't work because of well a long story, I posted about it before.

I want to install Mandrake 9.1 or whatever it is....

I NEED to keep my WINDOWS PARTITION!


In short- how do I install Mandrake and make a dual boot with Mandrake and XP?


Also, I downloaded this Security-Enchanced Linux from the NSA- does this work with Mandrake??
Thanks!

[Dressler]

A PROBLEM!

I downloaded the mandrake inst. ISO file (Using XP) and burned it to a CD with the correct settings...

The computer does not see the CD upon boot!!
But in Windows I can click it and I could possibly choose install...with God knows what consequences....

This is all a bit to handle, please help me!

[Calum]

that's all a bit more than i have ever done while trying to install mandrake. are you certain you used correct settings and what software did you use, it is my suspicion that you didn't set the CD to be bootable, or else that you need to go into your BIOS settings and enable your computer to boot from a CD (if you have other bootable CDs that boot fine (note NOT autorun CDs) then you don't need to do this of coursE)

as for consequences of installing mandrake i am fairly confident that it should all be okay. i would back up your windows stuff first of course, but to be honest mandrake's installer is easy and will enable you to not delete any of your windows stuff. Your biggest issue is going to be trying to access stuff off of a NTFS partition in linux and/or setting up the bootloader, and for all i know that last issue may have been fixed by now.
Anybody else got any experience with using grub as a bootloader between linux and winXP?

edit: make sure and do the expert installation when you install mandrake it likes to hide options from you otherwise.

[ May 12, 2003: Message edited by: Calum: hopelessly outnumbered ]

[KernelPanic]

Dresser i'm sure we can still fix that damn RH7.2 install!

[KernelPanic]

If you do need to install Mandrake it should all go very smoothly.

As Calum said take the expert option.
All you need to do is reformat your old RedHat Linux partitions and tell mandrake to install onto them. If this is what you wanted to do?....
Your Windows partitions will be kept.

Mandrake will configure the boodloader for you adding a boot option for WinXP (ick). Booting WinXP with GRUB/Lilo is fine as it uses the same bootloader as win2k.

[Dressler]

Thanks for all the replies, guys. Much appreciated!

Tux: Are you absoltuely confident that the boot loader (i'll use LILO) will automatically (and i stress automatically) set options for BOTH OS'es?

As for the autorun CD thing...it reads winXP cd rom automatically and also did with an old purchased mandrake (barely used) and the RH 7.2....


I don't know how to make the PC see the CD I made.

I used NERO and burned it as an image file with the settings I found in the readme...what else?

[Dressler]

Wohhooo I found out what was wrong.

I got an error message a few days ago that the standard CMOS settings had been loaded...silly me ignoring it  Anyhow, it boots off the CD.


Now is the part I fear...
My Hard drive is split into 4 partitions...a windows, and the rest Linux (Swap and I don't know what else)

I am at the partitioning thing...what do I do? I can in NO WAY risk deleting Windows, it simply must not happen. Too many important docs and *Cough*Music there.

How do I delete those three RH partitions, Put LiLo there so I can have a choice of OS when booting and install Mandrake on the last 3 partitions? I assume that I simply delete those 3 paritions and do something whatever...anyhow, THANK YOU for your time.

Open-Source community....a gift from the Lord.

[Copperhead]

Use XPee's disk-partitioning manager, or disk manager, or whatever the moniker they came up with on this "new and improved" system, to delete your former partitions that you had Red Hat on. Keep your Window$ drive intact, make sure you don't delete it.

If you get error messages from Window$ stating that "cannot acces drive d:\ because it is in use" (this happened to me when I di this on my neighbor's XPee machine) go get a copy of Partition Magic from somewhere on the net.  That Disk Manager is a piece of shit on XPee, so you might have to go with an eval copy of partition magic. http://www.powerquest.com/partitionmagic/

Delete the Red Hat drives, including the swap space, and save them as UNPARTITIONED SPACE. Do not format them for a file system, do not do anything. Leave them as UNPARTITIONED SPACE.

Reboot XPee. After an hour or so, XPee will have finally booted. Open Window$ Explorer and make sure that the only drive visible to explorer is the C: drive, or whereever you have Window$ installed.  If you have one window$ partition, it should be Drive C: and that is the only thing explorer should be showing. If that is the case great, you can move on. If not, you messed something up. Repeat above steps until you have the results described in this paragraph. You cannot install Linux to a drive visible to XPee. If you do, XPee will choke when it is booting because it is looking for the only three filesystems it can recognize on that partition (Fat, Fat32, and NTF$.) IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT YOU HAVE UNPARTIONED SPACE.

If everything checks out, you are good to go. Put that Mandrake CD into the tray, reboot, and follow the instructions on your screen. When you get to DiskDrake, /dev/hda1 will be your Window$ drive (if your main Window$ drive is C:\), so do not overwrite that drive. Either use the auto-partitioner, or create new partitions (including swap space) with DiskDrake. If you are creating new partitions, make them in the unpartitioned space. Install either GRUB or LILO in /dev/hda1 when it asks you where to install the Linux Loader. (your bootsector is located in /dev/hda1 aka C:\ drive)

There are plenty of other ways to do this, but this is the easiest.

And welcome to Linux  

[Calum]

i would advise against using any partitioner which runs under windows or DOS.

the partitioner (diskdrake) which comes with mandrake is at least as easy to use as partitionmagic and is much more stable. I suggest loading the mandrake installer from the CD, use the graphical partitioner to delete everything EXCEPT the windows partition. This will be an easy one to spot as the partitions are colour coded. the windows one will be either a FAT32 or an NTFS partition and will be a different colour from the linux ones (i think windows ones are blue and linux ones are red, but don't quote me on that).

Now you want to make one partition for your linux "/" partition and i would suggest making one "/home" partition and one swap partition too. the / partition should be no less than 2.5 GB and no larger than maybe 7 or 8 GB in my opinion, and the /home partition should take up the rest of the drive except for about 500MB at the end, which will become the swap partition.

so now you have something like the following:

Windows | Linux / | Linux /home | Linux swap

That's just my advice, copperhead appears to know more than i do in general, but you know i like to put my two pence in.

[Faust]

NTFS is dark grey, FAT is blue.
DO NOT DELETE EITHER ONE OF THOSE COLORS
Now when you click on a partition in disk drake you see a little info box that describes the partition so it's not too hard.
And remember - Diskdrake doesnt save any changes until you click the "format" or "next" buttons, so if you think you've made a mistake or if your unsure you can just hit the reboot switch on your case and try again / seek more help.

edit:wont he need a /boot?

[ May 15, 2003: Message edited by: Faust ]

[Copperhead]

The only reason I am telling him to start the first half of his partitioning procedure in windows is to avoid complications that Window$ will cause him. In genereal, Dressler seems a little uncomfortable with the whole idea of partitioning, so I'll try to explain it for him. Plus, he didn't post a very clear picture of his partitioning scheme that he has going.

When you boot Window$, go into Explorer. If you have anything else besides a C: drive, and Explorer is showing it (like if you have a D; and E: drive), it would probably be best for him to startout with Partition Magic.  If you need room on your harddrive, move everything from one of those partitions (either D: or E:) over to C: (with Explorer) and delete one of those partitions with Partition Magic, which will keep it as Unpartitioned Space. Like everything else M$, this is going to require you to reboot into XPee so that XPee can apply the changes to your partitioning scheme, and so XPee will no longer read the Drive D: and Drive E:

If all you have is a C: drive, then you have two options. Either delete the two Red Hat partitions (they will showup in Partition Magic as ext2 or ext3) and Swap with Partition Magic, which will save them as unpartitioned space, or use the Expert Option on DiskDrake. If you have Partition Magic downloaded, just use that. Plus, if you make a mistake, you can boot back into XPee and just run Partition Magic to fix your problem.

One you have Unpartitioned Space after where your C: drive is, reboot into XPee, and then put the Mandrake CD into the tray, and reboot so that Mandrake runs the installer. When you get to DiskDrake, now you can just run the "Auto" or "Recommended" partioning schema that it gives you. (This will create a swap space that is twice the amount of RAM that you have, and a root partition.) The Auto feature will not overwrite your Window$ drive. Unlike M$, Linux recognizes and respects other filesystems that have data on them. Linux doesn't take the Nazi Germany approach like M$ does by erradicating all 'inferior' filesystems, so you will be good to go with the auto-partitioner. It will also set your mount point for you (/), and it should choose either an ext2 or ext3 filesystem for you.

The main reason I am telling you to run Partiton Magic is so you don't do what I did when I first installed Linux. I actually just ran Mandrake, and used DiskDrake to delete my D: drive and installed Linux there. Big no on. Once I rebooted Windows$, it hung for like 10 minutes because it was searching for that D: drive and the FAT filesystem that was on there. Since Window$, and its infinite might, only recognizes three filesystems, it didn't know what to do except to repeatedly fuck itself when it came across an ext2 filesystem. However, sice I had Partition Magic, I went in, deleted the Linux drives I created, applied the changes, rebooted into Window$, and everything worked fine. Then, I gave it another shot, this time using Unpartioned Space to install Linux.

All of the methods posted here are good, and applicable. There are a million ways to do this. I, however, like to do things in the most failsafe manner when I am attempting them for a first time . I don't like problems. I already have enough of them