Installing Gentoo onto a Win2000 box (want to dual-boot)

rizzo

I know there have been plenty of discussions on this subject, but none seem to exactly fit my situation (at least not how I read them), so I thought I'd post and hopefully clear up my position.

I have a 40gb drive with Win2000Pro on it on NTFS. I've decided I can go with linux at home since my wife never uses the computer :twisted:

, but I still need the win2k partition for games (Medal of Honor owns me, don't have time to play with winex yet), and my employer only has a windows VPN client.

What I'd like to do (if possible) is have a setup where I have a 10GB NTFS partition for windows 2000, 10 GB partition for Gentoo and ~20GB FAT32 partition for data betwixt the two OSes.

My question is whether this is possible to do without blasting away the Win2000 install. Although it wouldn't be the end of the world if I had to. I found some instructions on windows2000faq.com to dual boot from NTLoader, but I'd rather use GRUB.

*shrug* perhaps I should just bite the bullet and re-install everything. That is, after this Friday's lan party.

Trumpcard · n00b Joined: 27 May 2002 Posts: 36

Its easy to do. As long as you installed Windows first, you will be fine.

First, if your Win2k partition takes the entire disk, you need to resize, there are several utilities for doing this. Then, just use the gentoo install process to install it on /hda2+ , and leave hda1 for the windows install. Ive had several systems set up this way with no problems. Windows will wipe out your bootloader if you load it after linux, but its not particular hard to boot to the cd and do a lilo -v or grub, setup (hd0) if you get the order off on the installs.

You will just have to add a grub or lilo option to boot to the primary dos partition. Windows likes to be upfront, I dont even think you can install windows on anything other than the first hda partition.

Your 10+ linux partition should include swap space if you can (people argue on this point, but I consider a 100-500 meg swap filesystem to be a must have in case of an memory emergency, and it also depends on the amount of ram you have.

Hope this helps, but Ive found it extremely easy setting up dual boot boxes.

mb · Guru Joined: 25 Apr 2002 Posts: 355 Location: Hessen | .de

hi...

*should* be no problem.... just resize your current disk.. create 3 new partions (boot,root,swap).. install grub in mbr and add:

rizzo · Posted: Wed Jun 12, 2002 3:21 pm Post subject:

That sounds promising. Yes windows is already on the box. The drive is currently all one big 40gb NTFS partition. I've never done a dual boot system before.

I've procured a copy of partition magic 7.0. Never used it before either.

I don't suppose a hand-holding, step-by-step HOWTO is available for what you describe. Although perhaps it will be intuitive once I get home and start slicing up the disk.

craftyc · Guru Joined: 23 May 2002 Posts: 443 Location: Behind You.

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fatwreckfan · Guest

Do you not need:

rizzo · Posted: Wed Jun 12, 2002 7:32 pm Post subject:

rizzo · Posted: Wed Jun 12, 2002 7:47 pm Post subject:

http://www.lincezone.com/linux/dualboot.htm

That seems like a nice hand-holding reference for me and my ilk. FYI.

Update: Hmmm I guess I didn't read it closely enough. This guy uses BootMagic as his bootloader. I want to use Grub. *sigh*

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

taskara · Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2002 2:26 pm Post subject:

hey - I do this all the time, so I'm sure I could be of assistance.

my 40gig hdd layout looks like this:

hda1: 8Gb ntfs partition = win2k [primary]
hda2: 30Mb ext2 partition = /boot [primary]
hda3: rest is one big extended partition, then:
hda5: 5gig ext3 = / [logical]
hda6: 5gig ext3 = /home [logical]
hda7: 1gig swap = swap [logical]
hda8: rest fat32 = /data [logical]

partition setup using windows disk manager (open in new window):

http://buzzmoo.com/taskara/hdd.jpg

install win2k first on the ntfs partition - use fat32 if you want to be able to WRITE to it under linux.

boot to linux and create the other partitions using fdsik.

you CAN use linux's fdisk to create the last fat32 partition, but I prefer to do that later in windows with administrator's disk management.

install linux

install grub

follow the instructions to setup grub (remember "root" under grub setup actually means your /boot partition!)

should be:

grub> root (hd0,1)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> quit

where (hd0,1) means "the first hard disk, second partition = /boot!

\

make your /boot/grub/menu.lst file (as per install instructions)

should look something like:

default 1
timeout 30
splashimage=(hd0,1)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz

title=gentoo
root (hd0,3)
kernel /boot/bzImage root=/dev/hda5

title=windows
root (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

follow rest of gentoo install.

reboot your pc and you shoudl see the grub menu. go into windows and make your data drive.

reboot and test linux.

easy as that really!

hope I got all that right.. let us know how you go..

rizzo · Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2002 2:30 pm Post subject:

very cool that sounds like just what I need. First I have to clear off some space and shrink down my NTFS partition.

So I shouldn't create /data in linux? You mentioned you go back into windows and do it. Do I think just mount it in linux?

Otherwise how does windows know about it?

taskara · Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2002 2:34 pm Post subject:

yeah make it in windows. that way windows is happy.

linux won't care - just create a directory called "data" under /
ie:
/data

and in your /etc/fstab file make an entry for /dev/hda8 and tell it to mount to /data

btw, partition magic 7.0 is a great program, but it's doesn't recognise ext3 partitions (only ext2) so if you load it on a hdd that has ext3 (as you prob will) it will complain and ask to fix things.. say NO!

taskara · Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2002 2:36 pm Post subject:

OH look at that! 111 posts!!

.. doh.. 112..

Guest · Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2002 2:42 pm Post subject:

taskara · Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2002 2:44 pm Post subject:

yeah of course..

I was just saying that if he uses partition magic to look at a partition with ext3, then partition magic will say there are errors everywhere and ask to fix them, and if he does, he will stuff his linux. but it is safe to ignore them, so long as you don't use partition magic to change any of the linux partitions.

DArtagnan · Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2002 2:45 pm Post subject:

rizzo · Posted: Sun Jun 23, 2002 6:31 pm Post subject:

Guest · Posted: Sun Jun 23, 2002 8:17 pm Post subject:

rite now i (triple) boot winxp, win98 and gentoo .
i use the nt boot loader and everything works great.
all i did was installed grub on the boot partition rather than my MBR
then while still in linux, i made a boot sector file, placed it on my win98 partition, restarted, used a free prog called bootpart, it wrote to my boot.ini file and to boot up gentoo, i just select it from my nt boot loader, another screen (probably grub) shows up and i'm ready to go!
for me, i thought this was the best method

rizzo · Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2002 4:49 pm Post subject:

Yeah I have a co-worker who does something similar. I'd prefer to load from grub, although I probably cannot come up with any valid reason why. Can anyone provide arguments as to using grub over ntloader, or vice-versa?

taskara · Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2002 11:36 pm Post subject:

ntloader is windows :twisted:

do you want IT in CONTROL of your LINUX environment!!??

reason enough? :lol:

FINITE · Guru Joined: 10 May 2002 Posts: 449

STAY AWAY FROM PARTITION MAGIC. Not sure if it supports ntfs yet but last time I used it with win98 i noticed something strange. My fat32 dos partition was no longer dos. Later on down the road I uninstalled partition magic and there went my main win98 partition with it. Oh it was there, just could not access it and even doing fdisk /mbr did not help in this situation.

masseya · Posted: Wed Jun 26, 2002 6:54 am Post subject:

Utoxin · Posted: Wed Jun 26, 2002 7:46 am Post subject:

I personally have never had a problem with it...
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