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Topic: Will Frugal Install work on dual boot machine?, HD install worked, Frugal didn't

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eeek

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Posts: 11
Joined: Dec. 2006

Posted: Feb. 19 2007,21:48

From my beginning with DSL, I had done a traditional HD install because that's all I knew how to do. Then I came across the (very informative) thread about "why do people do HD installs instead of frugal".

Until last weekend, I'd had a very well functioning laptop that dual booted to DSL or WinME. I had done a traditional HD install, used Lilo and the dual boot machine was set up very easily.

Just for fun, I decided to try the frugal install. Leaving the windows partition alone, I wiped the linux partition, reset up the partitions, and tried the frugal install. The computer didn't like it. I think it had something to do with not recognizing more than 4 HD partitions (but of course, I'm really not sure why the install didn't work.)

So (finally), the question: will the frugal install method allow dual booting as smoothly as the traditional HD install does?

By the way, after all this I went back to my old setup. I timed myself - I started and completed the traditional HD install in less than 5 minutes. Pretty cool. I think many people like DSL for many different reasons.

Thanks,

roberts

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Posted: Feb. 19 2007,21:56

Frugal Lilo in v3.2 installs lilo in the partition and not the MBR. So you would have to mark the partition active.

So, perhaps your existing Lilo in the MBR is/was still expecting a traditional hard drive install. You would have to manually adjust it if you still want to use that MBR style of Lilo.

Frugal Grub does install into the MBR and expects and prompt for a Windows setup in the first partition.

Both Frugal installation script display this information upon startup.

eeek

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Joined: Dec. 2006

Posted: Feb. 19 2007,22:44

I think I know what MBR stands for and that's about it. In other words, I don't have a clue how to "manually adjust" it.

WinME is installed on hda1, so from your comment, the dual boot should be able to work, right?

So... to answer my own question:
Yes.
Try Grub instead of Lilo.

Ok, I'll give it a go tonight.

Thanks,

eeek

Group: Members
Posts: 11
Joined: Dec. 2006

Posted: Feb. 28 2007,21:51

Is it ok to reply to your own post that's weeks old?

Anyways, I succeeded in getting a frugal install on a dual boot machine.

The answer appeared to be in the order of my partitions. For some reason, the elves inside the computer didn't like having the bootable partition right after the windows partition (eg. hda2). They did like it when I switched that partition to hda3. So I ended up with the following partition table:

hda1 - windows
hda2 - large linux partition (dsl data backup, I guess?)
hda3 - small linux partition, bootable - destination of dsl image
hda4 - linux swap

I chose grub instead of lilo.

Once I learned these things, the frugal install wasn't much harder than the traditional hd install.

Apparently, with respect to the extensions, life should be easier with a frugal install rather than a traditional hd install, according to what I've read.

cch

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Posted: Mar. 03 2007,15:32

This has been very helpful cuz I had a similar (but not identical) experience. I had been using DSL 3.2 happily on a HD-install (the way my father booted). I was learning Linux on my Celeron 633 mhz with 15+ gb HD and 128 mb memory. I used two partitions--hda1 as swap and hda2 as my DSL install. No Windows OS on the machine.

I read John Roberts post and was convinced frugal was a better long-term choice (excellent note!). I read clivesay wiki "How To" and attempted the frugal install -- and began a mighty struggle. Booting from LiveCD was no problem, but every frugal install would receive a Grub error 15 after removing the CD. I admit I'm a newbie and did a lot of "flailing around" at that point. I was attempting:
100 mb hda1 primary bootable DSL image
14.9 gb hda2 secondary with /home, /opt, etc.
256 mb hda3 swap

I re-partitioned and attempted to re-install multiple times. I suffered some I/O errors when running frugal_lilo.sh from Xshell (suspect these were due to running out of memory). Install executed successfully when using boot-up cheatcodes like tohd=/dev/hda, but I couldn't boot from HD. I tried lots of combinations of installing from Apps-->Tools, executing scripts from Xshell bash, executing scripts from command line (DSL 2 cheatcode) and install from DSL install cheat-code and choose options. All failed when I pulld the LiveCD and now I couldn't even get back to my father's HD-install.

Ultimately, this post made me suspect a problem with sequence of partitions and maybe I had multiple MBRs out there. A different post made me wonder about my use of LILO with an MBR beyond the 1024 cyl threshhold. I re-partitioned as:

14.9 gb hda1
100 mb hda2 (bootable with DSL image)
256 mb hda3 (swap)

It worked once I switched to GRUB and used the cheatcode install and option 4 for Frugal GRUB.

Follow-up questions:
1) Do all the different scripts reference the same "root" script? I thought there were subtle differences between them (or it could be a side-affect of my flailing). Certainly the install_grub.sh does not offer a place to store myDSL and persistent /home.

2) Does the DSL 3.2 version of LILO have the 1024 cylinder problem?

3) Would I have avoided problems by doing a mke2fs after each time I re-partitioned? I was sporadic about deleting/re-creating partitions and I assumed that the scripts would perform mke2fs.

4) /usr/sbin/frugal_instal.sh no longer exists. What's the protocol for alerting clivesay to update his doc?

I'm not certain what corrected my problem. It was either switch partition sequence or switch to GRUB. If any experts have feedback, I'll be happy to try some additional re-install tests to help the cause.

8 replies since Feb. 19 2007,21:48

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