Dual boot


Forum: HD Install
Topic: Dual boot
started by: walnut

Posted by walnut on June 13 2004,07:11
Hey, i dwnloaded DSL and ran it several times on my destop top, might i just say its sweet!. anyway i have a laptop that is happily running windows 95, and has 2 HDD partitions:

1. 550Mb ( c: )
2. 80Mb ( d: )

i originally used the 80Mb to store the install files for win95 (i installed from floppies, and held the install files there to make future install easy) and have since decided i dont need them.

The Question:
I would like to know how to install DSL onto d:, i have borrowed a cd-rom drive (PCMCIA), but my laptop wont boot from it, i can read the CD under windows though. is there some way that i can copy the DSL files to d: under windows, and setup a floppy disk that needs to be inserted whenever i want to run DSL, (ie: bott from floppy loads DSL, boot without out floppy loads windows)

Thanx for help in advance
-walnut

Posted by pvdvyve on June 13 2004,19:09
Hay Walnut, you can make a "poorman's install":
Try searching the forum.
Choose the search button at the top of this page.
Try keyword "poor"  for poor-mans install help (CDROM-like install)
Or try keyword "frugal" for frugal install (automated CDROM-like install to hard disk)
then choose "ALL FORUMS"
and "search from the beginning"  all messages "or newer"
Good Luck.
PS:(This message was used before by: cbagger01, and he got a point.)

Posted by walnut on June 14 2004,01:38
HEy, thanks for that, i had a look through the old posts and didn't really  find what i was after, but now i have, thanks for pointing me in the right direction
Posted by walnut on June 14 2004,09:51
aaahhh, i really need more help, i have copied the \knoppix folder to C:\ under windows. And following my assumptions about what to do attempted the creation of a boot floppy.

this is what i attempted (as it is what i understood to be coorect):

1 formatted a 1.44Mb floppy (came out as 1.38Mb)
2 accessed the \knoppix folder on the CD
3 Sent the files "boot.img" and "boot.cat" to the a: drive!! (but they total 1.40Mb in size and wouldn't fit)

is this right?, and if not is there a program (not necessarily linux) that i can put on a floppy to force my laptop to boot from a PCMCIA CD-rom ?.

(major n00b question) oh and just because it is buggin the crap outta me, when someone in the forums says use this code to mount USB drive:
#mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbdrive
what program do you type it into, i have only been using DSL to surf the net, as dillo seems faster than Internet Explorer.

Posted by cbagger01 on June 14 2004,16:47
It is not possible to get a good boot floppy by copying the boot.img file over.

You need a computer program called "rawrite" or similar style program.  This program is used to output a raw floppy disk image over to a floppy disk drive.

You can get a copy of rawrite here:

< ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub....otdisks >

Be sure to download the correct version for your operating system. IE: rawrite.exe for DOS/Win9x, rawritent.exe for Windows NT, rawritexp.exe for Windows XP.

Good Luck

Posted by ke4nt1 on June 14 2004,17:36
Winimage is another good program for making floppies
from .img files. More GUI than rawrite, less command line.
Whichever your flavor, both work well.

MAKE sure your floppy has no bad sectors
before attempting to write a .img file to it !!

Formatting 1.457,664 bytes should be 1,457,664 good bytes and
zero bytes in bad sectors with windows 98/me/2k/xp !!

Otherwise, the boot disk may fail to boot.

73
ke4nt

Posted by walnut on June 18 2004,12:28
most interesting, a file that large and it only uses 2.5Kb on my floppy. so i got that bit down pat.

when i boot i get right through everything (Xversa setup it think it is and i chose the one for older laptops)

it then comes up with the following message:

modprobe: modprobe: can't locate module fb0
XIO: fatal I/O error 104 (connection reset by peer on xserver ":0.0:
after 0 requests (0 known processed) with 0 remaining.
damnsmall@tty[damnsmall]$

What is this? i am currently assuming it is some kind of text based prompt and that DSL cant boot to a graphical desktop so it has defaulted to command line only mode!!!

-walnut

Posted by ke4nt1 on June 18 2004,14:12
Try this, it helps with one of my laptops ...

At the first splash screen, use the boot option fb800x600
Then when you get to the xvesa setup, choose xfbdev,
then 800x600.

reply back and let us know if that helps.

73
ke4nt

Posted by walnut on June 19 2004,07:30
Thanx for that, works like a charm, i had other issues aswell but spent like 2 hours trying just about every option and eventually got it done, now my next question is this:

Once i have booted to DSL and i have it on the desktop, it runs kinda sluggish (i expected this as i am running it on a 486 DX/4 with 16Mb of RAM) so i wanted to know to format the second partition of 80Mb as a swap space, and once it is done, can i just right click the drive and format it to FAT32 from windows if i decide to change it back??

Posted by cbagger01 on June 19 2004,15:43
A Linux Swap partition will not appear as a drive letter in Windows Explorer.

However, it is still possible to locate it and reformat it without using a Linux utility:

Use the "FDISK" DOS/WINDOWS command line utility to delete the linux partition and replace it with a FAT/FAT32 partition.

Then you can either use FORMAT or the Format Choice in Windows explorer to format your newly created partition.

Posted by AwPhuch on June 22 2004,00:58
One of the best utility bootable cd's I have ever used is

< Ultimate Boot CD >

Which has a ton of useful "freeware" apps.

Hope this helps

Brian
AwPhuch

Powered by Ikonboard 3.1.2a
Ikonboard © 2001 Jarvis Entertainment Group, Inc.