Frugal + Win98 dual boot

Forum: HD Install
Topic: Frugal + Win98 dual boot
started by: stoneguy

Posted by stoneguy on July 17 2005,03:20

I thought I knew what I was doing after poring over the frugal writeups. I like the idea of quick upgrades of the base system via frugal, and using HD in lieu of RAM where possible.

My P166MMX system has enough HD, but is maxxed out at 64MB RAM. It has Win98 on hda1 as well as a bunch of other fat16 partitions left over from the Win95 days. So I put swap and 2 ext2 partitions (hda5 and 6, each 2GB) on the disk, and ran frugal_instal.sh. System reboot took me directly to DSL with no choice screen to let me back into Win98.

So I went to edit /etc/lilo.conf to insert an 'other' section, but when I tried to save it discovered it was on the compressed partition where it couldn't be written. Oops...

Then I spotted mention in the forums of frugal-grub.sh, and had a look at the script to discover that it would guess (correctly) that hda1 was my Win partition. "Aha", says I, "problem solved". But when I tried to run it, it said I needed grub.dsl, and that's not around during the initial install.

Finally, I fdisk /mbr'd my back to booting Win98, and that's where it's sitting now.

Frankly, I don't care whether I use lilo or grub. The sfw/hdw I'm using should be fine with either.

Can anyone kindly provide some fairly detailed instructions about how to get this configuration working? TIA.

Posted by ke4nt1 on July 17 2005,04:08

The newer frugal_grub install script grabs both the bootfloppy image
and the grub.dsl from the internet during the install procedure..

< http://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/damnsmall/mydsl/grub.dsl >
< http://ibiblio.org/pub....ppy.img >

Don't know if your box is connected to the inet when you ran the script..

I suppose you could download them on another box,
and copy them over via floppy-net..

There is a LOT of info in the docs and the forums about using grub
with windows and DSL. It's pretty easy to do.

Also, you could use the grub.dsl itself, to set it up as your bootloader,
since you already have DSL installed to hda5/6 ..

Are you running this from DSL-1.3?
The newer frugal-grub install script is built-in, and works well..

73
ke4nt

Posted by stoneguy on July 17 2005,18:01

Well, it doesn't work here. When I run DSL (and yes, it's 1.3) from hda5 boot, install grub.dsl, and run frugal_grub.sh, the script runs, asking me whether I want to format hda5 (No) and where I want to load from (I put L after remounting the boot CD), the error I get is cp: /cdrom/KNOPPIX and /mnt/hda5/./KNOPPIX are the same file.

If it's true that "There is a LOT of info in the docs and the forums about using grub with windows and DSL. It's pretty easy to do", please point to the URL(s) that are appropriate. All the chatter I see pertains to hd-install, not frugal-install.

Posted by clivesay on July 17 2005,20:49

Sounds like you are booting from hda5 and then trying to frugal install to hda5. You wouldn't be able to do that since you are running the OS from that partition. You may be able to do it if you are running toram.

No need to mess with the grub.dsl. Easiest is to spin up the liveCD and run the frugal grub install script. If you have a net connection, it will d/l and install all the necessary files. Once the install is done, go into your hda5/boot/grub directory and edit the menu.lst file as root. It is already setup for multiple DSL boot parameters. You can edit them as you like. There is also a commented out Windows boot defaulted to hda1. Just remove the '#" from in front of each line and you should be able to boot Win98.

Chris

Posted by stoneguy on July 18 2005,01:06

That's what doesn't work for me in the 1st place. I boot up the CD using
DSL 2
and then enter
frugal_grub.sh
System comes back with
You must fetch grub.dsl
Press enter key

Looking around some more, I found a script called frugal_grub_fetch, which invokes frugal_grub. After becoming user dsl I was able to run it. It didn't ask all the questions that frugal_install did (requiring editing of the kernel statement), but after after uncommenting the Win9x lines, I'm there with GRUB.

Thinking this through, though, I'm wondering if there needs to be an initial install using frugal_install to set up home, opt, restore on the 2nd partition, followed by a reinstall using frugal_grub_fetch.

So now, when DSL 1.3.1 is released, all I have to is copy over the new linux24 and minirt24.gz files into hda5/boot. Right?

One more oddity I spotted. /home is linked to /ramdisk/home. Why isn't it connected to /mnt/hda6/home? How can I make that happen in a persistent fashion?
EDIT I just noticed that mount -a shows /mnt/hda6/home/dsl mounted on /home/dsl. I guess that's how it's done. I'm used to multiuser systems.

Posted by clivesay on July 18 2005,03:16

Yes, it looks like frugal_grub_fetch is the script that initiates this installation. You can manually update the files when a new version comes out but the frugal script gives you the ability to just do an upgrade instead of a full installation. Enjoy your frugal grub installation. I use it on multiple machines in many configurations.

Chris