Hi,

I'm planning on installing Slackware 10.1 and to use it as dual boot
with WinXP. But I don't want to mess around with the MBR so I was
thinking on installing it to the superblock as it's also an option in
the Slackware installation proces.

Now I'm familiar with the 1024 boundery so I was planning on using a
very small /boot partition wich is within this boundery and keep my /,
/home and /usr on my logical ppartition of the HD.

Is this a valid partition schem for doing this?

So I would install Lilo to the superblock (but Slack means superblock
of / partition, shouldn't that be /boot?)
And when adding Linux to Lilo I would choose the /boot partition as
the partition to boot from. Am I correct?

Thnx

I've created many Windows/Slackware Linux dual-boots, and I usually do
it by installing some kind of Linux bootloader on the MBR. It's much
cleaner and easier to do (from my perspective).

Suppose you have two harddrives (/dev/hda and /dev/hdc). /dev/hda is
your primary harddrive on your first IDE channel, and /dev/hdc is the
primary harddrive on the second IDE channel. Let's say you have
Windows on /dev/hda (technically it would be /dev/hda1, for the
parition).

Now /dev/hdc, is where you would install linux. You only need 4
paritions really. You need (or should have) a /boot, /, /home, and
swap partition. Suppose you do this-

/dev/hdc1 = /boot, 32 MB, active boot partition
/dev/hdc2 = swap, 256MB
/dev/hdc3 = /, 4 GB (for Slackware you really only need a 4 GB /
parition)
/dev/hdc4 = /home, rest of hdc
/dev/hda1 = Your Windows XP NTFS partition

So, you have your partitions all set up and nice.

During the Slackware install, when you layout your partitions, it asks
you about /dev/hda1 (since it goes through the drives and realizes this
is an NTFS drive), and asks you if you want to mount it to
/mnt/windows. You want to say yes here. So you go on with your
install, and at the end where it asks you about Lilo, install it to the
MBR. It should then ask you about your Windows paritition, if you want
Lilo to know about it. Say yes here. Then, when you reboot, you'll be
at the Lilo screen. You should then be able to select to boot either
Windows or Linux. Hope that helps.

And as for /boot, really what's stored in /boot is what is needed for
the system to boot up. This includes the kernel(s), the initial
ramdisks (if you need them), the kernel config files (if you want to
compile the kernel), and some more stuff. If you are using GRUB (witch
you arn't), that's saved in here to.

You don't nessisarly need a /usr partition, it's kinda a waste of time
(unless you somehow want to do some really strange setup). A 4 GB /
partition is good enough for Slackware (some even say forget /boot and
/home, just make one huge / partition).

The point is, installing to the MBR is much easier than trying to sort
out superblocks and what not. Linux boot loaders are much better than
the ones that Windows use.

On 11 Apr 2005 12:25:58 -0700, "jcdude2525" <jcdude2525@gmail.com>
wrote:


>The point is, installing to the MBR is much easier than trying to sort
>out superblocks and what not. Linux boot loaders are much better than
>the ones that Windows use.

And much more difficult to remove without reinstalling Windows

Jackie wrote:
>> Linux boot loaders are much better than
>> the ones that Windows use.
>
> And much more difficult to remove without reinstalling Windows

dd if=/dev/hda of=w32_mbr.bin bs=512 count=1

Why would you want to remove the Linux boot loader?

Jackie wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm planning on installing Slackware 10.1 and to use it as dual boot
> with WinXP. But I don't want to mess around with the MBR so I was
> thinking on installing it to the superblock as it's also an option in
> the Slackware installation proces.
>
> Now I'm familiar with the 1024 boundery so I was planning on using a
> very small /boot partition wich is within this boundery and keep my /,
> /home and /usr on my logical ppartition of the HD.
>
> Is this a valid partition schem for doing this?
>
> So I would install Lilo to the superblock (but Slack means superblock
> of / partition, shouldn't that be /boot?)
> And when adding Linux to Lilo I would choose the /boot partition as
> the partition to boot from. Am I correct?

Having a separate /boot partition is a quirk of "the other" Linux
distro's. However no-one is going to stop you if you want to have
/boot as a separate partition. The days of the 1024 cylinder boundary
limits for lilo are far gone, so this small /boot is really not necessary.

There is nothing against configuring lilo to install into the
superblock instead of the MBR. A matter of taste, the end result is
the same - you get dual boot.

As for howto's that instruct you how to add your Linux to the Windows
boot loader menu, there's loads of them on the Internet (didn't you
look?) but this one is nice since it tells you a lot on the side as well:

http://www.enterprisedt.com/publications/dual_boot.html

Cheers, Eric

jcdude2525 wrote:

> Why would you want to remove the Linux boot loader?
>
Not remove it, but install it into the root partition's superblock.
You still get to see the lilo boot menu, after you select "linux" in
the Windows boot menu.

As I said, it is a matter of taste. I often choose the "windows-first"
approach when setting up dual-boot PC's that more people are going to
use (who do not necessarily want to be bothered with Linux).

Also, on corporate PC's, due to IT policy restrictions you might not
even be allowed to alter the MBR.

Eric

I still prefer the putting Lilo on the MBR, it's cleaner and looks
nicer :-)

Jim

Eric Hameleers wrote:

> As for howto's that instruct you how to add your Linux to the Windows
> boot loader menu, there's loads of them on the Internet (didn't you
> look?) but this one is nice since it tells you a lot on the side as well:
>
> http://www.enterprisedt.com/publications/dual_boot.html
>
> Cheers, Eric

The only thing it seems to leave out is the fact that boot.ini is a
read-only, hidden, system file. In order to edit it, you first have to:

C:\>attrib -r -a -h -s boot.ini

And, here's another how-to, for what it's worth (look for the WINNT section
at the bottom of the page).

http://www.slackware.com/book/index....rce=x1776.html

--
Old Man

Jackie wrote :

> And much more difficult to remove without reinstalling Windows

Slackware uses lilo and when you install lilo in the MBR it saves a
backup of the MBR as /boot/boot.0300. Later you can restore the old MBR
from the backup by running '/sbin/lilo -u'. So you don't have to use the
good old DOS trick 'fdisk /MBR' or reinstall Windows.
--
Thomas O.

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