Re: dell 4000

[Jason Majors <jason@kwiqsilver.org>]

On Fri, Feb 08, 2002 at 05:04:03PM -0500, Ryan Elmore scribbled...
> Hi everybody...I am new to the mailing list and debian, so please excuse
> my ignorance.  I am currently running a dell inspiron 4000 with windows me
> and red hat 7.1, but I would love to add debian!  I was wondering if there
> are any problems that I should expect or may encounter by trying to add
> debian as a third option.  I'm not asking from the hardware compatibility
> side, but rather from the perspective of just having three operating
> systems to the machine.  Here is the partition table and what I plan to
> do:
> 
> Name    Flags    Partition type      FS Type         [label]       Size(MB)
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> hda2                 Primary        linux ext2      [/boot]          24.68
>                                     Unusable                         57.58
> hda1    Boot         Logical        Win95 FAT32 (LBA)              3767.71
> hda4                 Primary        Win95 FAT32 (LBA [P^]c]        2097.45
> hda5                 Logical        Linux ext2      [/usr ]        2097.45
> hda6                 Logical        Linux ext2      [/    ]        1579.26
> hda7                 Logical        Linux Swap                       74.03
>                      Logical        Free Space                      444.17
> 
> I plan on deleting hda4 and partitioning it into /usr, /home, and root for
> Debian.  By doing this, will I create problems by trying to boot the 3
> operating systems?  I am assuming that Debian will control the boot
> process and allow me to enter red hat or windows...is this correct?  Any 
> potential problems and/or suggestions are very much appreciated.   Thanks
> in advance,
> 
<wild guess>
I *think* it might work by telling lilo under Debian to boot RedHat
as an 'other' type set to /dev/hda2. (Or the reverse for booting Debian
under RedHat's lilo).
I don't think Lilo has a way of understanding that a certain / partition (or
other partition) belongs to a specific Linux install.
</wild guess>

If you don't get much in the way of responses on this list, which is low
traffic, cuz it's notebook centric, try it on debian-user, where it's more
generic Debian, and *much* higher traffic.

And on the hardware compatibility side...get a list of what hardware modules you
have from your RedHat, because Debian doesn't have a hardware detection tool
as part of the install. It's all manual.