Re: Flirting with diaster (a bad installation experience)
On Wed, 24 May 2000, Andy Krietemeyer <akriet@gate.net> wrote:
>With the DOS tool, fdisk, I deleted a little used DOS partition from my 8.4
>gb hard drive to provide ~2 gb freespace and rebooted the Slink rescue
>floppy into the installation program. As part of the Debian installation, I
>divided the hard disk free space into 70 mb linux swap (hda4) and 1843 mb
>linux primary (hda3) partitions. I then installed and configured the base
>system - uneventfully. I did not select the option 'boot linux directly
>>from the hard drive' - was I under the correct impression that doing so
>would prevent me from booting Win98?
No, not really. For the very first boot after installing lilo, this is
true. But all you have to do then is add a record for Windows to
/etc/lilo.conf and run lilo (to update the MBR). On the second reboot
you will be able to choose either OS (this is what lilo is for, after
all).
>I used dselect to install and configure packages, I configured X.
>Everything seemed alright. I did not (and don't how I would) install or
>configure LILO. Is that where I went wrong? I don't recall seeing mention
>of LILO in the installation dialogs.
You probably were almost there. Use lilo, really. It won't mess up
your Windows partitions and if you really panic, you can always (like
you did) boot from a rescue disk, write a plain MBR and set the
bootable flag on your Windows partition. There is no need to actually
delete the Linux partitions.
>I rebooted the machine, thinking it would boot Win98 (and I would have to
>(temporarily) boot from the Linux boot floppy to get into Linux). No OS
>booted. An error message along the lines of
> 'Set up cannot continue, invalid partition' appeared.
Can you provide more details of your partitioning sheme? And is your
HD set to LBA in the BIOS (should be, but double check)?
>Perhaps I overreacted, got stupid, or was lucky or unlucky, but I rebooted
>>from a Win98 rescue disk I had created and used DOS fdisk to delete the two
>linux partions to which I had just installed Linux. I then tried a reboot,
>and thankfully, my Win98 booted and seems none the worse for the experience.
>
>I'd appreciate any insight anyone might have. It may take a while before I
>get the courage to try reinstalling Debian on a dual OS machine.
Try it again right away, good learning experience ;) But first, read
the relevant HOWTOs at http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/; especially:
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/Linux+Win95.html
(obviously)
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/Multiboot-with-LILO.html
(more comprehensive than the first one)
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Large-Disk-HOWTO.html
(background and why you want to use LBA)
There might be even more, just look around.
--
Philip Lehman <lehman@gmx.net>
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