Re: Windows multiboot (aaargh!)
On Sunday 14 September 2003 16:53, Jacob Anawalt wrote:
> Pigeon wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> >Conclusion: DOS can't cope with the presence of non-DOS extended
> >partitions. How dead and chewed.
> >
> >So it seems that the options are something like:
> >
> >- don't have a Linux partition on that drive at all
> >- don't have your second DOS partition, so there can be room for the
> > ext2 partition to be a primary partition
> >- have two extended partitions, both DOS, and use umsdos in one of them
> >
> >It also seems I'd misremembered how the drive letters get allocated;
> >as you found out, the bootable primary partition is C:, the extended
> >DOS partition(s) come next and after them the other primary DOS
> >partitions.
>
> [snip]
>
> If you don't have to use the same disk for DOS and Linux, I second the
> first point. Once upon a time I had win98 on hda1(first primary
> partition), a second FAT32 on hda2 (second primary) and / on hda3 (third
> primary). The FAT32 partitions were made with the windows FDISK from the
> 98 install CD. The ext2 / (this was a while ago) was made with Linux
> fdisk. One day while installing a popular windows game (which is why I
> have the OS) onto the second FAT32 partition and it crashed in the
> middle of the install. Oh well I thought. Stupid MS, I'll go play
> FreeCiv in Linux, but Linux wouldn't boot. Booting from a rescue disk I
> found that hda3's contents were garbage. *#@$@*!!
>
> Oh well. I had two disks anyway and /usr/local and /home were on the
> second hard disk. I really wasn't using /usr/local with
> built-from-source programs, so it became /.
>
That's a good point. You may have noticed, in my initial post, I did not
specify making the Linux partition bootable.
Currently, I have my bootable Linux on /hda, on /hdc and /hdd I have one DOS
partition each and the rest Linux data partitions. So far I've never had
any trouble with DOS - presumably it can handle one partition per drive
without getting confused ;)
My proposed multi-OS drive would have had the Linux partition (/hdc6 or
whatever) as a data partition. Though I didn't say so, I'm intending to use
it for temporary storage of CD images produced by mkisofs for writing to CD.
It's handy to have a fixed 'empty' space of the required size that won't get
filled up with junk. So if DOS/Windows goes and writes all over it, it
shouldn't destroy anything that I can't easily replace.
cr
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