dual boot

[geezup]

hii,

im quiet new to unix/linux! I wanted to learn and therefore decided on installing linux redhat onto my computer. I want to keep my existing windows xp OS and install the Redhat in the same hardrive. Now i read up some stuff on using a dual boot to partition the disk. But im totally confused on how to get started and go through this process of installing linux redhat! Plz help!! thx

 

[RhythmAce]

What you will need to do is get your hands on a partitioning tool that can resize the current partition on your drive without destroying you data. Red Hat used to come with a program called fips that would do just that. It was in the utils directory on the first disk. There is also a linux version called parted. I don't know if you have to boot linux for this one though. Once you find something that will do the trick, you need to shrink it enough so there is room for your particular install. If you install everything on all six discs, you will need at least 10 gigs, 7 for the root partition and a little for the swap partition. You will also want a little to play with so I'd say about 20 gigs would be plenty for playing and learning. The install program will create the linux partitions for you and almost everything else will be handled automatically too. You will be asked where you want the boot loader (grub), have it installed to the MBR and your all set. Next time you boot, you will see a blue screen with the options of loading linux or Windows. If you don't make a selection within 5 seconds or so, the default OS will boot. You can change this buy loading linux. Then open /boot/grub/grub.conf. You will see that the different operating systems will be listed. The word "title" will identify each one. The first one is "0" and the second one is "1" and so on. You should see a line that says "default=0". If Windows is the second one and you want that as the default, then change it to "default=1" Directly under the default option, you will see the amount of time it will wait for a response. I think it is 5 by default but you can change this to whatever you want also.