Newbie bootloader help 1

[OzDog]

Guys/Gals,

I have a 20Gb Hard drive that I split up as follows: 8Mb Boot Partition (FAT), 10Gb Windows 2K (NTFS) install, Rest - Free Space.

I installed RedHat 8.0, and of course it partitioned the free space as it pleased. I want it to co-exist with Windows, and thought that by leaving the FAT partition, I could install LILO as a boot loader. On installing Linux, I got the message that the Boot partition "may not meet the requirements" (or something similar). I created a boot disk, and Linux boots fine from that, but obviously LILO is not installed as my boot manager.

The question - what are the requirements for LILO - I assume that there just wasn't enough space there? Or maybe I need to totally change the drive structure?

I am attacking this from the Point of view that I am a Windows NT/2K & Citrix systems architect/admin, and this partitioning sounded logical at the time, but I really don't know much about Linux. Cheers,
Sam

Please let members know if you found their posts helpful.

 

[ppc386]

AFAIK, the NT boot loader ( NTLDR ) insists on being on the first partition.
Installing LILO there would probably keep you from booting windows at all.

This was my situation, maybe you can get some ideas from it...

I have DOS 6.22, Win98, WinNT, and SuSE all installed on the same machine,
I use the Windows NT boot loader to select the system at boot-up.
My first partition on the first drive is Win98/FAT ( /dev/hda1 )
- The NT boot loader is installed here.

Windows NT itself on the second partition on the first drive ( /dev/hda2 )

Linux is on the first partition of the second drive ( /dev/hdb1 )
LILO is installed in the /root partition of the Linux drive ( /dev/hdb1 )

Under Linux, my "C:\" drive is mounted as ( /drv/c )

So the command to create the boot image (on my system) is:
[tt]
dd if=/dev/hdb1 of=/drv/c/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1
[/tt]

Where:
dd is the command ( I think it stands for "duplicate data" or something)
"if=" ( input file ) is the location of the Linux boot sector.
"of=" ( output file ) is the name of the output file.
"bs=" ( block size ) is the number of byte that dd reads in one block.
"count=" is the number of blocks to read.

So I made a copy of the LILO boot image, and named it "bootsect.lnx",
and put the file on the first drive. The copy is just a regular file,
it is NOT actually in the boot sector!

Then I modified the C:\BOOT.INI file and added this line under the
[Operating Systems] section:
[tt]
C:\BOOTSECT.LNX="Suse Linux 7.1"
[/tt]


Of course, the command arguments will vary according to your system.

For more detailed information, see:

http://jaeger.morpheus.net/linux/ntldr.php

http://classes.csumb.edu/CST/CST434-01/world/DualBoot.html

or:

http://www.google.com/search?q=NT+Linux+dual+boot