[AktiviX] Hard disks

[Nick Hill]

Please note: moving hard drives around and changing partition numbers 
will create a world of hurt for those not prepared to learn how the boot 
process works and learn some pretty complicated concepts. If you want to 
use your GNU/Linux machine as a desktop system and don't want to get 
involved with Unix-like commands, don't attempt to do this. I will 
therefore assume access to the root account, knowledge that root is 
needed to do these things and preparedness to learn Unix commands.

I agree with Martin. I recommend:

Pri Master (hda) Windows 8Gb
Pri Slave (hdb) CD Rom drive
Sec Master (hdc) GNU/Linux and doze data
Sec Slave (hdd) CD Writer.

If you swap drive order and want to continue to dual boot, you will need 
to edit a couple of files on your GNU/Linux distribution so that
1) Your bootloader will work properly
2) When your system boots, it can find your root partition.
3) Your bootloader will give an option to boot into doze

You need to know what partition the Linux distro is on
You need to know what partition doze is on.

I will assume you use LILO as your boot loader. This can provide a menu 
to select which operating system you want to boot into. LILO can manage 
booting into doze, GNU/Linux and other operating systems.

--Boot loading using lilo and lilo.conf--

LILO is managed from lilo.conf. lilo.conf describes to the program lilo 
(which does not run automatically) what bootloader it must write, and 
where it must write it.

Lilo must write the bootloader to the bootable disk. This is normally 
the first hard drive on the primary channel, as this normally has the 
highest boot priority.

I have shown hda, hdb, hdc and hdd above in their respective positions. 
hdd is always the slave on the second IDE channel, irrespective of what 
other drives are connected.

If your machine boots from the primary master hard drive, then put:
boot=/dev/hda

If your GNU/Linux system is on the first hard drive of the second 
channel (hdc) and the partition is number 2 (hdc2):

root=/dev/hdc2


If the the Linux kernel is called /vmlinuz and boot image is /boot.img 
(as is common on Debian systems - debian systems use boot.img. Many 
others don't.)

image=/vmlinuz
         label=Linux
         read-only
         initrd=/initrd.img

If you are dual booting doze and doze is on the first partition of the 
first hard drive (as is most comon- hda1) then you need a lilo.conf entry:

other=/dev/hda1
         label=DOS
         table=/dev/hda

After you have edited lilo.conf, you need to run lilo. lilo.conf does 
not do anything other than telling lilo the specifications of a 
bootloader to install. If you edit lilo.conf and you want the changes to 
take effect, always run lilo.

Running lilo from a system which has not already booted up can be 
tricky. You get a chicken and egg situation. This is where the command 
chroot is useful. If you can boot the machine with GNU/Linux, and you 
can mount the hard drive of the system you want to be bootable, you can 
chroot into the hard drive then run lilo.

For example, boot from a floppy distribution of GNU/Linux. A good single 
floppy distro can be found here:
http://www.toms.net/rb/

I recommend the floppy over Knoppix CDs as I have had trouble having the 
/dev/ devices recognised and useable in a chrooted environment when 
booting with some knoppix variants. Some tag in the kernel has possibly 
been set so that devices are not available on non-root mounted 
filesystems (or perhaps the system does not give access to devices where 
a filesystem is mounted with the user option).

Once booted from floppy, assuming your GNU/Linux system is on hdc2 and 
your lilo.conf is correct, do:

cd /mnt
mkdir hdc2
mount /dev/hdc2 hdc2
chroot hdc2 /sbin/lilo
umount hdc2

Reboot.. and Bingo!


Doug Paulley wrote:
> Following on from the Hardware workshop. If a PC has an 8Gb drive with one bootable Windows partition on it, one 40Gb with one 20Gb Windows data and a bootable Linux distro in rest, one 16x CD-ROM and one fast CD burner and DVD reader, what configuration would be best in terms of primary master etc?