LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Angus Wallace <angus.wallace@flinders.edu.au>
  To  : John Joseph <john.joseph@adelaide.edu.au>
        LinuxSA <linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au>
  Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 14:39:56 +0930

Re: Help

There's really only 2 things you need to be wary of.

1: If you want to boot linux directly from the hard disk, you must 
overwrite the master boot record (mbr) on your primary hard disk 
(probably the disk with windows on it). This is not damaging to windows. 
  What will happen is that when the computer boots, you will be 
presented with a menu allowing you to choose between booting windows and 
linux. the program that facilitates this is generally either 'lilo' or 
'grub', and there is some configuration that you will need to be aware 
of. This is definitely worth understanding, however the Redhat install 
should look after most of it for you.

2: Be aware of which partition you are writing to. Linux refers to 
partitions differently to windows. Your primary hard disk is hda, and 
partitions therein are defined as hda1, hda2, etc. windows is _probably_ 
in hda1 (depending on your configuration). Thus, if you install linux on 
hdb (your secondary (or slave - if on the same cable as the primary) 
hard disk) you shouldn't have any worries.
Note that when you are mucking around with partitions, you can see how 
they're formatted. Have an idea of what to expect (i.e. windows will be 
vfat [for fat32] or ntfs, and the other hard disk is very likely 
unformatted) so that identification shouldn't be a problem.

the installation itself is generally very easy, and Redhat is a distro 
prized for ease of use - a good choice for a first install  :-)

Hopefully all this if factually correct ;-)

Have fun,
-Angus

John Joseph wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I am in the process of installing Linux RedHat on my machine
> with Windows 2000 operating system. Since I wanted to install
> Linux separately, I added an extra hard disk. Do you think it
> is advisable to install Linux on the new disk? If so I do I
> proceed?
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> 
> John
> 

-- 
Angus Wallace              o__     o__     o__     o__     o__
Flinders University        ,>/'_   ,>/'_   ,>/'_   ,>/'_   ,>/'_
Ph. (08) 82013363         (_)\(_) (_)\(_) (_)\(_) (_)\(_) (_)\(_)
angus.wallace@flinders.edu.au    Ride a Bike!




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