[KLUG Members] Dual Boot

[Bryan-TheBS-Smith]

Scott Thurmond wrote:
> I tried this several years ago and at that time I think Linux had to
> have the boot partition within certain parameters on the primary hard
> drive - is this still true?

You must use either Linux's LILO, GRUB or another 3rd party boot manager
in the primary HD's MBR** to select Linux at boot.

**MBR = master boot record
This is the first cylinder of the hard drive.  All Microsoft OSes use an
unified, ultra-simple MBR that says "on the first disk, look for the
partition that is marked 'Active' and boot it".  Linux has no such
requirement, but needs a boot manager that can tell the disk services
which partition to boot.

> What is the best way to install linux on the secondary drive?  Is it
> as simple as installing the HD, loading the OS and configuring grub
> to boot both oses?

Usually.  It can get tricky with BIOS (0x80 = first disk the BIOS sees,
0x81 = second, etc...) to disk device mappings (/dev/hda, /dev/hdc,
etc...) -- especially if you put the hard disk on an off-chipset IDE
controller.

It's the price Linux pays for having the flexibility to boot anywhere on
any partition on any hard drive.

-- TheBS

-- 
Bryan "TheBS" Smith     mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org    chat:thebs413
Engineer   AbsoluteValue Systems, Inc.   http://www.linux-wlan.org
President     SmithConcepts, Inc.     http://www.SmithConcepts.com
------------------------------------------------------------------
Linux strives to solve computing issues, not ones Windows created.