Pre-Install: fdisk, grub

yogi · n00b Joined: 12 Sep 2002 Posts: 7

I am going to install Gentoo, and I'd like to clear a few points before I start (and possibly damage anything).

I have an existing 3GB harddisk (hda) that contains Windows 2000 and RedHat 6.x, and I am using lilo as the bootloader.

Recently, I bought a new 40 GB disk (hdb), where I would like to install Gentoo. Further, I want grub as a bootloader and I want to get rid of the existing RedHat installation, and give some more space to Windows on hda.

Here are the questions:
1) during the gentoo install, can I use fdisk to create a NTFS partitition on hda?
2) can I replace the lilo MBR by the grub MBR, by simply issuing

slartibartfasz · Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2003 5:41 pm Post subject:

1) mkfs cannot create NTFS afaik - only FAT

2) yes - but u will have to edit /boot/grub/grub.conf in addition
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yogi · n00b Joined: 12 Sep 2002 Posts: 7

Thanks a lot for the quick and useful reply.

1) fat is fine too, I guess I can reformat it in w2k as ntfs.

Milamber · n00b Joined: 23 May 2003 Posts: 72 Location: Richmond, VA

Hi yogi,

Some advice :
-if you still regularly use Win2k, don't remove the Win2k bootloader. In fact, leave /dev/hda1 alone. Instead, install grub on /dev/hdb and use the dd to boot gentoo from the w2k bootloader(modify the boot.ini file in windows). This saves you some more trouble when you have to fix Windows with your Windows install disk.

-Linux can't write to an NTFS partition. You may want to FAT32 instead for your old Red Hat partition so you could write some data from Linux that W2k can read.

kRock · n00b Joined: 28 May 2003 Posts: 73 Location: portland, or

Linux CAN write to NTFS, however it's still in the experimental stage.

Milamber · n00b Joined: 23 May 2003 Posts: 72 Location: Richmond, VA

I guess I have to qualify my statement !

It CAN but only if you can afford the risk of corrupting the whole filesystem. If you can spare a partition and some backed-up data, sure, why not. But if you're writing to an NTFS partition containing your C:\WINNT, dude, you're asking for trouble.

Make sure to specify read-only in /etc/fstab for the NTFS partition that you can't afford to mess up.

raid517 · l33t Joined: 06 Mar 2003 Posts: 946

Hi I'm sorry to butt in on this topic, but I have a similar setup. But I don't think my question is important enough to have a thread all of it's own. If I edit fstab and one or more of my partitions is formated in reiserfs, do I write reiserfs all in lower case, or Reiserfs with the first letter in upper case. The install instructions are not very clear on that. Can anyone possibly be kind enough to clarify this for me? Also the install instructions say nothing about copying the System.map file to the /boot partition after compiling the Kernel, but I have haerd several people here say that it should be done. Why is it necessary and what difference does it make?

slartibartfasz · Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2003 8:17 pm Post subject:

---> all lowercase works for me

---> System.map is used for tracing bugs and oops messages afaik - it is not necessary usually...
_________________
To an engineer the glass is neither half full, nor half empty - it is just twice as big as it needs to be.

slartibartfasz · Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2003 8:24 pm Post subject:

@yogi

the other posters r right - NTFS write support is very risky - it may crash a whole partition...better to stay with FAT

depending on your hardware u might be interested in vmware, pax86 and wine for running windows and windows applications.

another solution is to get a old cheap box (K6, P MMX or the like), another network card and set up a fileserver with samba. u can access samba shares very easy and convienient from both OS...
_________________
To an engineer the glass is neither half full, nor half empty - it is just twice as big as it needs to be.