Installing Windows on a system with an establish F8 distro

[bseltzer]

Unfortunately, I find myself in need of a Windows system to supplement my existing F8 distro in order to run some astronomical image processing and observation planning software that flat refuses to run under wine.

The machine is a Dell XPS 410 with 2 300 GB hard drives, the first of which (sda) hosts my every day, does everything else I need, Fedora 8 installation. The second drive (sdb) is reserved for crash and burn development type projects. Currently, there's an F9 -alpha install on that disk.

What I'd like to do is install Windows (Vista, probably) on that second drive WITHOUT messing up the F8 install on drive one, and then be able to boot into Windows of F8 at will. I've done dual boot systems (Windows & Fedora) before, and it was not rocket science. But it was always a box that already had windows on board and I was adding Fedora after the fact. This is the exact reverse of that, and to be completely honest, I pretty much of a Windows dummy.

So... can anyone help me out with a step-by-step on this one? Bottom line, access to my existing F8 install is an absolute requirement. The Windows add on would be nice, but if I have to, I guess I could run the software in question on my desktop at work, although I doubt my management would appreciate it.

Thanks,
Bert

[bob]

I'd unplug the F8 drive, set to other drive to cable-select (if IDE) and format, then install Windows. Might want to partition to leave space for the beta F9 that's due next week. Once installed and booting well, you can add the F8 drive back into place, set it's drive as first boot and then use grub to boot windows by mapping the drives:

title Windows
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1

That's assuming that you've installed Windows on the first partition of the slave drive. Adjust as needed. The nice thing there is that in case of a grub error, Windows can be booted by simply switching the bios boot order and there's no chance of damaging your F8 install with the Windows install. For the F9 beta, you can either overwrite the Windows mbr or install grub on the F9 partition and then use the same F8 grub to point to the F9 partition and boot it as:

title F9 Beta
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
root (hd1,1)
rootnoverify (hd1,1)
chainloader +1

[Aaron_H]

If I'm understanding you correctly, you can format the 2nd drive, partition it and install windows (first) and then fedora 9 (or whatever really). You could install a boot loader with the option to boot Windows, F8 (from the other drive) or F9 on the second disk. Then you could adjust the system bios to boot onto the 2nd drive first, which would bring up the boot loader, asking if you wished to boot fedora 8 (on your first drive, which is unchanged) or Windows/F9 from your second disk (which has been reformatted).

I'm new to Linux/Fedora, but I hope this helps.


EDIT: Bob beat me to it, with a better answer. :P

[birger]

I would recommend that you look at vmware server. it's free, well known and enables you to run your windows desktop in a window. Performance is good enough unless you need fast 3D graphics. You can set it up with NAT through your linux network interface making your windows installation more shielded from outer networks or make it completely local so it only communicates with your linux system

Dual boot has a lot of drawbacks. Not only the obvious problem having to reboot to switch, but my experience with dual-boot systems where windows gets used rarely is that they very often get hacked. For a windows system that hasn't been updated for a while it can be a matter of minutes from booting until its been taken over. Granted, that was in an environment without firewalls in the network. It was up to each individual host to be secured.

For the kids I have used vmware workstation (also free) to set up a windows98 environment for applications that wouldn't install in XP. For vmware workstation you need a virtual machine that has been set up already. It is more user friendly than vmware server, but less flexible.

It is also great to be able to test applications without installing them in my base operating system. I can clone a virtual machine to set up a test system in no time. I can play with windows 2008 core server one minute and Fedora 9 beta the next. I highly recommend having vmware server available at all times :-)

[marko]

Originally Posted by bob

.......
title F9 Beta
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
root (hd1,1)
rootnoverify (hd1,1)
chainloader +1

Bob,

Can you explain why the double root and rootnoverify ?
I thought the usual way was either root or rootnoverify but not both?

I'm doing something similar, I have a PC with two very large disks
(SATA 320 GB disks) The first disk came with XP from Dell and boots
ok but I put Fedora 8 on the disk 2 and it can't boot from disk2 because
the Dell bios won't let you make anything but the first disk bootable

My attempted work around is to make a grub usb key with
its grub setup:

title WinXp
rootnoverify (hd1,1)
chainloader +1
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)

This works fine ((hd1,0) is occupied by a special Dell recovery partition
which is why XP is on hd1,1 ). But Xp always booted fine, I'm trying to
get F8 to boot from /dev/sdb without having to change the disk 1.

my grub setting to get to the 2nd disk where F8 is is:

title F8
rootnoverify (hd2,0)
chainloader +1
map (hd0) (hd2)
map (hd2) (hd0)

The maps get around the fact that the usb key is sitting at
hd0, Xp is at hd1 and Fedora is on hd2

I get Error 18 selected cylinder is beyond the limits of the bios

I think it's weird that with a brand new (Dell 720) computer
they still have these bios limits? Does it help to move the 'map'
entries first?

This is related to a thread of mine at
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/forum/...d.php?t=183611

UPDATE -- Hmm, maybe I should be using "root" and not "rootnoverify"

Mark

[bob]

Mark, I use Mint's grub to boot my distros and here's my Fedora and PCLOS entries:

title Fedora 8 Werewolf
root (hd0,1)
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1


title PCLinuxOS Gnome
root (hd0,2)
rootnoverify (hd0,2)
chainloader +1


Since I didn't unplug drives, there's no need to map anything because it was all recognized during the install. Also, this only refers to the first drive, not my second one. Anyhow, yes, I'd bet that it's important to have the 'mapping' ahead of the instructions on the root/rootnoverify. I don't have any formal training, but it would seem that computers read things in order and the mapping is where you're telling it to "look over there!". If you put the root info in ahead of that, I don't think the computer will search in the right place. Just a half-bassed (fishing term) explanation from a layman.

[bseltzer]

Bob,

The drives are all SATA, so there's no need to diddle with the cable select settings. I was considering using the technique described here

http://forum.fedoraforum.org/forum/s...d.php?t=167302

by 'stoat'. It seems a bit simpler in that it doesn't require moving drives around, but I am wondering if it'll allow booting into Windows (remember, we're talking Vista here) from the Fedora 8 grub on sda.

For the time being, I'm not paying a whole lot of attention to F9. My experience with the Alpha so far leads me to believe it doesn't offer anything I really need that I don't already have, and it may be awhile before all the kernel/nvidia driver/X11 server issues are sorted out well enough to make it worth the update.

Birger,

I fully understand all the virtues of VMware you describe, but Fast 3D graphics are exactly what I need, especially for Registax and other image processing software. For what I need to do, VM's are not the answer.

Thanks,
Bert

[bseltzer]

Well, that turned out to about as painless as is possible, given that I AM dealing with Windo$e...

In the end, I just cleared out a 75 GB partition on the sdb drive, made it first in my BIOS boot order, and went ahead and installed Vista as usual. No unplugging drives or even opening the case. After all was said and done, I returned the boot order to it's normal sequence, sda, the F8 drive first, added the following to grub.conf;

title Windows Vista
        root (hd1,0)
        rootnoverify (hd1,0)
        chainloader +1

and 'Viola'... dual boot system. No muss, no fuss, not even any drive mapping, and my F8 distro is alive and well.

Regards,
Bert

[A.Serbinski]

Forget vmware. Use virtualbox, (k)qemu/kvm, etc. -- they're open source and work a LOT better than vmware.

Originally Posted by birger

I would recommend that you look at vmware server. it's free, well known and enables you to run your windows desktop in a window. Performance is good enough unless you need fast 3D graphics. You can set it up with NAT through your linux network interface making your windows installation more shielded from outer networks or make it completely local so it only communicates with your linux system

Dual boot has a lot of drawbacks. Not only the obvious problem having to reboot to switch, but my experience with dual-boot systems where windows gets used rarely is that they very often get hacked. For a windows system that hasn't been updated for a while it can be a matter of minutes from booting until its been taken over. Granted, that was in an environment without firewalls in the network. It was up to each individual host to be secured.

For the kids I have used vmware workstation (also free) to set up a windows98 environment for applications that wouldn't install in XP. For vmware workstation you need a virtual machine that has been set up already. It is more user friendly than vmware server, but less flexible.

It is also great to be able to test applications without installing them in my base operating system. I can clone a virtual machine to set up a test system in no time. I can play with windows 2008 core server one minute and Fedora 9 beta the next. I highly recommend having vmware server available at all times :-)