I CAN UNDER STAND THAT BIT BUT NOT THE GRUB

MIKE ----- Original Message ----- From: Hanmo To: CentOS mailing list ; centos@centos.org Sent: Friday, August 21, 2009 1:38 PM Subject: Re: [CentOS] Dual Booting Question

When install the system, please format the disk and leave the free space to the linux. Intall the xp firstly, then install the centos on the free space. Use the grub to load these two system.

2009-08-21

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Hanmo

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发件人： Michael Wright 发送时间： 2009-08-21 10:39:33 收件人： centos@centos.org 抄送： 主题： [CentOS] Dual Booting Question Hi List

I'm new to centos i'm also on the forum but my question is how do i do a dual boot say windows/centos

i no i have to partition the harddrive can i do this in centos..\

could someone help us out

Mike

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On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 10:00 PM, Chaz Sligerchaz@bctonline.com wrote:

I use Symantec’s Norton Partition Magic to carve up the disk, usually into 3 partitions (NTFS for windows, FAT32 for moving files between windows and linux, and a linux partition).

You’ll need to copy the linux bootloader into the Master Boot Record and then set it up so you can choose which OS to boot.

I used to use Partition Magic all the time. Still have version 8, I think. But I carry Puppy Linux around on thumb drive and it's just more convenient.

As for copying the bootloader into the MBR, isn't that Grub's default setup? I think Grub is pretty much automatic if let it be.

David McGuffey wrote:

On Fri, 2009-08-21 at 20:00 -0700, Chaz Sliger wrote:

...

 I use Symantec’s Norton Partition Magic to carve up the disk, usually into 3 partitions (NTFS for windows, FAT32 for moving files between windows and linux, and a linux partition).

You’ll need to copy the linux bootloader into the Master Boot Record and then set it up so you can choose which OS to boot.

-chaz

When it comes time to install Linux in dual-boot mode, I always use that opportunity to blow away Windoze and do a fresh install on a portion of the disk before letting Linux have the rest. After a few months Windoze can get loaded up with a lot of junk and get slow and quirky.

If for some reason you can't do that, then the Partition Magic route also works. But...back up the Windoze data first. PM is not always 100% fool-proof.

Now days, if the machine is fairly decent, I just install windows in a Virtual Machine.

I like Sun's Virtual Box on CentOS to run my Windows Hosts ... others use different things like VMWare.

You can get virtual box here:

http://www.virtualbox.org/

The great thing about a VM is that you can use both the Windows machine and the Linux machine at the same time.

The bad thing is that it can be slow if you do not have enough RAM or CPU.

I have a laptop with a Pentium M 2.2 GHz processor and 2 GB RAM and I run a Windows XP VM with 512MB RAM on top if CentOS 5.

Thanks, Johnny Hughes

On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 9:07 PM, Michael Wrightmicktaywright@bigpond.com wrote:

I CAN UNDER STAND THAT BIT BUT NOT THE GRUB

MIKE

Unless I'm misremembering, Grub finds your Windows partition and sets itself up for you. Just hit "e" when CentOS starts to boot to see your other choices.

If you want your computer to boot by default to Windows, just edit the 'menu.lst' file in /boot/grub -- you'll have to logged in as root (or su) to do that. If you want to see all your choices each time your computer boots, comment out the 'hiddenmenu' line. If you want more time to choose an OS (the default is 5 seconds) you can also change that at the same place.

Good luck.

On Fri, 21 Aug 2009 13:21:17 -0500 Ron Blizzard wrote:

I don't know if you can repartition with CentOS as you install, or not -- I don't think you can. I use Puppy Linux for this. One of its included utilities is GParted, which is a lot like Partition Magic and it lets you resize your Windows partition to make room for CentOS.

Even better would be to partition the disk into a primary partition large enough for XP and the rest free space, and then install CentOS in the free space.