Want to Install Linux as dual Boot

[amitdipa]

I have Two Hard Disk installed on my Pc. one in primary Master & other in Primary Slave. In one Hard Disk I have Windows ME Installed and other is completely empty. Can I install Linux on other Hard Disk as a dual Boot system ? and if yes How.

Amit

[bAdWaYz]

You sure can dual boot with 2 hard drives. One with Windows on it and the other with some distro of linux. How this is set up and done really kinda depends on what distro of linux you want to use, but I'll give a small general overview of how you would do it using Red Hat or Fedora Linux Operating System....

First get your hands on Red Hat 9 or Fedora ISO's. This could be another write up in itself but for now just either go directly to Red Hat, Project Fedora for the downloads.....

After you burn the ISO's then you just set your cd-rom to boot first. pop in your Fedora cd 1 and you should see a screen asking how to install Fedora.

At the boot: line, you can pass parameters here depending on your system and hardware. A list of available boot options can be found here

Enter any of the parameters into the boot: line and then hit <enter>.
Ok now Fedora will try to find all of your devices "cd-rom, hard drive, and so on". After the probe you will get a screen that lets you check the install cd for errors or just skip that and go right to installing. Either check the install dc or skip. After you check or if you skip you should get to "Anaconda system startup". Thats just Red Hats system installer..ohhh ahhh impressive hehe..

If everything is peachy the next screen is a GUI saying "Welcome to the Fedora Core"
Ok fist thing pick what language you want to use for the install, next pick what type of keyboard you want "if you don't know what type to pick then use U.S. English then click next.

Next item to select is the mouse. If the system was able to probe your mouse, the correct option should be listed. If your mouse isn't supported just select PS2 generic and click next.

The third thing we get to configure is the monitor. Just like the mouse and keyboard if the system was able to probe your monitor successfully, it'll be selected. Otherwise you'll need to select your monitor from the long list of models. If you don't see yours use generic CRT 1600x1200 click next.

Now that those things are taken care of you will see a screen asking you what type of install you wish to use.
- Personal Desktop
- Workstation
- Server
- Custom
For newbies I would say use Personal Desktop becuase it installs more of the generic things you will want as a new user and is a bit more fail safe. So select personal desktop and click next.

In order to install Fedora the hard drive will need to be formated with a Linux partition. You get an option to do this yourself of let Fedora installer do it. Let the installer do it "don't worry windows will be safe".

Ok here comes the dual boot part. The next screen will show a list of drives that you can unselect. You will want to pick the hard drive that you wish to install Fedora on here.

You should see hda and hdb. In Fedora hda is the primary master and hdb is the primary slave. Ok so since windows is sitting on the first hard drive "hda" you don't want to overwrite that so uncheck hda that will tell Fedora to only use hdb for the install...thus installing Fedora on the 2nd hard drive and dual booting.

If the hard disk you are installing Fedora is unpartitioned/formated, don't worry about any of the top options. If the disk has any partitioned space that uses NTFS/FAT32/FAT16 or the like select Remove all partitions on this system. Don't worry, it doesn't really mean ALL partitions, it's only talking about those on the hard disk we selected.

You also want to check the box below that says "Review and Modify the partitions", so select that and click next.

Since we selected the review and modify box on the last screen, we get a nice little display of the hard drives layout. Even though we told Fedora not to use hda in the install, information about that drive, and all other drives are still displayed.

If everything looks good here, click next. Ok now Fedora asks if you want to install a boot loader. Fedora uses GRUB so use that. You want to install the GRUB boot loader on hda. You do this so that when the master boot record is read at bootup the bootloader will ask if you want to boot into Fedora or Windows.

Below that you should see options to select what OS to boot as default. You can also change the lables of each OS "ie change DOS to Winxp or 2k or what ever". You can also choose to have a bootloader password that is kinda like just up to you if you want it or not. Make all your choices and click next.

Now we get to configure our network settings. Fedora will configure your network card to DHCP automatically. If you don't use DHCP, you can click the edit button in the top right corner. This brings up a box, and we'll deselect the option for configure using DHCP. And now we'll plug in our static IP information and click ok.

The box at the top should no longer say DHCP, and the boxes at the bottom of the screen should now be editable. We'll manually enter our host name. You can enter just your computer name here, or your computer
name.dmainname If you are not a domain just use your computer systems name like Dellbox or what have you.

Since I'm not using DHCP, I'll be entering my Gateway and DNS information. You have the ability here to enter up to three DNS servers, but one would be good enough (two is ideal). Once the network information has been entered, click next.

At this point, we are just about done, but first we need to configure Fedora's firewall. I don't use it, but if you want to select enable firewall. If this system is going to be used for a server, you'll want to select what ports are allowed. HTTP, FTP, SMTP, Telnet, or custom ports (if you plan on running a BF1942 or CS server, enter your ports or port ranges here).

Also, if the computer has 2 network cards, say one for the Internet and one for the internal network, you may want to allow all traffic through a device. In other words, not have the firewall rules apply to it. If you want to exempt a network card from the firewall rules, select it here.. or to forget about the firewall, just select no firewall. Once you are happy here, click next.

If you did go the no firewall route (no pun intended), you'll get a warning message to make sure that is what you wanted to do.

Next we get to select what the default language is for the system, and any additional languages to be installed. You have to have at least one language, and can select any number of other languages. When you are done selecting your languages, click next.

Next we select our time zone, I'm in EST, so I selected America/New_York as it was the closest thing. You can also select here if the system (BIOS) clock uses UTC. For those asking, UTC stands for Coordinated Universal Time, and is Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) updated with a leap seconds. Select your time zone, and click next. If you want more info on UTC, you can read all about it here.

The next to last thing for us to do is to give root a password. Root is basically the equivalent to Administrator on a Windows system. Enter and verify the password and click next.

Now, the last thing for us to do (aside from lettings Fedora install and swapping out disk) is to select the packages we want to install. We selected the Personal Desktop install back in the beginning, and because of that Fedora has selected what to install, but we still have the option here of customizing the installed packages if we wanted to. As I said before, if this is your first time, just go with the default packages, as you get more experienced with Fedora and Linux, you'll be able to go back and play around more.

Just select install the default packages, and click next.

We're told Fedora is going to install, and what disk are needed, and you are given one final chance to back out of the install. Either click reboot to abort the Fedora install without any affect on the system, or click continue to install Fedora.

Fedora will now partition the hard disk that you selected for the install, and format the drive using the ext3 file system. After the format is complete, the install image will be copied to the hard drive, and Fedora will prepare to install. As Fedora has started the installed, you'll see a progress bar and information on what exactly is being installed across the bottom of the screen. And at the top, you'll be given information about the Fedora IRC channels, developers mailing list, and some other information. When and if prompted, insert any other required disk. And then the Fedora install will continue. After the install is finished, Fedora will do some post install configuration and then we'll be asked to reboot the system. The system will reboot, and then we should see the GRUB boot loader. Select Fedora Core to boot to Fedora, or DOS (or whatever you labeled it) to boot to Windows.
You'll see some text fly by as the system is probed again, and then Fedora will switch over to a graphical loader.

On the first boot, you'll come across the Fedora post install configuration/setup. Just a few little things here to take care of. First, we have to accept the License Agreement. Next we'll select the system time and date, or tell Fedora to use Network Time Protocol. Then we'll add a user, this will be who you will want to log in as when not doing admin functions. Logging in as root all the time is not recommended!
Next you'll get to play a test sound to make sure the sound card was set up correctly. If you use digital output, you'll probably not hear anything, and will need to install updated drivers, or do some configuration to the sound settings later. If any additional CDs were needed, you have the option of installing software from it here. That's it, post configuration is done. Click next to exit this section.

And you should now see a login box. Enter your user name, and hit enter, enter your password, and hit enter, and you'll be logged in (assuming the user name and password are correct).

Fedora will start up, well, actually the Gnome desktop will start up, and you'll see some icons in the progress bar as various components of the Operating system is started. Congratulations, you should now be looking at the Gnome desktop. Now you can log off and reboot the box you will see the same bootloader asking if you want Windows or Fedora or if you set it to boot to a defualt OS it will do that, but you now have a dual boot machine with 2 hard drives each with its own OS enjoy.


PS.....
d3bruts1d "you know who you are" thanks for typing alot of this up j00 b3 da man!

[bAdWaYz]

I realise now I should have just pointed him to the doc online instead of that huge post, but hey my word count has got to be up in here now so yay!

[bigfatguy6969]

Either way badwayz amit got help, that is what matters!