Re: First Linux, then WinXp, is it possible on the same disk

From: Joe (joe_at_jretrading.com)
Date: 10/15/03 

Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 20:56:04 +0100

In message <_EEib.32910$dP1.102775@newsc.telia.net>, Yongtao Yang
<yongtao.yang@telia.com> writes
>Hi, I saw plenty of posts talking about installing linux after windows,
>no I wonder whether the opposite is possible. I have a computer which
>was installed with only linux(SuSE 7.0) and has been running fine. Now
>for some reasons I have to install WindowsXP on the last partition,
>which was left empty to install some other OS, but I didn't expect
>WinXP is such naughty. :)
>
>The parition table is
>
>/dev/hda1 * 1 14 105808+ 83 Linux
>/dev/hda2 15 150 1028160 82 Linux swap
>/dev/hda3 151 963 6146280 83 Linux
>/dev/hda4 964 2586 12269880 5 Extended
>/dev/hda5 964 1776 6146248+ 83 Linux
>/dev/hda6 1777 2585 6116008+ e Win95 FAT16 (LBA)
>
Can we assume that hda1 is /boot? /boot does not need to be a separate
partition with a modern boot manager i.e. you could move the files in
the boot partition into a /boot within the / partition. It's a bit messy
and you'd need to do that from outside your Linux distro e.g. with
tomsrtbt. If you mount and look at your current / from Tom's, you'll
probably find an empty /boot there already. Grub and /etc/fstab would
need to be modified. I know how to do it with lilo but I've never used
Grub.

If you can do this, you've freed a primary partition. This only needs to
contain a few small files (listed in someone else's post), and the
Windows or Winnt folder can be in a logical partition elsewhere. You set
that during installation. My XP C:\ contains less than 300KB of system
files. Make the main XP partition FAT32 if you need full access to it
from Linux, or NTFS if you'll never need to write to it from Linux.

Make a Linux boot disc first, and afterwards you have the option of
keeping the XP loader and booting Linux from it, or installing Grub and
booting XP from it. Most people will prefer the latter. 

-- 
Joe

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