HD Install :: Dual boot



I have two partitions, one with WindowsXP Home, and the second is a blank one which I plan to install DSL on (to make a dual boot) but when I go to install it, should I still install it to hda1 and risk screwing up my XP?
First of all, you need to make sure that the XP partition is indeed shown as /dev/hda1. On some Dell machines, it is not. When you boot DSL from the CD, then you can go to /mnt and ls to see the partitions that have been found. I have one machine with 16 partitions, and DSL shows all of them in /mnt.
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With DSL, I don't do a hard drive install in the regular fashion, like one would with Redhat 9, for instance. Look here to see how I do it:
http://www.angelfire.com/ms/telegram/general_howto
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I would store my backup.tar.gz and filetool.lst in your /dev/hda2, your
second partition, however, and place a copy of the /knoppix folder in
/dev/hda1 (in with Windows XP). As long as your Windows XP partition is /dev/hda1, then a boot floppy for DSL will find it. Then you can restore from /dev/hda2. The general_howto has the procedure on that.
In that case, you'll be running DSL off the hard drive, not the cd.
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If you run off the cd, then you could just place your backup.tar.gz and filetool.lst in the root directory of /dev/hda1 (in with Windows XP) and
restore from there.  On my Dell XP machine, I have to run off the cd, and use a usb drive (thumb drive, etc.) of 64 MB to restore. My restoration tarball is about 17 MB, and I can use it with either Damn Small Linux 0.6.1, or Luit Linux 0.2, no problem, just depends on which cd I put in the drive.
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Dells being sold now partition XP in /dev/hde2, which cannot be found by the knoppix bunch of OS's.

:;):
HI!

I-m writing this from dsl with firefox. i think its something great and id like to install it on my hard drive, but do the _real_ install (not the way mentioned above).

I have enough free disk space, but i have win2k installed (i need it for school)

I had to install it freshlz because i tried to install lindows -  it worked but lilo killed my mbr!!!!!!

as i had no backup i had to reinstall win2k.

My question is that when ill run mklilo will it find the ntldr in the mbr and will integrate it or will i just be able to boot dsl?
I think i have a man of how to make the ntldr boot  lilo but i dont know if it works with dsl...

If something is not clear just ask!

best wishes
lepingouin
I have one machine with about 16 partitions, and all kinds of Linux on that.
I find that one needs to use a tomsrtbt boot floppy, and using fdisk, write
down your partition table. Then if something overwrites it, and many boot
managers will, then you can use tomsrtbt to write it back to the mbr with
fdisk.
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I do not have any experience with a  genuine DSL hard drive installation,
I got into these live cd's when a 80 GB drive of mine quit on me.
(I didn't want to go buy another, and install all that again)
I have just remastered DSL, with Firefox and wvdial, and what little
restoration I need to personalize it will fit on a floppy. I can move
from computer to computer very easily, something I coulld not do before.
My main machine has Redhat 9 on it, and do use that to download all
the Knoppix remasters, DSL, Luit, Feather, etc.

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:;):
Im no more a newbee but im still new to linux!

so i think remaster and stuff like this will come later  :D

where can i find that tomsrtbt?

edit:
gogle answered my question!
i dont know if i could use it but i know what youre talkin about..
but cant i do a mbr backup with a "more normal" distro?
edit end

could you explain this?

can i also do a mbr backup with dd?

dd if=/dev/hda of=/boot/bootsector.ide bs=512 count=1
dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/fd0 bs=512 count=1

the problem is i found this in a book but i have no idea what im doing ???

if things should go wrong i should then do lilo -u
and
dd if=/boot/bootsector.ide of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1

if i doo these things before the dsl install i cant mess up my mbr right?

because if this is so then i can try to install it i think...

thanks for your answer ill look what that tomsrtbt is...

best wishes
lepingouin
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