dual boot

[ME]

Joseph McCarty said:
> I have Win2k on my machine's SCSI drive.  I added an IDE primary master
> on which I installed RedHat.  Grub booted Linux fine, but not Windows.
> Windows did not work right after the Linux install, even when I used
> CMOS setup to change the boot drive from IDE to SCSI.
>
> The "Multiboot with GRUB Mini-HOWTO" differs from my situation in that
> the author is using one hard disk.  Also, he installs Red Hat first, and
> then Win2k.  I'm hoping to keep my Windows drive intact.

I would expect it to be possible - depending upon how fooling your CMOS
hardware setup effects both OS...

It also may require a linux kernel be stored in the windows filesystem and
possibly an initrd file too. :-/
(It might be possible with other techniques, but this seems the "sanest"
of the less than desireable.)

(Is this getting complicated yet?)

The idea is to tell the system's CMOS settings that though there may be 2
ide controllers enabled, there is "NO Primary Master HD" to use for boot.

Now, if windows respects the BIOS settings, then it won't see the primary
master at boot, and neither will the BIOS.

When the linux kernel starts from Windows 2000, it finds 2 ide
controllers, but actually interrogates the devices that could be there and
finds the primary master, and with use of mod loaded from initrd and
started kernel, can then shift its local root fs to be that of an hda
partition.

(perhaps loadlin, or use of the windows boot manager with modified initrd
and linux kernel. Strict use of LILO *might* be possible, but even more
work is required to for LILO to look for drives not known by the BIOS. As
for grub? um, sorry, have not play there yet. :-/

So, in summary, I would expect it to be possible, but the work required to
make it happen may be a bit much. If you're going to be at our nblug
installfest, this might be a fun thing to check out. I cant guarantee
success, but it would seem likely.

-ME



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