JANUARY TUTOR ■

DUAL BOOTING

BOOTING
Do you want to give Linux a try but don’t have a spare PC lying around? Dual booting
lets you share two operating systems on one PC. Although installing Windows and
Linux on a single machine is much easier than it used to be, it’s not quite a no-brainer
yet. In this PC Tutor here we show you how it’s done.

inux is hot. Very hot. And you, tools for doing everything from reparti- set up a dual booting system? For the most

L like most PC owners, probably

want to find out what all the fuss
is about. Of course, you have no
intention of getting rid of Windows just yet.
Windows runs all your hardware, all your
applications and all your games. And the
newest stuff comes out for Windows first,
so naturally you want to keep it. That leaves
you with two choices if you want to use
Linux: you can either buy a second com-
puter or dual-boot Linux with Windows.
Not too many months ago, you might
have been better off with the first choice,
because dual booting took an enormous
amount of effort. Happily, things are easi-
er today, with recent releases of the various
Linux distributions (Caldera, Corel, Man-
drake, Red Hat, Suse and so on) offering
tioning your hard drive to finding the free
space for installing Linux alongside Win-
dows. If you want to try Linux, buy or down-
load a recent distribution and set it up for
dual booting so you can choose either oper-
ating system when you start your machine.
If your machine has sufficient resources,
the best way to add Linux (or another ver-
sion of Windows, for that matter) may be by
using a product called V M Wa re. Wi t h
VMWare, you don’t have to repartition your
hard drive, and you can run one or more
versions of Linux in virtual machines under
the host operating system (which can be
Win 2000, Win NT 4.0 or Linux). For more
information, check out www.vmware.com.
Most of us, however, don’t have the
memory needed for VMWare. How then to
part, the Linux distribution will do it for
you. As long as you have a partition on
which to install Linux, the installation rou-
tine will take over from there. In the vast
majority of cases, the Linux distribution
will install a boot program called LILO
(short for LInux LOader), which will be
the first program to run after your computer
goes through its BIOS routines at boot
time. From LILO, you can choose whether
to start Linux or Windows. Many Linux
distributions ask whether you wish to
install LILO and where you wish to install
it. Some, such as the popular Corel Linux,
install it without asking.
FIRST STEPS
To make your dual booting life easier, you

78 January 2001 www.DITnet.co.ae ■ www.PCmag-mideast.com


Figure 1. Several Linux installations will offer you the choices shown here.
Partitioning is easiest if you have free space on the drive, but if you don’t,
create the partitions yourself.
should understand what it means to set up
a system for multiple boot options. The
main component to learn about here is the
master boot record (MBR). The MBR is locat-
ed in the first cylinder on the system’s first
hard drive and it contains the information
the operating system needs to boot. The
MBR also gives the BIOS the information it
needs about the hard drives in the system,
including the number and size of partitions,
the types of partitions (primary or logical)
and which partition on the drive is bootable
(also called active). Armed with this infor-
mation, the BIOS looks in the MBR for the
master boot code, the small program that
tells it how to proceed with launching the
OS. The OS then begins its start-up, and the
BIOS hands control of the computer over to
the OS.
Setting up a dual boot system means
installing a small program called a boot
manager in the MBR. The boot manager
intercepts the BIOS’s search for the bootable
partition and the master boot code, and
then lists a set of choices on the screen.
When you make your choice, the boot man-
ager makes the selected partition bootable.
It then hands control back to the BIOS,
which continues the boot process as if there
were only one OS.
LILO is just one boot manager available,
although it is probably the one most com-
monly used for Windows/Linux dual boot
environments. Other operating systems,
such as BeOS, offer their own boot man-
agers. Windows NT and 2000 each provide
a boot manager that appears after installing
either OS on a system already containing
Win 9x (as long as you don’t simply replace
Win 9x). In addition, several commercial or
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DUAL BOOTING
Figure 2. Corel’s installation system is friendlier than some, but all let you select
the hard drive for the new partition. In Linux, the first IDE drive is called hd0, the
second hd1, and so on, so make sure you choose the one you truly want.
shareware boot managers are available,
including BootMagic, part of the popular
PartitionMagic suite from PowerQuest, Ter-
abyte’s excellent BootIt and the venerable
System Commander 2000 from V Commu-
nications.
THE PARTITIONING PROCESS
The most frightening part of installing a
new operating system is working with par-
titions. This is never easy, no matter what
the OS’s packaging or Web site tells you.
Increasingly, Linux distributions give you
Figure 3. Here we see a root partition of almost
2GB being created to hold Linux. The partition is
technically referred to as ext2. After this, you’ll
need to create a Linux swap partition, but it can
be much smaller.
■ JANUARY TUTOR
the option on installation to find free space
and create partitions, but this hasn’t elimi-
nated the potential for disaster: the process
might render some existing partitions inac-
cessible. This is especially true for drives that
already have multiple partitions. You must
back up your important data before begin-
ning such a process, and it would serve
you extremely well to have a disk utilities
package, such as Norton Utilities, handy to
try to re-set the partitions in case some-
thing unexpected happens. Still, the auto-
sensing feature of Linux installations can
work very well, putting Linux into an area
of free space on the hard drive and then
installing LILO so you can boot into either
Linux or Windows.
The biggest problem with most Windows
PCs is that they come configured with one
partition only. If that is the case, you either
need to destroy your existing partition
(which means wiping out Windows and
everything else on the hard drive) and start
over, or, more practically, use a partition util-
ity to make the existing partition smaller
and thus reclaim some free space where
Linux can reside.
All Linux distributions let you select the
partitions on which Linux will reside. Most
distributions ship with a partitioning utili-
ty called FIPS, and some include their own
utility. You can also use Linux’s version of
FDISK to create the partitions. These meth-
ods all work but are best for those who
understand partitioning. For most Win-
dows users, third-party software, such as
PowerQuest’s PartitionMagic or V Com-
munications’ Partition Commander, tends
to be easier.
The partitioning process is complicated by
January 2001 79
JANUARY TUTOR ■
Figure 4. Utilities like PartitionMagic let you easily create, delete or resize partitions. Here, a Windows-based FAT32 partition is being resized. If you have no
room to create Linux partitions, you can use a utility like this to shrink the existing FAT, FAT32 or NTFS partitions to make room for Linux’s ext2 and swap parti-
tions. Figure 6. The Linux window manager KDE has a graphical version of LILO called KLILO. Using this, you can set the default OS, add new ones,and more.
the fact that a Linux installation needs more
than one partition. At the very least, you’ll
need a main partition and a swap partition.
The utility will let you create both at the
same time.
It’s crucial to keep in mind how Linux
refers to your hard drives. The first hard
drive in your system is drive 0 (zero) and the
second is drive 1. Don’t make the mistake
of telling Linux to install on drive 0 if you
really mean drive 1. This is especially impor-
tant if you’re already running two OSs, such
as Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0. It’s
easy to unintentionally delete a partition
that contains an operating system, or worse
yet, your important data files. Fortunately,
partitioning utilities tend to be forgiving in
one sense: the changes don’t actually hap-
pen until you specifically direct the soft-
ware to make them. This gives you time to
double- and triple-check your work.
Once the partitions are in place, the instal-
lation can continue; it will end, typically,
with the installation of the LILO boot man-
ager. As noted, most distributions of Linux
will install LILO automatically. Many, such
as Mandrake Linux and Suse Linux, will
give you the choice of installing it or not,
and just as important, whether to install
LILO on a floppy disk only (Corel Linux
doesn’t provide the latter option). Yo u
should definitely opt for a LILOinstallation
– unless you’re already experienced with
Linux and LILO and can install it manually,
or unless you are already working with a
third-party boot manager. The boot manager
will detect the Linux boot partition and let
you add it to your start-up boot menu.
Note one thing: LILO works only for oper-
ating systems installed within the first 1,024
cylinders of your hard drive. Practically
speaking (and a good guideline if not tech-
80 January 2001
DUAL BOOTING
nically true), this means that if you install
Linux to a drive larger than 8GB, be sure to
put Linux within the first 8GB. If, for exam-
ple, you have a 12GB hard drive and Win
98 takes up the first 9GB, you may create a
separate partition for Linux past that point.
LILO won’t be able to find it, though. In such
a case, you’ll have to use a partition utility
to re-size the Win 98 partition to, say, 6GB,
and then install Linux right after it. Some-
times the only way to resolve this is through
trial and error.
LILO appears as either a graphical list of
operating system choices or as a simple
text prompt. The former is obviously more
intuitive to use, but the text prompt usual-
ly reveals a menu if you simply press the
Tab key.
If you are already using a system that lets
you choose between Win 9x and Wi n
NT/2000 at boot time, LILO won’t affect
your ability to access these operating sys-
tems. You simply choose your Win 9x sys-
tem from the LILO menu, and the Windows
dual boot menu will appear. In other words,
LILO installs itself between the BIOS and the
Windows dual boot menu.
A problem can arise if you re-install Win
Figure 5. Most Linux distributions (Red Hat is
shown here) let you select where LILO resides.
Selecting Master Boot Record installs LILO so you
can choose the OS to boot on start-up.
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9x, for whatever reason. Doing this wipes
out LILO, because the installation process
re-builds the MBR. In such a case, you won’t
be able to boot your Linux installation unless
you created a Linux boot floppy disk. If
you did, boot with that floppy disk, and
then type /sbin/lilo at the root prompt. For
most Linux systems, this should restore
LILO. Third-party boot utilities can often
help with this type of problem. If all else
fails, you may have to re-install Linux.
REMOVING LILO
If you want to remove LILO, either because
you deleted your Linux installation (by
removing the Linux partitions), or because
you no longer want to use it as a boot man-
ager, you can do so from within Linux by
typing /sbin/lilo –u , or just lilo –u, at the root
p rompt. If that doesn’t work, specify
removal from the MBR with the command
lilo –u/dev/hda . If none of these commands
work for your particular system, call up the
LILO documentation or visit any number of
Linux information sites on the Web.
A som ewh at mo re ra di ca l me thod
involves restoring the MBR to its pre-boot
manager state. To do this, boot Win 9x to a
command prompt and type fdisk /mbr . This
command removes LILO from the MBR. It
also, unfortunately, removes the Windows
dual boot menu, if you had one. According
to Microsoft (http://support.micro s o f t
.com/support/kb/articles/Q171/6/11.asp),
you must not use this method on a drive that
is part of an NT fault tolerance set.
Dual booting Windows and Linux is
becoming easier, as Linux developers recog-
nise the need to make the process accessi-
ble to a growing number of Windows users.
But, as we’ve noted here, the process still
has its share of concerns and issues.
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