Installing Red Hat Linux in a Dual-Boot Environment

After Windows is installed and you have free disk space ready for Linux, you can start the Red Hat Linux installation program. See Chapter 1 for instructions on installing Red Hat Linux.

At this point, the only difference between a Red Hat Linux installation and configuring a dual-boot system during the Red Hat Linux installation is partitioning the hard drive and configuring the boot loader. When you are at the Disk Partitioning Setup screen, return to this section.

Disk Partitioning

At the Disk Partitioning Setup screen of the installation program, you have a few options. Depending on which option you choose, the steps for configuring a dual-boot system vary. If you do not know how many Linux partitions to create, refer to Chapter 2 for a recommended partitioning scheme. If you choose:

• Automatic partitioning — Choose Keep all partitions and use existing free space. This option will leave your Windows partitions on the hard drive and partition the free space or additional hard drive for Red Hat Linux.

• Manual partitioning with Disk Druid — Do not delete the existing Windows partitions (they are the partitions of type vfat). Create your Linux partitions on the additional hard drive or in the free space you have reserved for Red Hat Linux.

• Manual partitioning with fdisk — This option is similar to using Disk Druid except you will not have the graphical interface. The basic procedure is the same. Do not delete the existing partitions of type FAT16, FAT32, or NTFS. Create your Linux partitions on the additional hard drive or in the free space you have reserved for Red Hat Linux.

Configuring the Boot Loader

When you arrive at the Boot Loader Installation screen during the Red Hat Linux installation, choose to install the boot loader. You can use a different boot loader to boot both Red Hat Linux and Windows.

Red Hat does not support alternate boot loaders. Thus, this section will discuss how to configure GRUB or LILO to boot both operating systems.

The Red Hat Linux installation program will usually detect Windows and automatically configure the boot loader (GRUB or LILO) to boot either Red Hat Linux or Windows. This can be seen on the boot loader screen of the installation program. An entry named DOS appears in the list of operating systems to boot.

Post-Installation

After the installation, whenever start the computer, you can indicate whether you want to start Red Hat Linux or the other operating system from the boot loader screen. Choose Red Hat Linux to boot into Red Hat Linux or choose DOS to boot into Windows.

If you did not partition all the free space on your hard drive for Red Hat Linux, you can partition it for Windows after installing Red Hat Linux. You can use parted or fdisk to create these partitions.

parted is easier to use than fdisk because of the interface and the commands used. For example, to view the partition table, you type print in parted instead of typing p in fdisk. For more information about parted, see the Official Red Hat Linux Administrator’s Guide (Red Hat Press/Wiley, 2003).

Warning

It is highly recommended that you use parted or fdisk to create partitions after installing Red Hat Linux. Other partitioning software has been known to change the partitioning table of the hard drive and move the Linux partitions. If this happens, the boot loader will not be able to find the Linux partitions and will not boot into Red Hat Linux.

To access the files on the Windows partitions while using Red Hat Linux, see Chapter 21.

Note

If you formatted the Windows partitions in NTFS format, this method will not work.