XP / Redhat 7.3 / 98 triple-boot

I want to set up my computer to run Windows XP, RedHat 7.3 and Windows 98. I have two hard drives. One I'm going to use entirely for XP, another I want to use for Linux and 98. Now I already have XP on one HD and Linux on the other, I just want to add 98 to the Linux one, but I don't care if I have to totally reinstall Linux to do it.

What I basically want to know is where to put the partitions. I don't know whether to put the Linux partitions first on the HD or to put the FAT32 one first. I don't know if 98 can find partitions that aren't first on a drive. (I hope it can find the partition at all, really.) I also don't know which order to install the two OS's in. I think 98 clobbers the boot sector when it installs, so I'm probably going to need to fix it if I install 98 second. I was thinking I could partition the drive into a FAT32 and a couple ext3 or whatever, then install 98, then install Linux.

The other thing I'm trying to figure out is how to get XP to boot all the OS's. Currently it boots Linux fine, I had to dump an image of the boot sector (or something) and store it as a file on my XP drive. I don't know how to do it for 98 though.

If there are web sites for this, that'd be nice. It'd probably be too long to explain it all in this post. If someone could give a reall condensed explanation, that'd be good too. *looks for Bleys / crono_logical*

If you install Win98 when Linux/XP is already there, I think Win98 adds itself to WinXPs bootmenu anyway, so everything should be dandy there :p Win98 has to be in a primary partition though, not logical. Its primary partition doesn't have to be the first on the HD.

When I used to have that same 3 way boot setup (though on 1 HD not 2), I had two Windows partitions first, and all the linux ones as logical partitions. I'm sure you could easily change the partition Linux tries to boot from by hand after using Partition Magic to shuffle the parititons around on your second drive (change /dev/hdb0 to /dev/hdb4 or whatever linux uses to address the appropriate logical partition)


I'd backup somehow before doing anything though, in case Win98 doesn't add to the menu and takes over the boot sector instead - though it was fine when I installed Win98SE myself like that.



I'd like to know how you added Linux to WinXPs boot menu :D

I don't know what a "logical" partition is.

1. Boot to Linux, and mount a floppy (I think the floppy has to be formatted as FAT32; Windows needs to be able to read it later). Type dd if=/dev/hda1 bs=512 count=1 of=/mnt/floppy/enigma.bin . hda1 should be the boot partition of your Linux drive, I THINK. I'm not sure. I usually have to try a couple times to get the right dev . Name enigma.bin whatever you want. The tutorial I found named it that because it was the codename for RH 7.2, or something. Make sure you check the floppy to see that a file was actually created. A lot of times it'd fail for me and create a file that was 0 KB. It ought to be 512 KB.
2. In XP, copy the enigma.bin to c:\enigma.bin
3. You need to edit boot.ini in XP to add c:\enigma.bin="Linux". Then it ought to work. If it doesn't, you probably need to do that dd command again.

Cheers :p


You get two types of partitions on the HD, Primary and Logical. You can only have up to 4 Primary partitions per HD, but as many Logical ones as you want. Logical partitions all sit inside something called an Extended partition, which normally you create to be whatever space isn't taken up by the primary partitions.

For older OSs (like Win98SE), you can only have one primary partition visible per HD, though for Linux and XP, this restriction doesn't apply.



Basically, what I said in my previous post was to give Win98 a primary partiton on the 2nd HD and convert Linux's partitions to logical so you don't have to worry about this single visible partition stuff for Win98.




EDIT: Slight problem I remember running into - Partition Magic seems to corrupt Linux partitions if you try to convert/resize them, dunno why. :\ You might be better off wiping the Linux drive and repartitioning it, install Win98 (should be seen as D: since XP is on C: on the other HD), then install Linux last (telling it not to wipe the MBR, of course :) ) The XP drive should be fine.

So what I'm going to do is use the partitioning program that RedHat lets you use during installation, and put the first half of the drive as a FAT32 partition, and the second half of the drive will be divided up into a boot, ext3 and a swap partition, and format the whole thing. Then if I try to install Windows98, on drive D: or whatever, it ought to install into the first partition, the FAT32, and it probably won't even be able to see the other half of the drive (hopefully). Then I'll install Linux into the other partitions, and hope to God that GRUB manages to work, somehow. Does that sound at all like a reasonable plan?

I don't know what GRUB is, but it all sounds good enough to me. Just wondering why 3 Linux partitions when you can get away with 2 (one Linux formatted, one swap), or are you trying to seperate the system from your data like that?

EDIT: Oh, and you'll find Win98SE can live happily on a 1 GB partition, the OS itself shouldn't be over 200 MB or I'd be worried - the rest can be swap/temp/whatever :p So a half-half split may not be the best distiribution for the OSs :) I'll assume any programs and data 98 will want to use can sit on the XP drive, unless you've done that NTFS or something :p

GRUB is the bootloader RedHat uses since version 7.2. It's been around for a long time, but a lot of people preferred LILO.

Personally, I have no preference. LILO and GRUB both do what they're supposed to do. I use GRUB because I find it looks nicer.

XP is NTFS for me, yeah. I was planning on keeping the two drives totally seperate as much as possible (except that I like Linux to have read-only access to my XP drive).

Another question. If I do the install for my second HD like

|    Windows98    |     /boot    |    /    |    /swap    |

Where do I install the bootloader for Linux? Will it work if I put it in the /boot partition? Or should I put it in the MBR? Since my main HD is going to be the XP one, that's what actually boots when I start my computer; I need to be able to run 98 and Linux from the XP boot menu. Does GRUB even work if you put it in the /boot partition when the /boot partition isn't the first partition on the drive? I know LILO used to have tons of problems unless you installed it before the 1024th cylinder or something.

This is complicated. Blarg.

Ah, if the XP partition is NTFS, forget what I said about giving 98 only 1 GB, since it'd gonna need space for programs etc, as it can't read NTFS :\


Don't put the Linux bootloader in the MBR, because that will wipe XPs, unless you intend to add XP and 98 to the Linux boot menu instead (don't ask me how, I 've never done that, I only know it's possible :p )


GRUB should be fine in /boot - that's the only other place you can put it if not in the MBR anyway. As for the 1024 cylinder limit, I've no idea, I guess you could make the Win98 partiiton small enough so /boot starts below the limit if you don't want to risk anything.

I guess you're right about the MBR. I wonder if 98 is going to change it to boot to 98 by default? I guess I better look up how to fix it from XP before I do this. Darn Windows.

I think they might've fixed all the boot loaders so they don't have the 1024 cylinder problem any longer. So I've read. But I'll have to wait and see. I don't look forward to doing this, but I might try tonight, if I can get all my stuff backed up.

98 might change it to boot into 98 by default, but if I remember what my PC did when I did that, it leaves the XP boot loader intact and you get that boot menu on each boot anyway, 98 being selected by default, and you have a few seconds to change it to XP (or Linux if you add that there too) before the boot continues.