Linux and XP dual boot

[snidy]

I want to set up a dual boot with Windows XP and Linux Red hat 8 retail version. I heard that I can only do it if I put XP on less then a 9 gig partition. I want XP on at least a 30 gig partition. Is it possible?

 

[snidy]

Oh, if it matters, Linux will be on its own hard drive.

 

[drag]

I don't think that matters. I have a 80 gig hd and I have the first 20 gigs located for windows XP, the next 20 gig for freebsd, and the last parts to linux and the swap stuff. I have never ran into this problem...

What it refers to is a limitation with lilo and having to locate the /boot partitiion and the entire kernel with in the first 1024 cylinders of the harddrive (about 8,4 gigs). This is because lilo has to work with the motherboard bios to grab read info off of the harddrive and older motherboards had a limitation built into them because the designers didn't have a reason for super big harddrives (ie above 2-3 gig, remember those days?). Modern Bios(es?) don't have this limitation.

linux is much more flexible when it comes to all this booting stuff than windows, it doesn't care where partiiton it is located or which HD it is located, as long as the kernel and /boot folders are located in a logical partition (again a limitation of the i386 archeticture). And it doesn't even have to have the bootloader installed in the MBR of the harddrive, it can be located a floppy or the local linux partition that was labled "bootable" when you partition it using linux utilities...

Since you are installing it on a different HD altogether none of this is even a issue, I would actually leave the HD with XP in it completely unmolested, and just install the boot stuff in the MBR of the linux harddrive. That way you can select which HD too boot off of in the bios, instead of risking fragging the XP install. Once you get the linux bootloader (lilo or grub) and get it set up correctly so that it can go to the Windows HD and activate XP's bootloader, you can just specify the linux HD in the bios and not worry about it no more.

Also if you want a little bit of a performance boost when it comes to utilizing the swap space.... you can install the small swap partition on the XP HD. As long as the 2 HD's are on different IDE controller and both HD's are close to equally as fast you can get better thruroughput when using reading the data from your progams partition and writing data to the when loading new programs. But it ain't much of a boost so if it seems to complicated for you right now, then don't worry about it...

 

[snidy]

Thank's for the reply