trouble dual booting win2k/redhat 7.3: help needed

[palidor]

i'm not a linux newbie.. i've taken my share of unix courses and what-not, but this is just baffling me.

i have a laptop with a 30 gig drive. i gave the first 5 gig of it to windows 2000 (ntfs), and then was going to use the remaining space for red hat 7.3.

i followed this guide: http://www.usd.edu/~tander02/linux/dualBoot.htm

During red hat installation, i told it to use LILO and not grub. I told it to not write to the mbr, but to the /boot partition.

After installing, I removed what the guide told me to in the lilo.conf file. mine reads as follows:

"
default=linux
boot=/dev/hda2
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
message=/boot/message
lba32

image=/boot/vmlinux-2.4.18-3
label=linux
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.18-3.img
read-only
root=/dev/hda3
append="hdc=ide-scsi"

"

/dev/hda3 is my root partition
/dev/hda2 is my boot partition

so after making those changes, i did the standard "dd if=/dev/hda2 bs=512 count=1 of=/mnt/floppy/linux.bin" after mounting my floppy.

now i boot to win2k, and change the boot.ini file to have the line 'c:\linux.bin="Linux"' after i copy the linux.bin from my floppy to the c:

when i boot up i get the MS boot menu, and when i select linux, it just hangs with a black screen and a cursor in the upper left corner.

i've tried reinstalling red hat & trying again, with no luck.

maybe i'm just missing something, but i don't really see why this isn't working for me. any suggestions?

 

[FUBAR]

Personally, I have never gotten that option to work, but I did get it going with GRUB in the MBR. On install it wouldn't give me the option to make XP default, but it does work. I also have a 30GB lap hd that I had XP (ntfs) installed on first. Here's my /etc/grub.conf file from rh7.3:

default=1
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,2)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.18-3)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-3 ro root=/dev/hda3 vga=0x31A
initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.18-3.img
title XP
root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

 

[Tiger]

I've always done it the way specified in the AT FAQ.
I've never modified lilo.conf ever, no need to.

PS, Did you remember to unmount the floppy properly after copying the bootsector?

 

[FUBAR]

Ooh.. that's a good one, I never thought of that at all... unmounting would force all files and such to be closed and released and synced and such. Huh... whoda thunk it.

At any rate, it can be done, presumably both ways.

 

[palidor]

wow. i didn't unmount the floppy afterwards. good call.

unfortunately, it's too late.. cause i reinstalled red hat just now, told it to use grub and to write to the mbr.. and it works beautifully.

i will most certainly remember to unmount the floppy next time though!