Win2K and Linux dualboot: which bootloader to use?

[Sohcan]

I've been Linux-less for six months now, so I want to try out Slackware...will LILO work with Win2K?

 

[claw]

No, it won't...

You'll want to use bootpart:
http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm

What you want to do is install Win2K first, then install Linux, but when installing LILO, don't install it onto the master boot record. After installing linux, follow the instructions that come with bootpart.

 

[claw]

This mini-HOWTO will also tell you how to install bootpart.

Edit: Urk... forgot to write the link 🙂
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/Linux+NT-Loader.html

 

[Sohcan]

Awesome, thanks....I've been too long without Linux. 🙂

 

[Damaged]

LILO won't work? Why not? I dual booted Win2K and Linux with it and it worked fine.

 

[claw]

I guess it does... I never tried it myself... I just thought it didn't because the bootpart HOWTO was the only thing in linuxdoc I could find talking about how to dual-boot WinNT/2K and Linux.

 

[Damaged]

Oh. Okay. I thought you read somewhere that it wouldn't work was all. And I was thinking "that's weird, it worked fine for me." 🙂

 

[skriefal]

You should be able to set up *either* bootloader (NT bootloader or LILO) to do what you want.

With LILO, you just need to edit lilo.conf and add an entry for your Win2k parition. And then rerun /sbin/lilo to generate a new boot sector.

With NT's bootloader, you need to add an entry in boot.ini pointing to a file containing the boot sector from your Linux partition. The format of the entry is a bit weird (don't recall the exact syntax). The BOOTPART utility refered to above should do this for you, so you don't have to edit boot.ini or read the boot sector into a file.

But even if you choose to use NT's bootloader, you still need to install LILO. You just install it onto the parition boot record rather than into the master boot record. Then when you choose Linux from the NT boot screen, it launches LILO which then boots Linux.

 

[Praetor]

Ditto what skriefal said. 🙂 I was going to point to the same HOW-TO, but others beat me to it. Dual-booting to Win2k using LILO is painless.