[Sussex] Success!

Steve Dobson SDobson at manh.com
Fri Nov 29 16:00:02 UTC 2002


Dom

On 29 November 2002 at 10:44 Dominic Clay wrote:
> You should be very proud! :)

I am.
 
> Thanks to the good communication last night, I have 
> successfully dual booted this damn laptop all on my lonesome :D

I've said this before and I'll say it again: "Unix IS a user-
friendly operating system; it just chooses it's friends carefully" :-)
 
> I installed WinXP, booted to a rescue prompt with RH7 install 
> CD.

I think this just goes to show how compatible the distros are.
Linux is Linux - the distro's are just the icing - you get what
you inversely pay for :-)

> Mounted the / partition, then did a chroot to this partition.
> I then added a section to lilo.conf for hda1 called it winxp.  I
> added the menu thingy which was commented out at the top of lilo.conf
> (bit of a panic before I spotted this as it just rebooted into Linux
> without offering me a chance to choose :P) and Bob is your mother's
> brother!

Good job.

> Did I do the right things?

I'm a great believer in "If it works for you then it must be right".

On  29 November 2002 at 10:55 Geoff Teale wrote:
> On 29 November 2002 at 10:44 Dominic Clay wrote:
> > So, what do I do now to make it a pretty 'windowy', 'outlooky' type
> > environment?
> 
> You're going to need to install and configire XFree86, then a decent
window
> manager (Your choice really.. but KDE is best for doing everything and
> wiping your bum afterwards, GNome is very purdy...).  This shouldn't take
> long on your nice big link at work.
> 
> BTW, if you ever need access to a nice big pipe to pull things over when
> you're outside work.  Give me a shout, I have ADSL and plenty of spare
ports
> on my hub and I'm only a 2 minute walk from you.

Geoff is correct but I would add the following words.  XFree86 can (esp on
the
older versions) be difficult to configure.  The new version is much, much 
easier.  Unfortunally XFree86 4.2 didn't make it into woody (the current
version of Debian, and the one you're running.  So if you want this you'll
have to compile it yourself.

Before doing this you'll need the latest version of the Linux kernel.  First
pull it from ftp.kernel.org and place the bzip2ed tar ball in /usr/src.
Uncompress it: (tar -xvfj linux-2.4.20.tar.bz2 or whatever).  Copy the
kernel
config (.config) file from the linux-2.2 dir, cd into the new directory
and run:
   # make oldconfig
Hit return when it stops and prompts you, the
  # make dep && make bzImage && make modules && make modules_install
Go get a cup of tea/coffee/booze.
Go get another one.
When finished copy the kernel to the boot area
(cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/Linux-2.4) and an entry to /etc/lilo.conf
[if you can add the winxp you'll figure out the entry from the one I created
for Linux-2.2] and then run lilo to finish the install.

If that kernel works then go back to the build directory and start trying
to work out the graphics options.  There is loads of help available in 
the Documents directory.

If you get stuck: Geoff is not far away and I gave you my card with my 
mobil number on it (there's always the list).  If you want we could meet
up this Sunday [I've got to drive to NY again].

Steve




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