Re: [gentoo-user] Dual Boot Partitions

[Petri Rosenström]

On Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 5:01 PM, dhk <dhkuhl@×××××××××.net> wrote:
> I have a new laptop that I need to set up for dual booting.  As much as
> I despise Microsoft, I have to use it for certain things.  Such as some
> obscure peripherals, like my slide photo scanner, it doesn't support
> Linux and TD Ameritrade's streaming Java tools don't work the same as on
> Linux.  Until corporation's smarten up Microsoft will be a problem.
>
> The setup for dual booting seem pretty straight forward.  Install
> windows first, then Linux, and modify the boot loader.  However, I have
> a couple of question and observations.
>
> First, the observations.  I tried to partition my disk with fdisk the
> way I wanted.  It had the usual Linux partitions and a partition that I
> was going to use for Window 7.  I wanted to make this an LVM2 partition,
> but that didn't work; I guess that was too ambitious.  Then I just made
> it an ordinary static HPFS/NTFS partition on /dev/sda5.  When installing
> Windows 7 it wouldn't install on that partition.  I deleted all the
> partitions and just installed it on the first 50Gigs of the disk.
>
> Second, the questions.  The Windows 7 install on the first 50Gigs of the
> disk needed to created two partitions.  The first was a very small boot
> partition that I increased to 128Megs, and the second is the rest of
> Windows 7.  Now when I boot to the livecd to partition the rest of the
> disk for Gentoo fdisk says "Partition 1 does not end on a cylinder
> boundary."  Is this a problem?  The other big question is:  what do I do
Dunno, it might be that win7 changed the amount of heads/sectors that
could give that notice from fdisk. I would not be to worrified about
it (Installing windows would be more horrifying). If you have a
traditional hd then the worst thing I think might be that reads/writes
would be slower.

> about the first partition in the partition table?  It is an HPFS/NTFS
> partition and has been toggled bootable.  It also has some stuff in it
> that looks like it's important to Windows:  a BOOTSECT.BAK file, a Boot
> directory, a System Volume Information directory, and a bootmgr file.
> Now for my Gentoo install, how and where do I make a /boot partition?
> Do I replace the Windows 7 boot partition with /boot?  If so, what
> happens to the contents?  or Do I make a /boot partition on /dev/sda3
> and toggle the bootable flag there?

Something like that. You could install gentoo on one partition (I
don't recommend).

Just make partitions like you would do without windows. When you do
the grub-install script or by hand grub links the boot to the
partition where boot exists. You should not remove or change the
windows partitions or the data windows will probably brake when you
do.

>
> I apologize for the long story.  Thanks in advance for all the help.
>
> dhk
>
>

Some links with more information...
http://www.gentoo-wiki.info/HOWTO_Dual_boot
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=1&chap=10

Best regards
Petri Rosenström