Dual Boot Old Pc W/ W98se & Linux

[Jon_J]

I've got an older PC that has Windows 98SE and I want to get some "hands on" experiance with Linux. I've never used Linux before, but have downloaded a lot of help/tutorials.
I have a copy of "Damn Small Linux" DSL 1.2 ("DSL" stands for damn small linux).
I've also gotten that older PC to boot from the DSL 1.2 ISO, but I would rather install it with windows as a dual boot setup.
Anyone have any pointers?
The old PC is AMD K-6 3D+ processor.  256mb of RAM. 12GB hard drive

The DSL1.2 Linux only takes 50mb of space in it's minimum configuration.
I've tried the Hard drive setup within the DSL, but I seem to have no access to the "Real" hard drive because the ISO loads completely into memory as a RAM drive.
I've tried a couple methods inside DSL, but it fails to let me cfdisk a new partition. I'm in windows now, and am going to use partition magic to try to make a Linux partition.

Thank you for any help

Jon

[qx773]

If you have an MSDOS FAT file system loop file, you can make it mountable in Damn Small Linux by adding a command line parameter like:

-hdc c.img

as in:

c:
cd \qemu
net start kqemu
qemu -user-net -L c:\qemu -m 128 sharp_zsdk_dsl_disk.img -hdc c:\c.img -enable-audio -localtime
net stop kqemu

You mount the drive in DSL and then write files to the MSDOS file system image.  Then, from Windows, you can copy files from the MSDOS file system image onto a real hard drive with Cygwin and the mtools set of utilities.  This is faster than using samba.  I wrote a detailed set of instructions somewhere else in the forums about how to set up mtools.  Search for mtools.

[qx773]

Alternatively, you can run DEFRAG and then run a program called fips to repartition your hard disk so that your existing Windows file system is on one partition and a new partition is available for installing Linux.  You can use a program called LINLOAD.EXE from MSDOS to launch Linux, but LINLOAD.EXE must be run from pure MSDOS, such as you get when you press F8 while booting up and select the command line.  For some reason, EMM386.EXE interferes with LINLOAD.EXE, so run LINLOAD.EXE without any memory managers present.  I extracted the fips and LINLOAD.EXE programs from a Red Hat dsitribution several years ago.

I think that it would be simpler for you to just install Cygwin, mtools, QEMU, and DSL.

[craigtyson]

if you have partition magic (and a full backup of you pc) you can make the ms partition as small as will fit all the stuff you need plus a bit for temp files then create a new partition to install dsl on.  from memory partition magic used to also have a dual boot util (ex OS/2-IBM) that will allow you to boot from either partition

if you have space its also usefull to create a 3rd partition which both oses can see to use for data.

[Jon_J]

Thank you for your replys.
I'm thinking the Hard drive may have too many errors on it. It's a Quantum Bigfoot. (It's really big, it won't fit into an external USB HD enclosure, and weighs a couple pounds).
Is Linux more "picky" about hard drive errors than DOS/Windows? I've used windows scandisk and it passes the tests. I haven't done the "surface scan" though.
The reason I think the hard drive is the culprit is because the install option within DSL linux gives me "disk error 16" or "cannot read disk drive" I went to these forums and got some tips:
http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin/forums/ikonboard.cgi
I finally got DSL linux installed. I installed the "Grub Frugel" install.
Now my computer just stops and hangs up when trying to boot. It gives me a message that "Grub" cannot start. I didn't write down the exact message, but the computer was completely inaccessable at that point. It wouldn't boot into windows either. I tried my partition magic boot diskette, it didn't work, So I used my Windows 98se boot diskette, with win98se CD-ROM and re-installed windows onto itself. Now this computer boots windows once again. When I went into partition magic, (I have 3 fat32, 1 linux ext, and 1 linux swap partitions). I noticed that my 3rd Fat32 partition was now completely erased, (Unallocated). If this had been one of my newer computers, I would have lost all my data files! I always use 3 partitions on a windows machine.

qx733, I don't have a "MSDOS FAT file system loop file" and don't know what it is.
I tried using partition magic 5.0 . I made a linux partition and a linux swap partition in partition magic.
craigtyson, I have "Boot magic" (included with Partition magic 5.0) I did make a dual boot menu with it, but because of above problems, it wasn't working. I had already disabled the dual boot menu before my last attempt to install DSL linux. This is when I had the problem where the "Grub" install wouldn't let my computer boot. Like I said above, I've since reinstalled windows, and am now in pure DOS, and I'm doing a full surface scan of my hard drive. This takes a long time...

Thank you again for your replys,
Jon

[craigtyson]

Im guessing this is a real old drive??? (5.25" IDE33??)  it might be better to try a newer hard disk (2nd hand is cheep I got an old 10GB hdd for £25 a while back for my old IBM Stinkpad though be sure to get one that will run with your BIOS if you decide to get one)

[Jon_J]

The surface scan took 2½ hours. There were no errors. (This is MS-DOS scandisk)
The hard drive lists as a Quantum Bigfoot TS 12.7A
When getting this info during boot, I noticed this drive is listed as, Secondary master
Could this be my problem? This computer was given to me for configuring a computer for a friend.
This PC is AMD K-6 3D+ processor. 256mb of RAM. 12GB hard drive
The IDE setup shows:
Primary master - CD-ROM (DVD drive)
Primary slave - CD-ROM (CD burner)
Secondary master - Quantum Bigfoot TS 12.7A
Secondary slave - None

Could this be causing my "Disk error" problems in DSL linux?
Windows works fine except a buggy video card\driver issue.
When DSL linux runs from the CD-ROM, I don't seem to have any video card\driver issues with this machine.

Thank you for replying craigtyson,
Jon

[qx773]

The Bochs emulator comes with a utility to create hard disk images.  You can also create one yourself in Linux with commands like:

cd /mnt/cf
dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/cf/c.img bs=1M count=32
mkdosfs c.img

That will create a 32MB file formatted with a blank FAT file system that can be mounted as a loop device.  Some pre-made c.img files are available on the web and are referred to from the Bochs home page.

[Jon_J]

qx773, I have no idea what a loop device is. And I cannot create any kind of file in DSL linux because when I'm booted in DSL linux from the CD, I have no access to the hard drive.
The hard drive is inaccessable when booted in DSL linux.

thank you,
Jon

[inode0]

qx773, I have no idea what a loop device is. And I cannot create any kind of file in DSL linux because when I'm booted in DSL linux from the CD, I have no access to the hard drive.
The hard drive is inaccessable when booted in DSL linux.

Start up DSL. Open a root shell xterm. What does "ls -l /mnt" return?

Anything of the form hdcX would suggest that DSL did in fact find your old hard drive.

John

[Jon_J]

Inode0, I used your input in the ATerminal (It uses bash) I couldn't figure out how to copy & paste it into a txt file. I took snapshot but I couldn't save it anywhere, it wouldn't let me save it to a floppy, even though I did actually find my floppy in the "Save" dialog. (I was using Xpaint) So I used my crappy Palm Zire 72 camera and took a photo of the screen. Sorry about the bad picture, I held my palm camera on a pillow to steady it. This is the best result. 1 out of 5 pics.

Thank you,
Jon
EDIT:

The top 4 lines which are cut off are:
auto
CDrom
CDrom1
floppy
The bottom seven lines have the following in dark blue (which is cut off in the pic):
hd
hdc1
hdc5
hdc6
pts
sys
test

2nd Edit Learned how to get screenshot from my linux PC to this windows PC. Upped original screenshot instead of crappy Zire camera shot.

[inode0]

The bottom seven lines have the following in dark blue (which is cut off in the pic):
...
hdc1
hdc5
hdc6

Cool. These felllas should be the hard drive you are looking for. You should be able to mount those partitions with

mount /mnt/hdc1
mount /mnt/hdc5
mount /mnt/hdc6

Then you can look around some to see what is there.

mount

without any arguments should reveal the sort of filesystem you have on each partition. Other than that you probably should peek at the size with

df

and snoop around with ls in the /mnt/hdcX directories to see what you have.

John

[Jon_J]

Thank you inode0. I can navagate my C:\ D:\ & E:\ drives with those commands. I know because I know what files/folders are in the roots of these drives.
I got it installed onto my hard drive. (onto my E:\ drive [hdc6])
It modified the bootloader, and when booting, a boot menu comes up, but it only has one choice now [DSL] Seems I lost my windows connection. Windows is still there, but I don't know how to access it. I'll go back to the forum at:
http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin/forums/ikonboard.cgi
They have a complete subforum on installing DSL to the hard drive.

Thank you again,
Jon

Edit: I finally got it! )
I have DSL linux (lilo) installed and have figured how to enable my previous Win98 install in the boot menu. I found information on editing lilo.conf, but at first I couldn't access it because it's set as read only. I then found a command to use emelFM as superuser. I found a refrence on the internet to enable windows to dual-boot with lilo linux. I added the following lines to lilo.conf and saved the file:
(lilo.conf was at default state before my edit)
----------------------
other = /dev/hdc1

table = /dev/hdc

label = windows
----------------------
Then I used terminal and ran lilo like this:

sudo su lilo

now the configuration has been saved, and when I rebooted, my Windoze was back!

BTW: For a very new linux newbie, it seems like it is difficult to find a very specific answer to a very specific task. It took me 3 days to find this solution.
Also, I hope this may help someone who has a similar question.
Thank you again for reading this.

[qx773]

A loop device is a virtual drive in Linux that is associated with a file that has a file system image on it, as if you copied every bit of a hard drive or floppy disk into a single file.  When mounted, it acts like a regular hard drive.  I read once that the term loop device comes from the days when tape drives were more common and you had a physical loop of tape that would be mounted onto a tape reader.

mkdir /mnt/c
mount -o loop c.img /mnt/c

would mount the c.img file so that it could be accessed under the /mnt/c folder.  Perhaps that will not work for you, since you mentioned that you boot Linux from a CD.

I use the DSL image file that was created by kopsis, running under the QEMU system emulator, which does not require me to boot from a CD or to even leave Windows in order to run Linux.

[Jon_J]

Thank you qx773.
I also have QEMU DSL linux emulator on this machine. I haven't used it much because I wanted to run linux and learn about it, with it (linux), installed onto the hard drive on a seperate machine.
This is what I did on my old AMD K6 computer. I installed the DSL CD version to my hard drive and selected "lilo". But I also wanted to retain my windows install on that machine until I got comfortable with linux. (I have the boot menu setup now with both OS's).
Now that I have it running on a dedicated machine, I've been learning a lot about it. The main thing that I want to learn about is, files and directories, and how to work with them. I have been learning quite a bit lately.  I don't want to break my old DOS habits, but "relate" these habits as to how linux works. I started using DOS in the early 80's and first used windows when it was 3.1 in 1992.
I'm finding more "newbie" tutorials and howto documents on the net now that are easy for me to understand.

Thanks again,
Jon