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Appendix G. Configuring a Dual Boot System

Automatic partitioning   Choose Keep all partitions and use existing free space. This option

will leave your Windows partitions on the hard drive and partition the free space or additional hard

drive for Red Hat Linux.

Manual partitioning with Disk Druid   Do not delete the existing Windows partitions (they are

the partitions of type

vfat

). Create your Linux partitions on the additional hard drive or in the free

space you have reserved for Red Hat Linux.

Manual partitioning with fdisk   Similar to using Disk Druid except you will not have the graph 

ical interface. The basic procedure is the same. Do not delete the existing partitions of type

FAT16

,

FAT32

, or

NTFS

. Create your Linux partitions on the additional hard drive or in the free space you

have reserved for Red Hat Linux.

G.2.2. Configuring the Boot Loader

When you arrive at the Boot Loader Installation screen during the Red Hat Linux installation, choose

to install the boot loader. You can use a different boot loader to boot both Red Hat Linux and Windows.

Red Hat does not support alternate boot loaders. Thus, this section will discuss how to configure

GRUB or LILO to boot both operating systems.

The Red Hat Linux installation program will usually detect Windows and automatically configure the

boot loader (GRUB or LILO) to boot either Red Hat Linux or Windows. This can be seen on the

boot loader screen of the installation program. An entry named DOS appears in the list of operating

systems to boot.

G.2.3. Post Installation

After the installation, whenever you start the computer, you can indicate whether you want to start

Red Hat Linux or the other operating system from the boot loader screen. Choose Red Hat Linux to

boot into Red Hat Linux, and choose DOS to boot into Windows.

If you did not partition all the free space on your hard drive for Red Hat Linux, you can partition it

for Windows after installing Red Hat Linux. You can use parted or fdisk to create these partitions.

parted is easier to use than fdisk because of the interface and the commands used. For example, to

view the partition table, you type print in parted instead of typing p in fdisk. For more information

about parted, refer to the Official Red Hat Linux Customization Guide.

Warning

It is highly recommended that you use parted or fdisk to create partitions after installing Red Hat

Linux. Other partitioning software has been known to change the partitioning table of the hard drive

and move the Linux partitions. If this happens, the boot loader will not be able to find the Linux

partitions and will not boot into Red Hat Linux.

To access the files on the Windows partitions while using Red Hat Linux, refer to the Accessing a

Windows Partition FAQ in the Official Red Hat Linux Getting Started Guide. If you formatted the

Windows partitions in NTFS format, this method will not work.

G.3. Partitioning with FIPS

As a convenience to our customers, we provide the FIPS utility. This is a freely available program

that can resize FAT (File Allocation Table) partitions. It is included on the Red Hat Linux CD ROM

in the

dosutils

directory. If you are using NTFS partitions, FIPS will not work.