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Partitioning Drive

In order to prepare the drive for a dual boot system install Windows first and then Redhat Fedora. Below is what my drive looks like when partitioned:

Output of the "fdisk -l" command showing the partitions.

#fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40007761920 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4864 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
 
   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *         1      1567  12586896    7  HPFS/NTFS

/dev/hda2          1568      1580    104422+  83  Linux
/dev/hda3          1581      2885  10482412+  83  Linux
/dev/hda4          2886      4864  15896317+   f  Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5          2886      3407   4192933+   c  Win95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda6          3408      3538   1052226   82  Linux swap
/dev/hda7          3539      4864  10651063+  83  Linux

Output of the "df" command showing the mount points.

Installing Fedora

The NVIDIA GeForce FX5200 video card was not compatible with the generic "nv" driver that the installer detected and had to do the install in text mode. The installation is a breeze once you have setup your partitioning and decided what goes where. If this is your first time, you may want to refer to the Redhat docs for installation as Fedora currently lacks one.

See the video troubleshooting...

Installing Dual Boot Windows 2000 or XP and Linux
Partitioning Drive
Installing Fedora
Dual Booting
Troubleshooting XFree86 GUI display!

Dual Booting

Once the Fedora installation is complete, start fedora in rescue mode and make a copy of the Linux boot sector onto the FAT32 partition and name the copy "fedora.bin".

1. To start fedora in rescue mode:
   • Boot from your install disk 1
   • At the Linux prompt, enter "linux rescue"
   • Specify your keyboard and language stuff. Your Linux partitions will get mounted under "/mnt/sysimage".
   • Run the following command:
     

     #chroot /mnt/sysimage
     

     This command makes "/mnt/sysimage" your root directory. So the filesystem looks the way it would if you booted up normally.

2. To make a copy onto a FAT32 (vfat) partition:
   • Mount the FAT32 partition if it's not mounted yet. If it isn't listed in the df output, it hasn't been mounted yet.
     

     #mount -t msdos /dev/hda5 /win
     

   • Run the following command, which copies the first sector of the /boot partition, 512 byte size to the /win partition as the binary file, fedora.bin:
     

     #dd if=/dev/hda2 of=/win/fedora.bin bs=512 count=1
     

   • Substitute the path for the if= parameter (the input file) with the appropriate partition from the previous step, set if= to /dev/hda2. Substitute the path for the of= parameter (the output file) with whatever is appropriate for your system. The example here (of=/win/fedora.bin) is for copying onto a FAT32 partition called win.
3. Reboot into Windows
4. Copy the fedora.bin file to C:\
5. Run notepad and edit "C:\boot.ini". Note that C:\boot.ini is a hidden system file, so it probably won't show up in Windows Explorer. To edit the file, try: "Start->Run" and enter: "notepad C:\boot.ini". Add the following line at the end: "c:\fedora.bin="Fedora Linux".
   If your C: filesystem is NTFS (not FAT32), you must edit C:\boot.ini as a user with administrator-level privileges.

   Below is what my "boot.ini" file looks like:

   [boot loader]
   timeout=5
   default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
   [operating systems]
   multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
   c:\fedora.bin="Linux Fedora"
   

6. Reboot again. You should be able to pick either Windows or Linux. Selecting Linux will start GRUB

Installing Dual Boot Windows 2000 or XP and Linux
Partitioning Drive
Installing Fedora
Dual Booting
Troubleshooting XFree86 GUI display!

Troubleshooting XFree86 GUI display!

You may not be able to "startx" as the NVIDIA GeForce FX5200 video card is not compatible with the generic "nv" driver that the anaconda installer detects. Luckily NVIDIA has a driver and can be downloaded from here. See the README file for the installation and configuration of the driver. Check to see that your nvidia kernel module is loaded via "lsmod | grep nvidia". I had to "insmod nvidia" to load the nvidia module into the kernel after driver installation. Also check that you have the line, "alias char-major-195 nvidia" in your "/etc/modules.conf" file.

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