(sending in 2 parts because this is too big )
Regarding filesystems and reinstalls ...
> I would if I had the disk space. I currently have
> a 1.5gb and a 700mb drive.
After doing way too many reinstalls ... and switching
filsystem formats etc ... I came up with a great way
to make it almost painless to reinstall and also to
fix the partitions, or reformat, without needing any
floppy drive or cdrom drive. Everything is done from
the hard drive. It works like this:
I put a small DOS partition on every machine now.
I think this is good to have because some things
just need DOS, for example many BIOS update programs.
But there is another reason. Slackware has a slick
thing called install.zip ... it's basically a root
file system that is the *same* as booting from the
slack floppies BUT it sits on a DOS partition. It
uses the UMSDOS file system, which overlays onto
a FAT (DOS) file system. Why have this? If any of
my normal partitions get screwed up, or if I want
to change from reiserfs to ext3 or xfs or jfs ...
I can just boot this root file system from hda1
and it doesn't touch the rest of my disk until
I execute commands. So I can repartition, or
reformat, copy stuff around, fix problems, or
whatever.
This is what I do now ... I set up a partition
scheme that looks like this ....
1) Small DOS partition. It serves multiple uses.
First it boots DOS for whatever purpose.
Second it runs the NT bootloader ... it can
start windows 2000 or DOS ... third it has
the UMSDOS slackware install root disks
(see this readme) ...
ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware-9.0/rootdisks/install.zip.README
I have to basically start with a clean disk,
but once I have the above UMSDOS filesystem
install, I include it in LILO ... so any time
I can boot a busybox based "rescue" disk which
is actually the slackware install root disk!
If *anything* goes wrong with my slackware,
I just boot that and then I can mount the
other partitions and fix, reformat, whatever.
This is how I did this: I mount a target drive
as slave from a working system. I then use
cfdisk on the target drive and create a small
DOS partition, and partitions for windows and
slackware. I move that target drive to be
master and boot with a bootable DOS floppy.
I do an FDISK /MBR on the new disk to clear
out the master boot record and set up a new
DOS master boot record. I reboot to make sure
DOS is bootable. At that point the system
will boot directly into DOS.
2) Then I attach a CD-ROM drive and install the
slackware, making sure I include the DOS
partition in the LILO configuration. After I
am done installing slack, I copy that
install.zip to the DOS partition and unzip
it (from within linux). It creates a linux
directory in the DOS partition. I then copy
the kernel from the slackware root partition
into that umsdos directory:
cp /boot/vmlinuz /dos/linux
Then I edit the lilo.conf and add this umsdos
partition to my boot options like this:
# this is the normal root file system
image = /boot/vmlinuz
root = /dev/hda5
label = Slackware-Linux
read-only
# this is the dos/windows boot
other = /dev/hda1
label = DOS-Windows
table = /dev/hda
# this is the busybox/umsdos file system
image = /dos/linux/vmlinuz
root = /dev/hda1
label = Busybox-Rescue
read-write
Note that this last item points to /dev/hda1
which the first partition, and is a small
DOS partition where I have unzipped that
install.zip file from slackware. Also note
that it's listed as "read-write" rather than
the usual "read-only" because it's not an
ext2 file system, it's UMSDOS overlayed on
top of DOS.
3) After I have LILO booting both the normal
slackware and the busybox/rescue from the
DOS partition, I install windows. Windows
2000 install the NT bootloader into the
DOS partition automatically. When I select
DOS/Windows from LILO it launched the NT
bootloader, which in turn displays its
own menu allowing me to boot either DOS
or Windows ...
(continued on next message)
-- Doug
