The Linux DOS-Win95-OS2-Linux HOWTO
Mike Harlan, r3mdh@dax.cc.uakron.edu
v1.0, 06 MAR 1996
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Disclaimer: Any damages inflicted on any machine by you as a result of
your reading of this HOWTO is still YOUR FAULT. When you read
about deleting partitions and formatting disks, be smart.
Realize that doing any of the above will result in loss of data.
So, BACKUP SOON, BACKUP OFTEN. This is your second-to-the-last
warning.
=============================================================================
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_____________________________________________________________________________
Now................. on with the show!
After many days of struggle and frustration, I finally figured out how to
accomplish what I wanted. I have a 1.2GB HD and 16MB RAM PC. I wanted to
have 4 operating systems on my system: MSDOS v6.22, Windows 95, OS/2, and
Linux. Until now, I have found no Linux HOWTO to perform the task of getting
each and every one of these operating systems on one machine and still have
the ability to boot each (it is possible to write the OSs to different
partitions, but getting them to boot and not hang at the "Starting MSDOS"
message, for example, is something that I had to figure out. Well, after
much trial and error, I have come up with the following recipe to perform
this feat:
NOTE: Numbers in parentheses were the number of megabytes that I used on my
1.2GB harddrive.
1. Run view.exe on the Linux Slakware CD and create the Linux Boot and
Linux Root floppies. For some reason, the Linux bootstrap program
calls the Root disk the Ramdisk floppy. I'll refer to this disk from
now on as the Ramdisk (Root) floppy.
2. Backup any information that you wish to keep to tape (or whatever media
you have available to you).
3. Boot your original MSDOS installation floppy, disk 1.
4. When "Starting MSDOS" appears, press F5 to bypass config.sys and
autoexec.bat.
5. Run a:\fdisk.exe.
6. Delete all partitions (you have been warned: DELETING / MODIFYING OF ANY
PARTITION WILL RESULT IN THE LOSS OF ALL DATA ON THE DISK!).
7. Add an MSDOS primary partition. (11MB)
8. Format this partition.
9. Run a:\setup.exe to install MSDOS on this partition.
10. Boot OS/2.
11. Select Advanced installation.
12. Run FDISK (this will eventually popup for you if you run through the
OS/2 installation.
13. Add 1 primary partition after the MSDOS one. This will become our
Windows 95 partition. (349MB)
14. Add the Boot Manager to the next primary partition. (2MB)
15. Add a logical drive in the extended partition. This will become the
data portion of our MSDOS system. (511MB)
16. Add another logical drive to the extended partition. This will become
our OS/2 HPFS (High Performance File System) partition. (127MB)
17. Add 1 partition with the remaining space on the drive. This will later
become 2 partitions under Linux -- our swap partition and our native
Linux partition. But, since OS/2 (and DOS as well) can only write
up to 6 partitions per drive (3 primary and 3 extended or 4 primary),
we have to create only one. And we DO have to create this partition.
Don't leave this as free space and expect Linux to be able to create the
two partitions. Due to the way that OS/2's FDISK works, where you add
your last logical drive to the extended partition marks the END of the
extended partition. You cannot add partitions beyond this point. So,
in other words, creating this one last logical drive serves as a space-
filler for Linux. Later we will delete this partition and add 2 new ones
in the space that it once took up.
18. Add partitions 1, 2, and 5 to the Boot Manager.
19. Make partition 5 installable.
Your FDISK screen should now look like this (or something like this):
FDISK
Disk 1
___________________________________________________________________________
Partition Information
Name Status Access FS Type MBytes
___________________________________________________________________________
MSDOS Bootable C: Primary FAT 11
WIN 95 Bootable : Primary FAT 350
Startable : Primary BOOT MANAGER 2
None D: Logical Unformatted 511
OS/2 Installable E: Logical FAT 127
None F: Logical Unformatted 219
20. Continue on with the OS/2 installation process.
21. Reboot and select partition 2 (Windows 95) from the Boot Manager.
22. When the missing operating system error pops up, boot your MSDOS
installation disk. We selected this partition in order to "hide" the
MSDOS partition. The OS/2 Boot Manager allows us to hide 1 or more
primary partitions by selecting the one that we want visible. You can
only have 1 primary partition ACTIVE at a time with IBM's FDISK (and
MSDOS follows this rule also), so when DOS is hidden, OS/2 is drive C and
DOS has no drive letter and when OS/2 is hidden the opposite is true.
Our DOS Data partition will be drive D for both of these partitions.
Since IFS's (Installable File Systems -- e.g., OS/2, Linux) can't
be seen from MSDOS, we will only have drives C and D from DOS and
Windows 95. OS/2 can see our DOS Data partition, so we could use that
to dump OS/2 files there also and the same goes for Linux (we'll have
to mount this DOS Data drive first, though).
23. Install MSDOS to Partition 2.
24. Boot Partition 2.
25. Install Windows v3.1 to this partition.
26. Install Windows 95 to this partition.
27. Boot Partition 1.
28. Format Partition 4.
29. Restore DOS data from tape to partitions 1 and 4.
30. Boot the Linux Boot Floppy.
31. Follow up with the Linux Ramdisk (Root) floppy.
32. When you log in as root and get to the # prompt, type "fdisk" and press
enter.
33. Delete the last partition (the one we created in step 17).
34. Add 1 16MB partition and tag it as filesystem type Linux Swap. (17MB)
35. Add 1 last partition with the remaining cylinders on the disk and tag
this as filesystem type Linux native. (198MB)
36. Write the changes to the boot sector and reboot.
37. When you get to the # prompt again, run setup.
38. Install Linux to the last partition.
39. When you install LILO, be sure to install it to the root of the last
partition (NOT to the MBR, as you will destroy all of your work if you
do so). Add only the last partition to LILO and set the timer to zero.
By doing this, when you select Linux from the OS/2 Boot Manager, LILO
will activate and will then boot Linux from the logical drive on the
extended partition. Since Linux is the only partition that we wish to
activate from LILO, we don't need a timer on it (unless you have more
than one Kernel that you wish to load. In this case, you may want to set
the timer to something more than 0 seconds).
40. Activate the Linux swap partition (refer to the Linux Installation
and Getting Started Manual by Matt Welsh for this).
41. Boot OS/2.
42. Run FDISK.
43. Add Linux to the Boot Manager (it's the partition of type 83).
Your FDISK screen should now look like this (or something like this):
FDISK
Disk 1
___________________________________________________________________________
Partition Information
Name Status Access FS Type MBytes
___________________________________________________________________________
MSDOS Bootable C: Primary FAT 11
WIN 95 Bootable : Primary FAT 350
Startable : Primary BOOT MANAGER 2
None D: Logical FAT 511
OS/2 Bootable E: Logical HPFS 127
None : Logical Type 82 17
Linux Bootable : Logical Type 83 198
...And you're done!
Send any comments/suggestions/problems (as a last resort, please!) to me at
r3mdh@dax.cc.uakron.edu.
Mike Harlan
06 MAR 1996