dual boot - win2k/debian linux - two hard disks

[blazer]

Hi all,

I have a win2k system running off a 20gig HD. I recently bought a second 20gig HD and will soon install it.

I want to know how I can install my second HD and have debian linux on that one ... with an option to either boot into win2k or linux.

Thanks all

Ku

[BertieB]

Yes you can! My laptop has this sort of setup, except with Win XP instead of 2k. My method was to download the netinstall CD of Debian, install normally - except for adding a FAT32 partition for the two to share data - and let GRUB handle bootloading. Grub detected the already-installed XP, and gives the option of booting to that on startup. In my case (for another system) it also gave access to the NT boot menu as well, allowing for a system with 98, 2 copies of 2k and Debian. Hours of fun :)

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As for the mechanics of the installation:

Get the Debian netinst (sarge-i386-netinst.iso when I last installed) CD image [debian.org] if you have broadband; if not, acquire the regular install CD image. Burn the CD, and boot from it.

Partition-wise, you can let the installer handle partitioning for you, although if you do it manually you will want at least: a swap device ('swap' filesystem); '/' or root (I went with ext2); and possibly other partitions for /home and /var, though these aren't strictly necessary. Also, as I mentioned earlier, you can create a FAT32 partition for sharing data -- though you can also get linux to read NTFS partitions. I've heard the last option can be flaky, though I have yet to try it myself.

Proceed with setup, configuring your system as a 'Desktop' environment, although also selecting 'Web Server' can be handy. Feel free to mix and match. For reference, I selected Dektop and used GNOME, having previously used KDE. In my opinion each is as good as the other. Software packages not installed during setup can easily be added with apt-get later.

As mentioned, GRUB can be used as the bootloader, since it detects previous windows installs, and gives you the option to boot to them. You may want to install it to the master boot record if your machine is older, otherwise use the BIOS to set the 2nd hard drive as the first boot device.

If you didn't set up a webserver, you can add apache or apache 2 with 'apt-get install apache' / 'apt-get install apache2'. I'd recommend using the package search [debian.org]. To install apache on my test server, I ended up downloading the source, compiling and installing. Add other software (php, pearl, OpenSSH, etc) as required :)

Apologies if you are already au fait with Debian / Linux in general, but I figured being thorough would help others in a similar situation. If anyone can spot any glaring errors in my setup, please point them out. I'm no guru... yet :)

HTH
Bob