CentOS and WinXP dual boot - please help

[Dave C.]

On Fri, 16 Oct 2009 01:51:06 GMT

Please give suggestions on how to best handle
dual booting in this case:

- Two Drives. Both contain primary partitions
(Drive1 NTFS and Drive2 Ext3).

- Drive1 has WinXP installed and configured.

- I want to dual boot XP with 64-bit CentOS 5.3
(Not yet installed).

- Preferably, I'd like to use NTLDR so that if things go
wrong with Linux, I should be able to simply delete
the partition to which the OS is installed - without
any effects on XP.

- Changing boot sequence in BIOS is an ugly option
which I am trying to avoid.

Thank you!

Dima

Nothing will go wrong with linux. Install Centos and let Centos
install (whatever) to the MBR to give you a boot menu.

If you later think you have a problem with linux, or just want to
uninstall linux (unlikely), boot the windows xp install CD to access
the recovery console and run fixmbr. After doing that, it will be (to
windows xp anyway) like your linux install never existed. -Dave

 

[DK]

Please give suggestions on how to best handle
dual booting in this case:

- Two Drives. Both contain primary partitions
(Drive1 NTFS and Drive2 Ext3).

- Drive1 has WinXP installed and configured.

- I want to dual boot XP with 64-bit CentOS 5.3
(Not yet installed).

- Preferably, I'd like to use NTLDR so that if things go
wrong with Linux, I should be able to simply delete
the partition to which the OS is installed - without
any effects on XP.

- Changing boot sequence in BIOS is an ugly option
which I am trying to avoid.

Thank you!

Dima

 

[Grinder]

Please give suggestions on how to best handle
dual booting in this case:

- Two Drives. Both contain primary partitions
(Drive1 NTFS and Drive2 Ext3).

- Drive1 has WinXP installed and configured.

- I want to dual boot XP with 64-bit CentOS 5.3
(Not yet installed).

- Preferably, I'd like to use NTLDR so that if things go
wrong with Linux, I should be able to simply delete
the partition to which the OS is installed - without
any effects on XP.

- Changing boot sequence in BIOS is an ugly option
which I am trying to avoid.

I'm interested in doing something similar, and have come across this
article:

http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/113945

I can't vouch for it but it does seem to address your situation.

 

[dold]

- Preferably, I'd like to use NTLDR so that if things go
wrong with Linux, I should be able to simply delete
the partition to which the OS is installed - without
any effects on XP.

I used a tool called bootpart to add a little Linux stub file to my Windows
file system, and an entry in my boot.ini.

Google says that the main site is a malware site, but I don't know what to
think of that. There are other download sites for bootpa26.zip.

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

Please give suggestions on how to best handle dual booting in this case:

- Two Drives. Both contain primary partitions (Drive1 NTFS and Drive2
Ext3).

- Drive1 has WinXP installed and configured.

- I want to dual boot XP with 64-bit CentOS 5.3 (Not yet installed).

- Preferably, I'd like to use NTLDR so that if things go wrong with
Linux, I should be able to simply delete the partition to which the OS
is installed - without any effects on XP.

- Changing boot sequence in BIOS is an ugly option which I am trying to
avoid.

Thank you!

Dima

The CentOS installer will install Grub. It will also recognize Windows
and add it to the boot menu automatically. you can always restore the MBR
from the Windows install disk if you want to get rid of Grub.

May I suggest that you install VMware Server on CentOS and then run XP as
a virtual machine on top of Linux, it will allow you to use both at once.
VMware has a utility called Converter that will create a VM that's an
exact duplicate of your existing XP installation. VMware Server and the
Converter utility are both free.

http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/
http://www.vmware.com/products/server/

You will definitely want to run XP on top of Linux, not Linux on XP.
CentOS 5.3 is a 64 bit OS so it can use as much RAM as your machine can
support, if it's a DDR2 system you can put in at least 8G which will run
you about $150. XP is a 32 bit OS that is limited to 3G so running a VM
on top of XP would be very limiting whereas running an XP on top of
CentOS would allow XP to have the full 3G that it wants and still leave
5G for everything else.

If you were to use Fedora 11 instead of CentOS you could use KVM to run
the XP VM, KVM is baked into Fedora 11. However there is no equivalent
utility like converter for KVM. The mechanism for moving your XP setup
from the physical machine is to install a fresh copy of XP on a KVM
virtual box then to use the Windows backup utility to create a backup of
your physical XP machine and then use the utility on the VM to restore
the backup. This works for any VM not just KVM. You could also use
VirtualBox on Fedora, you would want to use the full version of
VirtualBox which you would get at the link below. The Fedora repositories
only have VirtualBox OSE (Open Source Edition) which has some
limitations. Ubuntu mostly uses VirtualBox as it's standard VM, I don't
know if they provide the full VirtualBox or the OSE edition, if they
provide the OSE then you can get the full version at the link below also,

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads

The best Virtualizer is VMware Server. It's the oldest and most robust.
It also has better performance for Windows guests than KVM, for Linux
guests KVM has the best performance. KVM is also a little flaky with
Windows guests, VMWare is solid as a rock. On CentOS 5.3 VMware is
completely supported. It's not supported for Fedora 11, it requires a
patch to run there. VirtualBox is fully supported on Fedora so if you
were to use Fedora instead of CentOS then it would be the best choice for
the Windows VM. On Ubuntu you would use VirtualBox.

 

[DK]

I used a tool called bootpart to add a little Linux stub file to my Windows
file system, and an entry in my boot.ini.

Could you please let me know details of what you did with
the drive on which Linux was installed? (Was it CentOS?)
I tried bootpart, which did what it does but Linux won't boot
(no bootable drive).

I had pre-existing Ext3 partition (primary/bootable), so the
setup did not partition/format and I asked for Grub to be put
on it. Now I'll try to clear it and let setup to partition it first.

Dima

 

[DK]

The CentOS installer will install Grub. It will also recognize Windows
and add it to the boot menu automatically. you can always restore the MBR
from the Windows install disk if you want to get rid of Grub.

May I suggest that you install VMware Server on CentOS and then run XP as
a virtual machine on top of Linux, it will allow you to use both at once.

That's what I intend to do. What I am not sure about is how much of
a performance hit I can expect. The application that I'll run are
CPU-intensive calculations and, less frequently, ray-tracing.
Obviously, I am not worrying about office stuff. Also, I don't know
for sure but I might at some point do lots video editing/compression.
These things I am alot more comfortable in Winsows.
Memory right now is 6 Gb and video memory is 1 Gb. This is an
i7 950 machine.

Another thing is that I am an absolute beginner in Linux. (Was
using bunch of apps through GUI for years and had sysamin
take care of everyhting else). Chances are very good I will
mess up somehting in Linux more than once...

VMware has a utility called Converter that will create a VM that's an
exact duplicate of your existing XP installation. VMware Server and the
Converter utility are both free.

http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/

I wasn't aware of the Converter. Sounds great, thank you.
Crazy thought: Is it even possible to run 64-bit OS in emulation
on a 32-bit host? (On very few occasions, there will be a
benefit to running Linux in emulation from XP). It will be great
if I won't need to install 32-bit Linux separately.

Thanks,

Dima

 

[Eef Hartman]

I wasn't aware of the Converter. Sounds great, thank you.
Crazy thought: Is it even possible to run 64-bit OS in emulation
on a 32-bit host? (On very few occasions, there will be a
benefit to running Linux in emulation from XP). It will be great
if I won't need to install 32-bit Linux separately.

That is for VM-ware to decide, if they can offer a virtual 64-bit
machine on a 32-bit O/S. I'm not familiar enough with the current
versions to know this.
But you won't have much advantage in it as the memory the VM can
use is a subset of what the host O/S has available (and the latter
is less than 4 GB on W-XP) as - of course - VM-ware cannot give
you RAM memory IT cannot get from the host O/S.
In fact mostly VM's are configured to use a maximum of HALF of the
available RAM, as to leave space for the host O/S itself (without
needing swap) and optional other VM's.

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

That's what I intend to do. What I am not sure about is how much of a
performance hit I can expect. The application that I'll run are
CPU-intensive calculations and, less frequently, ray-tracing. Obviously,
I am not worrying about office stuff. Also, I don't know for sure but I
might at some point do lots video editing/compression. These things I am
alot more comfortable in Winsows. Memory right now is 6 Gb and video
memory is 1 Gb. This is an i7 950 machine.

Another thing is that I am an absolute beginner in Linux. (Was using
bunch of apps through GUI for years and had sysamin take care of
everyhting else). Chances are very good I will mess up somehting in
Linux more than once...


I wasn't aware of the Converter. Sounds great, thank you. Crazy thought:
Is it even possible to run 64-bit OS in emulation on a 32-bit host? (On
very few occasions, there will be a benefit to running Linux in
emulation from XP). It will be great if I won't need to install 32-bit
Linux separately.

Thanks,

Dima

You can run a 32 bit guest on a 64 bit host but I'm pretty sure you can't
run a 64 bit guest on a 32 bit host. Are you running 64 bit XP? If you
are running 32 bit XP all it will be able to use is 3G of RAM. MS doesn't
support PAE mode in XP so it can't handle more than 3G, 32 bit Linux does
support PAE so it can handle upto 64G of RAM, not that that's relevant
anymore since 64 bit Linux is a much better way to get access to large
amounts of memory.

I've never benchmarked Windows guests only Linux guests. I run CentOS5.3
VMs on top of Fedora 11. Fedora gives me hardware compatibility,
CentOS5.3 gives me software compatibility for certain commercial
applications that require RHEL 5. For Linux guests KVM gives about 98% of
the native performance, VMware is a little less, about 95%. I only use
Windows for Quickbooks and MS Word so all I can tell you is that the
interactive performance in VMware is very snappy, it feels like native
performance. KVM uses VNC to connect to Windows if you use it's console
window. VNC sucks so the performance of Windows on a KVM console feels
slow. However Linux has a nice Rdesktop client so you can connect to XP
with that and the performance is fine.

 

[Dave C.]

[snip most of the message about dual boot and XP and CentOS on
separate drives]

I had pre-existing Ext3 partition (primary/bootable), so the setup
did not partition/format and I asked for Grub to be put on it. Now
I'll try to clear it and let setup to partition it first.

Oh dear. Turns out I can't boot CentOS 5.3 at all! Cleared entire
disk, let the setup choose its deafults and partition the disk,
installed GRUB but *did not* let it to load any other OSes and
write to MBR of the first disk. *Did not* enable LBA32 mode (from
what I understand, it shouldn't be necessary).

Changed boot drive sequence in BIOS. Upon reboot:
GRUB_
(That is, a word and a blinking cursor on black background; nothing
ever happens). So I am guessing CentOS does not like something
about my BIOS/HDD?

This is P6T Deluxe V2 board and two identical SATA 1 Tb Cavier Black
disks (WD1001FALS).

Wow, this is unexpected, to say the least. Any ideas what I
should/can do next?

Thanks,

- Dima

Now that you've swapped the order of the drives try reinstalling and
thins time let it install to the MBR.

Agreed. The mbr is where it belongs. Why shy away from putting it
where it belongs? -Dave

 

[DK]

[snip most of the message about dual boot and XP and
CentOS on separate drives]

I had pre-existing Ext3 partition (primary/bootable), so the
setup did not partition/format and I asked for Grub to be put
on it. Now I'll try to clear it and let setup to partition it first.

Oh dear. Turns out I can't boot CentOS 5.3 at all!
Cleared entire disk, let the setup choose its deafults
and partition the disk, installed GRUB but *did not* let
it to load any other OSes and write to MBR of the first
disk. *Did not* enable LBA32 mode (from what I understand,
it shouldn't be necessary).

Changed boot drive sequence in BIOS. Upon reboot:
GRUB_
(That is, a word and a blinking cursor on black
background; nothing ever happens). So I am guessing
CentOS does not like something about my BIOS/HDD?

This is P6T Deluxe V2 board and two identical SATA
1 Tb Cavier Black disks (WD1001FALS).

Wow, this is unexpected, to say the least. Any ideas
what I should/can do next?

Thanks,

- Dima

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

[snip most of the message about dual boot and XP and CentOS on separate
drives]

I had pre-existing Ext3 partition (primary/bootable), so the setup did
not partition/format and I asked for Grub to be put on it. Now I'll try
to clear it and let setup to partition it first.

Oh dear. Turns out I can't boot CentOS 5.3 at all! Cleared entire disk,
let the setup choose its deafults and partition the disk, installed GRUB
but *did not* let it to load any other OSes and write to MBR of the
first disk. *Did not* enable LBA32 mode (from what I understand, it
shouldn't be necessary).

Changed boot drive sequence in BIOS. Upon reboot:
GRUB_
(That is, a word and a blinking cursor on black background; nothing ever
happens). So I am guessing CentOS does not like something about my
BIOS/HDD?

This is P6T Deluxe V2 board and two identical SATA 1 Tb Cavier Black
disks (WD1001FALS).

Wow, this is unexpected, to say the least. Any ideas what I should/can
do next?

Thanks,

- Dima

Now that you've swapped the order of the drives try reinstalling and
thins time let it install to the MBR.

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

[snip most of the message about dual boot and XP and CentOS on
separate drives]

I had pre-existing Ext3 partition (primary/bootable), so the setup
did not partition/format and I asked for Grub to be put on it. Now
I'll try to clear it and let setup to partition it first.

Oh dear. Turns out I can't boot CentOS 5.3 at all! Cleared entire
disk, let the setup choose its deafults and partition the disk,
installed GRUB but *did not* let it to load any other OSes and write
to MBR of the first disk. *Did not* enable LBA32 mode (from what I
understand, it shouldn't be necessary).

Changed boot drive sequence in BIOS. Upon reboot:
GRUB_
(That is, a word and a blinking cursor on black background; nothing
ever happens). So I am guessing CentOS does not like something about
my BIOS/HDD?

This is P6T Deluxe V2 board and two identical SATA 1 Tb Cavier Black
disks (WD1001FALS).

Wow, this is unexpected, to say the least. Any ideas what I
should/can do next?

Thanks,

- Dima

Now that you've swapped the order of the drives try reinstalling and
thins time let it install to the MBR.

Agreed. The mbr is where it belongs. Why shy away from putting it
where it belongs? -Dave

You need at least one copy of Grub in an MBR. If you have additional
distros then you would put their grubs in their root partitions and chain
link to them from the first copy of Grub.

Also I think that by installing and then switching the drive order you
screwed up the partition names in the /etc/fstab and /etc/grub.conf.
There are a lot of ways of referencing disk partitions in Linux. CentOS
uses a method that's sensitive to the drive name which you changed by
swapping the order. Fedora uses a different mechanism which isn't
sensitive.

BTW RHEL is a server distro, Redhat does a lousy job of updating it for
desktop hardware so there is a good chance that it won't run on your
system. Fedora will certainly run on your box, it uses the very latest
kernel so it has the best hardware compatibility. I run Fedora as the
host OS on my machines and then use CentOS VMs to provide software
compatibility for commercial applications. If you aren't using any
commercial apps that require RHEL compatibility then you don't need the
VMs.

 

[DK]

Now that you've swapped the order of the drives try reinstalling and
thins time let it install to the MBR.

OK, I managed to do it. I certainly overestimated CentOS's
friendliness on many levels. In the end, the solution was to:

1) Let setup format the drive and do something else (not
quite sure what this else is; all I know is that if I let it install
onto pre-formatted drive, the setup does not object, finishes
fine but system fails to boot no matter how many drives I
had during installation).

2) Even then, it won't boot in two drives config. Had to use
SuperGrub boot disk to fix Grub to understand two drives.
( http://www.supergrubdisk.org/index.php )

3) After that, BootPart seemlessly does everythng it takes
to make NTLDR load both OSes.

First boot into CentOS was not a pleasant experience:
it prompted for root password and stayed in console mode.
No prompts to enter GUI, no hints what to do next, nothing.
Had to start figuring out how to create new user, how to
enter graphic mode, and figure out why why ethernet adapter
is recognized but won't work (works fine even with BartPE
that is 6 years old). Still don't know how to make the damn
thing to boot directly into GUI.

Lesson: claims that Linux is much more friendly these days
are highly over-rated. <Sigh> Oh well, I'll have to put up
with this bullshit - really need to have it working

Thanks everyone who replied! Your comments were very
helpful.

Dima

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

OK, I managed to do it. I certainly overestimated CentOS's friendliness
on many levels. In the end, the solution was to:

1) Let setup format the drive and do something else (not quite sure what
this else is; all I know is that if I let it install onto pre-formatted
drive, the setup does not object, finishes fine but system fails to boot
no matter how many drives I had during installation).

2) Even then, it won't boot in two drives config. Had to use SuperGrub
boot disk to fix Grub to understand two drives. (
http://www.supergrubdisk.org/index.php )

3) After that, BootPart seemlessly does everythng it takes to make NTLDR
load both OSes.

First boot into CentOS was not a pleasant experience: it prompted for
root password and stayed in console mode. No prompts to enter GUI, no
hints what to do next, nothing. Had to start figuring out how to create
new user, how to enter graphic mode, and figure out why why ethernet
adapter is recognized but won't work (works fine even with BartPE that
is 6 years old). Still don't know how to make the damn thing to boot
directly into GUI.

Lesson: claims that Linux is much more friendly these days are highly
over-rated. <Sigh> Oh well, I'll have to put up with this bullshit -
really need to have it working

Thanks everyone who replied! Your comments were very helpful.

Dima

If it came up in console mode then you selected the wrong type of
installation. You probably did a server install instead of a desktop
install.

RHEL/CentOS is a server OS, it's not aimed at desktop users. Servers
generally run with X disabled, it saves memory and reduces the number of
daemons that are running around eating CPU cycles. Servers are usually
administered remotely so running X locally is a waste, if you do need to
use X temporarily you just do startx from the command line, do what you
need to do and then exit out. If you want it to boot with X on then you
do have to edit /etc/inittab and change the init level from 3 to 5.

The target users for RHEL/CentOS are experienced system administrators.
That's because this distro is aimed a corporate servers. You will find
that it's missing a huge number of applications that a desktop user might
find useful and even some that server users need, for example it doesn't
even include Xemacs, just it's more primitive father Emnacs. To get these
applications you need a couple of additional repositories, EPEL (extra
packages for Enterprise Linux) and the karan repositories

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL/FAQ

http://centos.karan.org/

Redhat does have a desktop OS which is much more full featured, Fedora.
If you install Fedora from the Live CD it will make almost all of the
decisions for you. If you install from the DVD then you will be using a
later version of the installer that you used for CentOS. The full
installation method gives you a lot of control but it does require you to
understand what you are doing. Fedora is designed as a beta for future
versions of RHEL so it's not the best choice for an inexperienced user.
The distro that's targeted at desktop users is Ubuntu. Like Fedora it can
be installed from a LiveCD or from a full DVD. The liveCD installs a
basic system, very few questions asked. The full DVD has an installer
that similar (but different) to the installer that you used for CentOS.