Linux Thinkpad R40 (2897-54U)

2003-08-02

The Hardware

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Installing Dual Boot Linux/Windows XP

This is a major hurdle because
Here is what I did:
  1. Download the ISO for a Knoppix disk.
  2. Wretched Windows XP can't burn a CD from an ISO file. How lame is that? Install the ISO Recorder "Power Toy" and burn the Knoppix disk.
  3. I ran the Windows XP defragmenter. There was nothing to defragment, but it was instructive to see the file layout--a big file about half-way on the hard disk that the defragmenter didn't want to move. Maybe the swap file?
  4. I didn't follow J. Hall's suggestion to turn off swap in Windows XP, but perhaps I should have--I believe it would have given me more space for the Linux partition.
  5. Enough of Windows--boot into Knoppix.
  6. I tried to use QTParted to resize the NTFS partition, but it failed with an enlightening message "An error has occurred."
  7. I then followed the manual instructions for running ntfsresize. Worked like a charm. I got about 17GB for Linux.
  8. I installed Red Hat 9 (Shrike). Red Hat didn't detect the laptop screen, so I had to use the text-based installer. At the end of the installation, tell Red Hat that you have a Generic LCD Panel (1024 x 768), and that you want 24-bit color and 1024 x 768 resolution.
  9. If you don't have a  flash card reader (see below), also make a small FAT partition so that you can exchange data between Windows XP and Linux.
  10. Following Ed Park's advice, I told GRUB to use a /boot partition, not the MBR. My /boot partition seems to be beyond cylinder 1024, but I didn't have trouble with that.
  11. I rebooted with Knoppix (since Red Hat isn't quite ready to boot). Still following Ed Park's advice, I copied the first 512 bytes of the /boot image to a file. To overcome the lack of a floppy onto which to save the file, I used a flash card reader (for my digital camera). Make sure to insert the card reader before Knoppix boots--it should recognize it as /dev/hde1. Then (as root) issue
       mkdir /mnt/flash
       mount -t vfat /dev/hde1 /mnt/flash
       dd if=/dev/hda2 of=/mnt/flash/linux.bin bs=512 count=1
  12. Reboot into Windows XP (with the flash card reader still in the slot). Windows XP will wet its pants and tell you to reboot once again so that it can use the flash card reader.
  13. In Windows XP, get a shell (Ctrl+Esc, R, cmd, Enter).
       copy e:\linux.bin c:\
       attrib -s -r -h c:\boot.ini
       edit c:\boot.ini
    Now add a line
       c:\linux.bin="Linux"
    at the end of the file. Save and execute
       attrib +s +r +h c:\boot.ini
  14. Reboot one more time, and select Linux. GRUB will come up and load Linux.

What doesn't work

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Conclusions