Subject: Re: CCL:W:Installing windows under linux

From: Mikael Johansson <mpjohans:at:pcu.helsinki.fi>
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 11:58:30 +0200 (EET)

Hello Kumar and All!

On Tue, 22 Feb 2005, Sandeep, , Kumar wrote:

> I have got a dual processor computer with pre-installed Redhat linux. 
> I want to install windows also on the same machine and run it in dual 
> boot mode. I am told that usually people install windows first and then 
> linux. However this is not the case for me. Does anyone know how should 
> I install windows XP?

Short version:

If you have enough free unpartitioned space on your hard drives, just 
install XP but be careful to manually select where (which partition) to 
install. After installation of XP, you will have to edit the boot loader 
of the system so you can select to load either XP or Linux. Either edit 
BOOT.INI under XP [1] or reinstall Grub/LILO under Linux (using a boot 
CD/floppy).

If your Linux installation already has all hard drive space partitioned 
for itself, you have to shrink some Linux partition first, and make the 
empty space available. The painfulness of this depends on your exact 
partition/mount point config. 'fdisk' and 'parted' as well as perhaps 
'resize2fs' are the tools of choice here, assuming your Linux partition is 
on an ext2/ext3 file system. The only other file system under Linux 
that supports shrinking is, AFAIK, reiserfs. If you have some other fs, I 
guess your only hope is to move the data from one partition to another and 
delete the empty partition.

See [2] for some good info on parted.

[1] http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;289022
[2] http://www.linux-mag.com/2003-07/guru_01.html

Have a nice day,
     Mikael J.
     http://www.helsinki.fi/~mpjohans/