Howto Install Windows XP and SuSE Linux on the same PC

Procedure 1. Steps:

1. Test your computer with Windows XP. Set up your Windows users, register with Microsoft, etc.

2. Buy an additional hard drive. These are quite cheap now. You can have 40gb for a little over $100. I bought Maxtor Ultra Series 80gb (red box) for $150. Six months from now, you'll laugh at these prices! I think most any IDE/ATA drive will work fine.

3. Change the original hard drive from Master to Slave by opening the case and moving a jumper on the drive. Install the new hard drive, and set it to be Master on the same IDE cable. Look for some instructions with your new hard drive, make notes, and check your original drive carefully. The jumper positions are different for different brands of hard disk drive. Usually, there is something printed on the drive label.

   Tip

   (You might want to get help to do the Master - Slave changes and install the new drive.)

   (It would probably work to put the original hard drive on the second IDE cable as Master, where the new drive is Master on the first IDE cable just as above, but I haven't tested this.)

   Just remember, the original drive with Windows will be the second drive, and the new one with Linux will be the first drive.

4. Install SuSE -- Run the SuSE installer, starting with SuSE's directions. Usually this means booting from CD#1 or the DVD.

   1. Throughout the installation -- Remember that you are installing Linux on hda, the "first" drive. The SuSE installer should suggest this as the default.

   2. Create a partition to share between Linux and windows -- At the partitioning step of the install, shrink the Linux partition a bit and add a FAT partition on hda. For "mount point" of the FAT partition enter /windows/share and the remaining default options for "FAT" should be OK. Both Windows and Linux can read and write to this FAT32 partition. I made my FAT partition 300mb. [Perhaps we could specify the options for /etc/fstab at this point, but I did it later. Comments?]

   3. Rest of Installation -- Follow SuSE's suggestions to install on first hard drive (hda). Follow SuSE's suggestions to install GRUB on the Master Boot Record (MBR). On the software options page, choose Default system. You're done when you get the KDE desktop and not the installer menus.

   4. Explore Linux a bit. There are a few more steps before we can easily switch back and forth between Linux and Windows, but these can wait.

5. Test booting -- Logout and restart your computer. Watch the boot menu. You should get options for Linux, Floppy, and Failsafe. Also a couple of "windows.." options. Check that "Linux" works. Don't try the "Windows" choices in the boot menu; they won't work! Make a note of the items you see in the boot menu. (I did try the "windows" option and the computer "hangs". If this happens to you, the old "three finger salute" still works... hold Ctrl and Alt while you type Delete. This will restart your computer.)

6. (Strictly Optional) Switching OS's the HARD WAY -- You might need to use this in order to boot Windows before completing the remaining steps. It's awkward, but it does get you to Windows... When you boot, there is probably an option to enter the "BIOS Setup". Watch for this option and act quickly. On my machine, I have to hit "Del" within a couple of seconds. Proceed carefully, but find the option to change the "boot priority" of the different hard disks. You can choose Windows by giving boot priority to the second hard disk drive, Linux by giving boot priority to the first hard drive. This works, but there has to be a better way!

   If you do change the BIOS boot-priority order, then before doing the remaining steps, go back and reset the boot-priority order so the first hard disk (with Linux) has priority.

7. Fixing the Windows item in the Boot menu -- Restart your computer, choose the default "Linux" in the boot menu, login as root. Note that "root" will NOT be one of the choices you can select by clicking the name/picture on the login menu, just type "root" in the "Login" space and give the root password. You should see the KDE desktop. Notice the warning icons on the desktop. As root, you can blow things up completely! Be careful.

   1. Check the boot options created by the installer. Launch YaST2 by clicking the bottom-left icon, the gear wheel... then System... then YaST2; the name is an acronym for "Yet another System Tool" and this is one of SuSE's important contributions.

      • Choose "System" in the left panel of YaST2.

      • Choose "Bootloader Configuration" in the right panel.

      • Choose "Expert manual configuration". Next.

      • Look at the window "Boot loader configuration:"... After some initial items, you'll find one section for each item in the boot menu. Each sections starts with a "title" line. (The text in this window is from the file /boot/grub/menu.lst )

      Here's what SuSE's installer created for me:

      ---- START of /boot/grub/menu.lst ----
      # Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Thu Nov 21 23:31:22 2002
      
      gfxmenu (hd0,1)/boot/message
      color white/blue black/light-gray
      default 0
      timeout 8
      
      title linux
          kernel (hd0,1)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda2  hdc=ide-scsi  vga=785
          initrd (hd0,1)/boot/initrd
      
      title windows 1
          root (hd0,2)
          makeactive
          chainloader +1
      
      title windows 2
          root (hd1,0)
          makeactive
          chainloader +1
      
      title floppy
          root (fd0)
          chainloader +1
      
      title failsafe
          kernel (hd0,1)/boot/vmlinuz.shipped root=/dev/hda2 ide=nodma apm=off 
      acpi=off vga=normal nosmp maxcpus=0 disableapic 3
          initrd (hd0,1)/boot/initrd.shipped
      ---- END of /boot/grub/menu.lst ----
      	    

      OK, so what's the problem? There are two problems with what SuSE creates:

      • The "windows 1" section will try to boot from the sharing partition (first hard disk, third partition, the FAT partition... remember it's counting from zero). This partition will have only some of my files, and not Windows itself, so any boot from this partition will fail. (I suppose SuSE thinks we MIGHT put some Windows version on this paritition in the future. I think this boot menu option is confusing, so I'll just remove it.)

      • The "windows 2" section is pointed to the right place, but has an error.

   2. Remove the wrong "windows" section -- Select the windows section that references (hd0,2) by left-click-dragging over the text. Hit the "delete" or "backspace" key on your keyboard to erase it. Poof! Gone.

   3. Fix the remaining Windows option -- Continue your editing... I took the secton "windows 2" and changed it to be like this:

      title Windows XP
      map (hd1) (hd0)
      root (hd1,0)
      chainloader+1
      makeactive
      	    

      Note

      Some notes: "Windows XP" can be whatever text you want in the boot menu "map..." see below. Last two entries... I think SuSE has them in backwards order Don't worry about the indenting... SuSE will fix it. Ignore the button marked "Edit /etc/grub/conf"

      • Click Next then Finish then Yes. YaST2 will save your revised boot menu.

      Explanation

      There are limitations on Windows ability to boot. The GRUB manual at http://www.gnu.org/manual/grub/html_mono/grub.html explains this and suggests the map command. By using the map command, any running program, after GRUB passes things to the next stage, will see the second disk hdb a.k.a. (hd1) as though it were the first hda a.k.a. (hd0). (More precisely, any running program that accesses the disk through the BIOS will see it this way, so there -could- be programs that won't work with this disk-swapping approach. [Hackers, is there ANY danger in this? Should I skip this detail?])

8. Test the Boot Menu Choices -- In Linux, logout and select "Restart computer". Try the boot options for Linux and Windows to verify that they work. When you log-in to Linux, do so with your normal username, not as root. Use root only when you need to in order to change a system configuration.

9. Format the shared partition -- I use the Windows XP format command to format the shared partition.

   • Restart the computer

   • Chose Windows XP (or whatever label you chose)

   • Start... My computer... Your shared partition will appear as an "extra" local drive. Mine was E:. Here's how to know you have the right "local drive": When you click on a drive, it's icon is highlighted and the lower left display shows the size and space available. When you click on your shared drive, the lower left display will not show size because the partition has not yet been formatted.

   • Right click on your shared partition. Format. Choose FAT32, not ntfs. Use the defaults for other options.

   • Now if you click on the shared partition, the lower left display will show the size.

10. Make the "Shared" partition visible to Linux

    • Restart, boot Linux, login as root, open a console window with Konsole (I start Konsole with one of the icons in the lower left... Move your mouse over the icons and let it pause. Linux will show the name of the program represented by the icon.)

    1. Look as /etc/fstab this is the table that tells Linux which partitions to mount at boot and which can be mounted by the user. In the Konsole window, type

          cat /etc/fstab
       	    

       My output looked like this for the hard disks (there are additional lines, but these are all the /dev/hd... lines)

       /dev/hda2     /                    reiserfs   defaults        1 1
       /dev/hda3     /windows/share       vfat       defaults        0 0
       /dev/hda1     swap                 swap       pri=42          0 0
       	    

       In this table, hda3 is our FAT partition for sharing between OS's.

       (What's the problem? The problem is if /dev/hda3 is mounted with defaults, this will be done by root at boot-time, and no other users will be able to touch it. You won't be able to touch it if you login with your normal userid, only if you login as root. Instead, we need to set the shared partition to be mounted by you after login.)

    2. Save a copy of /etc/fstab

       		cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstabSAVE
        

       If this fails, you probably didn't login as root. Logout, login as root, and repeat from step 10.

    3. Change /etc/fstab

       
       		  umount /windows/share
       		  pico /etc/fstab
       		

       This is a simple text editor. Use the arrow keys to move the cursor. Ctrl-Dto delete a character. Just type to insert characters. Now change the /dev/hda3 line so that instead of the word defaults", you have noauto,user". When done, the first few lines of my /etc/fstab look like this:

       /dev/hda2     /                    reiserfs   defaults        1 1
       /dev/hda3     /windows/share       vfat       noauto,user     0 0
       /dev/hda1     swap                 swap       pri=42          0 0
       ... there's more... leave the additional lines unchanged ...
       	    

       Note

       (Thanks to Kevin Nathan for this tip.)

       If you make a mistake, Ctrl-X, No so you don't save, and repeat pico /etc/fstab

       • Still in Pico, Ctrl-X, Yes to save, Return to confirm the file name. Now you have changed /etc/fstab.

       • Logout, Shutdown, let the computer stop, then Power-on, and boot Linux.

       • If this doesn't work, boot rescue system and trouble-shoot.

11. Learning to mount your shared partition in Linux

    To mount your partition:

    • Boot Linux and login with your normal userid

    • Open a Konsole window

      mount /windows/share
      	      

      To un-mount the shared partition

      umount /windows/share
        

      .. or just log out.

12. Uninstall. Someday, you might want to return your machine to be a Windows machine, just like you purchased at the store. I'm sure you'll like SuSE Linux, but maybe you want to give the computer to someone who doesn't know this yet! Remove your linux hard drive and change the original drive (with Windows) back to "Master". Now, when you boot, the machine will never know that you used to have Linux installed!