Dual Booting the
Clemson Dell Latitude C600:
Windows 2000 and Red Hat Linux 7.2

Bill Moss
January, 2002

This article is for owners of a CES Laptop Program Dell C600 who want to dual boot to Red Hat 7.2. Here we outline the installation of the Windows 2000 CES Laptop Program fall 2001 image along with a laptop installation of Red Hat 7.2. For more detail see the four Red Hat 7.2 manuals and the Release Notes.

The Red Hat 7.2 distribution can be downloaded from http://www.redhat.com/apps/download/ or one of the Red Hat mirror sites. I downloaded the following disk images and burned them on CD's using EZ CD Creator under Windows 2000.

ftp-linux.cc.gatech.edu
cd /pub/Linux/distributions/redhat/redhat-7.2-en/iso/i386
binary
get
enigma-i386-disc1.iso
enigma-i386-disc2.iso

Note that beginning with 7.2, Red Hat is no longer producing a powertools disc.

Red Hat 7.2 can be installed directly from disc1 if your BIOS is set to boot from CD-ROM or an installation boot disk can be created from the floppy image boot.img. With disc1 in your CD-ROM drive (assume drive E) and a blank floppy inserted, at a DOS prompt do

>E:\dosutils\rawrite
>E:\images\boot.img
>A:\

to create the installation boot disk.

Before getting into the details, let me say a word about bootloaders. The Windows 2000 documentation says that the Windows 2000 loader can only load other Windows OS's but this is not true. Below I describe how to set up both the Windows 2000 loader and the Linux loader, lilo. From what I have read, occasional users of Linux prefer the Windows loader, and occasional users of Windows prefer lilo. Both loaders allow you to set the default OS and the delay time before the default is automatically started. Note also that 7.2 gives you a choice of the bootloaders lilo or grub. I have not experimented with grub yet but will for the next article in this series.

This year Dell is installing the laptop program load at the factory. If your machine did not come with the factory load, you can go to the CES Helpdesk in Riggs 10 and have it installed. The next table contains an estimate of the partition sizes used. This is an estimate because my installation was created when we were still formulating the image.

Partition Table, Dell C600, Windows 2000 -- C active

In April 2001, in stalled Red Hat 7.1 on my C600. The next table shows the partitions I resized or created using the commercial application Partition Magic 5.0 last April. Here are the steps I used to create the dual boot partitions last April.

1. Decrease the size of C by 23.5 MB.
2. Create a primary partition for /boot in the unallocated space of type linux ext2.
3. Decrease the size of D to 9044.4 MB.
4. Create four logical partions in the unallocated space for /home, /usr, /, and swap.
5. Make /boot (/dev/hda3) the active primary partition if you are going to use lilo. Leave /dev/hda1 as the active partition if you are going to use the Windows 2000 loader.

Partition Table, Dell C600, dual boot RH 7.1 -- C active

After reading the 7.2 installation guide, I decided to double the size of my /boot and swap partitions. I used Partition Magic 7.0 to accomplish this. First, I made /usr smaller on the right by 133 MB and / larger by 133 MB on the left. Then I made / smaller by 133 MB on the right and swap bigger by 133 MB on the left. Finally, I made C smaller on the right by 23.5 MB and /boot larger on the left by 23.5 MB. The new partition table follows.

Partition Table, Dell C600, dual boot RH 7.2 -- C active

Note that both C and /boot are well below the 1024 cutoff for boot partitions. You can accomplish the same thing for free using the application GNU Parted. It is always a good idea to backup before repartitioning a hard disk. The Laptop Program web site contains instructions on backing up your C and D partitions.

RH 7.2 can now be loaded. Last April, I made the following statement about RH 7.1 based on the documentation, "Of the standard installation methods -- workstation, server, laptop, and custom -- only custom allows the user to choose where to install lilo. Experienced users can do a custom install from disc1 and disc2."

With RH 7.2, this no longer appears to be the case. All the install methods will let you use lilo and will let set up your partition table. This is a big improvement. For the RH 7.2 installation, I had the option of upgrading my 7.1 installation or doing a fresh laptop installation while preserving /home. I decided on the fresh laptop installation because this will be the choice of most users.

Here are the main steps for a fresh laptop installation which preserves /home.

1. Boot using the installation boot floppy and put disc1 in your CD drive (you can edit your BIOS and boot to disc 1).
2. Choose a laptop install.
3. Choose manually partition with Disk Druid. Select /home, type the label, migrate to ext3, do not format. Select /boot, /usr and /, type the labels, and format as ext3.
4. Choose lilo as the boot loader and /dev/hda3 as the boot partition. Change the DOS label to Windows2000.
5. Make a firewall choice. You may want to choose no now and play with this later.
6. There are four package choices: GNOME, KDE, Software Development, Games. Only GNOME is selected by default. I selected all four packages.
7. Make a boot disk when asked.

Reboot with the boot floppy you just made and login as root. The RH 7.2 installation does not recognize your Ethernet card. Here is the workaround. Create a file ifcfg-eth0 in the directory /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts containing the following lines

DEVICE=eth0
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
ONBOOT=yes
TYPE=Ethernet
USERCTL=yes
PEERDNS=yes

Start the network configuration tool by looking for "Network Configuration" in the desktop menus or else start the tool by typing neat at the commandline. Select the Devices tab and then eth0 Check your configuration, hit the Apply button, and then the Close button.

Next, edit the file config in the directory /etc/pcmcia. Search for the text

card "Intersil PRISM2 11 Mbps Wireless Adapter"
manfid 0x0156, 0x0002
bind "wvlan_cs"

and change wvlan_cs to orinoco_cs.

Linux users will find it convenient to mount their Windows 2000 partitions. To mount C and D from Linux, as root add the following lines to /etc/fstab

/dev/hda1 /mnt/windowsc vfat rw,nouser,auto,uid=500,gid=500 0 0
/dev/hda5 /mnt/windowsd vfat rw,nouser,auto,uid=500,gid=500 0 0

and then issue the commands

# mkdir /mnt/windowsc
# mkdir /mnt/windowsd
# mount /dev/hda1
# mount /dev/hda5

If you plan to use lilo, you have already set /boot as the active partition. You can remove the floppy and reboot. Lilo will give you a choice of Linux or Windows2000.

If you want to use the Windows 2000 loader, here are the setup steps. Remember you are still logged in as root.

1. Edit /etc/lilo.conf and delete "prompt" and "timeout=50". Then issue the commands
2. # /sbin/lilo
3. # dd if=/dev/hda3 of=/tmp/LiloBoot.bin bs=512 count=1
4. # mcopy /tmp/LiloBoot.bin /mnt/windowsc
5. Reboot with the Partition Magic and set C (/dev/hda1) to be the active primary partion.
6. Reboot to Windows 2000.
7. Open a DOS prompt
8. C:\> attrib -r -s -h boot.ini
9. Edit C:\boot.ini and add the following line at the bottom:
   C:\LiloBoot.bin="Red Hat Linux 7.2"
10. C:\> attrib +r +s +h boot.ini
11. Reboot to Window 2000.
12. Open the System Control Panel, Advanced tab, Startup and Recovery. Check "Display list of operating systems for __ seconds." Insert something like 15 for 15 seconds. You can also select the default OS to be booted after 15 seconds.
13. Reboot. You will see a list of your two operating systems. Make your choice.

Red Hat has already release a number of errata and updates for 7.2 including a kernel update. It is strongly recommended that you follow the instructions in my article on updating your system before you use this new installation.

Configure your wireless settings. Start the network configuration tool by looking for "Network Configuration" in the desktop menus or else start the tool by typing neat at the commandline. Under the devices tab choose wireless and configure your wireless card. See my article on wireless for more information.