Questions about a dual boot system

[maol9883]

Hi I want to make a dual boot system with XP and Gentoo.
My harddrive is partitioned like this:

15 Gb - NTFS (XP)
5 Gb - FAT 32 (swap, if I want to move files between the OS:es)
25 Gb - nothing (this is where gentoo goes)

I also have a 250 Gb external USB Maxtor HD so space won't be a problem.
Now my question is: How do I make a dual boot system that won't frick my XP-partition if the Gentoo installation fails?

I assume that I'll make a boot, swap and regular partition out of the empty 25 Gb with Grub or Lilo on the boot partition. I just want to be sure that if the installation fails I'll always be able to reach the XP partition so that I can connect to the internet and look for solutions...

[techieMoe]

Now my question is: How do I make a dual boot system that won't frick my XP-partition if the Gentoo installation fails?

I assume that I'll make a boot, swap and regular partition out of the empty 25 Gb with Grub or Lilo on the boot partition. I just want to be sure that if the installation fails I'll always be able to reach the XP partition so that I can connect to the internet and look for solutions...

If you're new to Linux, I personally wouldn't start with Gentoo. That being said, if you install GRUB or LILO onto the master boot record of your harddrive, you can add the option to boot to XP from there, and if Gentoo doesn't work, you can always wipe the MBR with fdisk /MBR or FIXMBR from the Windows Recovery Console.

[maol9883]

I'm relatively new to linux. I've been using Mandrake for two months now, but I want to learn more so I figured getting Gentoo to run well is a good start... Maybe I'm making a mistake, but I've seen others on this board claiming starting with an easier distro like Fedora or Mandrake and then moving on to Slackware or Gentoo so I figured what the heck....

[techieMoe]

I'm relatively new to linux. I've been using Mandrake for two months now, but I want to learn more so I figured getting Gentoo to run well is a good start... Maybe I'm making a mistake, but I've seen others on this board claiming starting with an easier distro like Fedora or Mandrake and then moving on to Slackware or Gentoo so I figured what the heck....

More power to ya, Gentoo is a great distro to learn from. The catch is it takes a long time and a lot of effort to get set up, but you certainly learn a lot in the process. Just make sure you know what you're getting into.

[Dapper Dan]

As a precaution to the possibilty of hosing your XP, I'd download and burn one of the many Linux live CD's that, if your hardware is detected, will allow you access to the Internet.

Make sure you back up those valuable XP files before you embark. Good Luck!

[maol9883]

Yup I've already thought of that. I downloaded, md5-checked and burned Knoppix. Just in case

Now all I got to do is find time... With school and a girlfriend taking up a lot of my time... I figure I'll need at least one full day (for a stage 3 install + the factor of me being a n00b ) to get a running system...

[clucas916]

good luck. and if you get stuck during your install, get on IRC and go to #linuxforums and ask one of us

[Dapper Dan]

With school and a girlfriend taking up a lot of my time... I figure I'll need at least one full day (for a stage 3 install + the factor of me being a n00b ) to get a running system...

If you're gonna run Gentoo, you might want to go ahead and dump your girl friend and drop out of school.

[maol9883]

Ok I\m almost done with the installation but I encountered three problems. I'm running a stage 3 install...

1. When I try to emerge "slocate" It tries to access the internet and since I can't access the internet I can't emerge slocate

# emerge slocate

2. Same as above but for "dhcpcd". Since I'm on a network using DHCP I need "dhcpcd" according to the install-guide (otherwise I can't access the internet). As with "slocate" it tries to access the internet ----> nothing happens

# emerge dhcpcd

3. I managed to type in the wrong path for "real_root" in the grub.conf so now I can't run Gentoo properly.

This is what I typed in: ... real_root=/dev/

I believe it's supposed to be (in my case): ... real_root=/dev/hda4

How do I get access to the grub.conf file so that I can correct the error and how do I emerge "slocate" and "dhcpcd" without internet connection, all the other packages emerged without internet (I assume that both "slocate" and "dhcpcd" are on the install-CD otherwise they would tell me right?)?

Good this is XP works so I can carry on with my other business until further, but it would be nice to get Gentoo running as well

[maol9883]

Fixed the grub issue!

But ran into other problems apart from those concering emerge. I can't seem to su into root and Gentoo won't mount my nvidia or keymap during startup. It just says it failed.