[CALUG] SuSE and Ubuntu dual boot

[Rajiv Gunja]

See, I dont beleive in sharing windows and linux partitions. If at all I
need to write, I have captive-ntfs installed, so I can mount the NTFS
partition with RW access. With Xandros as my desktop, I dont need to mount
the NTFS partitions, by default, they are mounted when the OS is installed
and made available to root. With some editing skills, we can get the normal
user to mount and use them too (vi on /etc/fstab).

The main reason I dont like sharing is that, a trojan, which is written for
a dual boot desktop, will see its way into linux from the shared fat32
partition.

As long as we keep windows and windows programs far from linux, we will be
safe.

For me, windows is not worth running on my computer, so it runs under VMware
only. So from VMware, I mount my local linux directories via samba.

Ofcourse, not many people can be without windows, neither can I. Since there
are certain programs which works only on windows.

-GGR


---
Rajiv G Gunja
System Analyst / Engg
SUN / AIX / HPUX / Linux Admin
IM: AOL / Yahoo / MSN : ggvrsn

On 10/22/05, Russell Evans <russell-evans at qwest.net> wrote:
>
> On Sat, 15 Oct 2005 08:13:49 -0400
> "Rajiv Gunja" <opn.src.rocks at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Lets assume that you have enough hard-disks available on your system.
> > For our example, lets say you have 60 GB HDD.
> > while installing Windows XP, carve up you disk into 4 partitions.
> > { Windows XP (20[OS only] + 20[data only]), suse (10) and Ubuntu (10)}
> > Next install SuSE on the 3rd partition making sure that you install
> > its boot loader into the MBR.
> > Next install Ubuntu on the 4th partition making sure that you install
> > the boot loader on the root partition and not the MBR.
> > SuSE should recognise the 3rd OS while rebooting for the 2nd time, if
> > not, you can point the LiLO config to the root partition and you will
> > have all 3 OSes installed and bootable.
>
> If you are not leaving room for a fat32 partition and a separate
> partition for /home for your Linux installs, you're not going to be
> efficient with your system.
>
> Linux support for writing to a ntfs file systems is getting there, MS
> windows writing to Linux is a lot worse. The easiest way to deal with
> file transfer between OS on a dual boot system is to have a fat32
> partition to keep your data on.
>
> For the MS side point either your My Documents folder to the partition
> or, if you are comfortable with regedit, edit the profileimagepath
> entry for your user id. If you do the regedit, you can then have your
> user's MS Windows home be separated from the MS OS file system much like
> having the separate /home partition in Linux.
>
> On the Linux side, you can mount the fat32 partition in your home
> directory as Documents or make a link to it if you let the install
> decide the mount point.
>
> You can use either the Windows boot loader or a standard linux
> distribution boot loader (grub, lilo) or a third party boot loader
> like xosl or gag http://www.ranish.com/part/xosl.htm
> http://gag.sourceforge.net/ to boot all your OS installs.
>
> You could use colinux on MS Windows to mount your Linux partitions and
> then use WinScp to move files around, you could setup the user space
> ntfs tools on Linux but the simplest way is just to have a fat32
> partition.
>
> I tried at one point to a have a dual boot laptop set up where both
> linux and ms windows used the same home partition. I wanted to use the
> same tools, sylpheed-claws, firefox, gaim, openoffice, with the same
> config files, and have my data files as well, so that it didn't matter
> what OS I was in, it would just be the same. I would be able to add
> email filters, bookmarks, openoffice templates, gaim contacts,
> firefox extensions, ... and it would be there in either OS. I would be
> able to find emails, documents, gaim logs, ... no mater what OS I
> received or created them in.
>
> I got some of it working before getting to the point where I
> wanted a working laptop again. I tried Thunderbird, Sunbird, and a few
> other tools as well. I think it can mostly be done. The mozilla
> software was the hardest as I needed to track down how to get the
> applications not to use the unique file naming structure. Updates,
> where an issue as well and I think the main reason I stopped working on
> it.
>
> If you can't abandon MS it might be worth looking into again as it has
> been a couple of years now since I tried it.
>
> Thank you
> Russell
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--

---
Rajiv G Gunja
System Analyst / Engg
SUN / AIX / HPUX / Linux Admin
IM: AOL / Yahoo / MSN : ggvrsn
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