Caldera OpenLinux 1.4 dual boot with Win98 on Pavilion 8570c

[JB_4]

Does the HP pavilion 8570c have any issues that would complicate a dual boot with Win98? I don't have a strong preference for Caldera Linux, it just happens to be what I have on hand..I'm sure any people posting to this will be quick to suggest a newer/different version of Linux. I'm having trouble partitioning the HD properly (19GB) with the Linux installation software. I tried Partition Magic without success. Help from any Pavilion or Caldera users (or anyone else for that matter) would be appreciated. A lot of the info I'm after is "beyond the scope" of the book that accompanied this Caldera distribution, mainly concerning partition placement/size and internet connection. Thanks for any help w/ this.

[Felix J. Liu]

I have an HP pavilion 8765C which dual boot to Win Me and
RedHat 7.0.

The first thing I did was to change the OS settings from "Win95/98" to "Other". Without this change my copy of Linux won't even finish booting from floppy disk after installation.

The complication of all this procedure is, after you finishes all the installations and install LILO on MBR, the HP recover CDs will refuse to work. (It can't identify your computer as an HP).

So, incase your Win98 crashes to the bottom, you need to have a copy of the windows' fdisk handy to erase the MBR by doing fdisk /mbr. Now if you change your OS setting back to Win98 you will be able to recover. Change back to "Other" afterwards. At this point you want to have your Linux boot diskette handy, because, without it you won't be able to boot Linux again. After you get into Linux, re-install Lilo, and you are done.

Hope this helps.

Felix

[JB_4]

thanks for the info Felix, I'll try that. could you post or email a copy of your partition table so I can have an idea of what it should look like. Thanks again

[Felix J. Liu]

JB:

Off the top of my head, here is what the partition scheme looks like:

(40GB, The first 8GB is within 1024 cylinders)

hda1: 7.5GB, fat32, Windows C:
hda2: 512 MB, ext2, /
hda3: 10GB, fat32, windows D:
hda4: extended partition
hda5: 128MB Linux swap (I have 128MB of RAM)
hda6: 4GB, ext2, /usr
hda7: 2GB, ext2, /var
hda8: 2GB, ext2, /opt
hda9: 2GB, ext2, /tmp
hda10: the rest, /home

I took the lasy way of equal sized for most of those Linux partitions. I am sure experts can suggest a more reasonable way to do it.

Hope this helps.

Felix