58 lines
2.5 KiB
HTML
58 lines
2.5 KiB
HTML
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<TITLE> Managing Multiple Operating Systems HOWTO: System requirements:</TITLE>
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<H2><A NAME="s4">4. System requirements:</A></H2>
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<P>BIOS - Any bios that allows automatic identification of disk drive
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geometry and allows you to select the sequence of devices to boot from
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should work. I successfully built systems based on both PhoenixBIOS
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4.0 and AMI Plug and Play Flash BIOS.
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<P>
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<P>DISKS - One fixed internal disk dedicated to Linux. (first disk)
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One Removable drive enclosure, with any number of drives. (second disk)
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<P>
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<P>Since a lot of this HOWTO has to do with disks, from now on I will
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generally use the terms "first disk" and "second disk". The first disk is the
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one initially accessed when the machine is turned on, commonly known as the
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boot disk. It has LILO installed in the MBR and is dedicated to a single
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operating system, specifically Linux. The second disk is a removable disk
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that contains one or more alternative operating systems which may or may not
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have a boot loader in the MBR or elsewhere.
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<P>
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<P>There are no other hardware/firmware requirements. Any other
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requirements would be dictated by the specific O/S. For instance, even
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though you could install it, Solaris 7 is not going to run well on an
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old 90MHz machine! The configuration and methodology described here
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should however work equally well regardless of the CPU speed or other
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installed peripherals.
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<P>
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<P>Operating Systems - I have tested this process with Linux (Redhat
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and Suse), Solaris 7, BeOS, Win 98 and even MSDOS 6.22. I see no reason
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why it wouldn't work with Win 95, O/S 2, or FreeBSD. I am not familiar
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with Windows NT or 2000 so I don't know how they would react to this
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kind of setup.
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<P>
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<P>Boot loader - I used LILO on the first disk and BeOS bootman on the
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second disks. I used LILO on the first disk because it was the only
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boot loader that allowed me to select the MBR on the second disk as an
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acceptable boot partition. Any relatively robust boot loader should
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work on the second disk.
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