Linux and XP

[Kills On Site]

Is there any way to have linux and XP on the same machine with out the linux boot be seen normally. There is a computer that has 60 GB of unallocated space and I would like to put Linux on it. The only thing is that it has to not appear to have linux on it. It has to boot to XP normally without showing the XP boot loader. Perhaps boot to linux by pressing Ctrl+Alt or F8 or something.

[Scourge]

Lemme guess. Linux and 50 someodd gigs o porn? Not sure if you can hide the boot option or not. Consulting my linux guru brother.

[Underpants?]

I assume you've already got a working copy of XP running tits and don't want to disturb anything? Take a look at this:

http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux/gr ... HOWTO.html

and

http://hacks.oreilly.com/pub/h/2337

[Scourge]

I don't see anywhere in there explaining how to 'hide' the linux boot option. Unless I missed something there.

[Underpants?]

well I reckon you just add the boot.ini line every time you need to use the linux then simply reboot or just set the timeout to 0 in your startup so that the option doesn't show itself during boot.

[dzjepp]

Yup. Editing the timeout to 0 should not show the boot select menu. Just use f8 whenever you want it to show up.

[Scourge]

My brother suggests: "install grub to a cdrom instead of hd, then when he wants to boot linux put the disk in and it will display grub menu"

Also gave me this

From the Grub manual:

Something else you could try, if you think this would be too slow, is to
hide grub/lilo and have it give you about, say, two seconds to press a
key to unhide the boot menu. The default would boot WinXP and your wife
might not notice a two second delay.

Hiding grub, as far as I know is as simple as uncommenting a line in the
grub configuration file, which is located in /boot/grub/menu.lst

Here's an example file, running under Ubuntu "Hoary Hedgehog" Preview.
Check the timeout on the third line.

# Generated by grubconf-0.5.1
default=0
timeout=2

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.10-4-386
#:2 - type: 0 => linux, 1 => windows, 2 => other
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.10-4-386 root=/dev/hda1 ro
## quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.10-4-386
savedefault
boot
title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.10-4-386 (recovery mode)
#:2 - type: 0 => linux, 1 => windows, 2 => other
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.10-4-386 root=/dev/hda1 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.10-4-386
savedefault
boot
title Ubuntu, kernel memtest86+
#:2 - type: 0 => linux, 1 => windows, 2 => other
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
savedefault
boot

When your terminal is dumb or you request GRUB to hide the menu interface explicitly with the command hiddenmenu (see hiddenmenu), GRUB doesn't show the menu interface (see Menu interface) and automatically boots the default entry, unless interrupted by pressing <ESC>.

13.1.3 hiddenmenu
— Command: hiddenmenu

Don't display the menu. If the command is used, no menu will be displayed on the control terminal, and the default entry will be booted after the timeout expired. The user can still request the menu to be displayed by pressing <ESC> before the timeout expires. See also Hidden menu interface.

the command "hiddenmenu" needs to be at top of grub where the timeout line and default line islike this

default=0
timeout=2
hiddenmenu


Which is pretty much what Undies suggested.

[AmIdYfReAk]

i know there is a way to make it boot off of a Floppy, i dont remember how i did it before ( it was a few years back ) and i did the same

[Scourge]

i know there is a way to make it boot off of a Floppy, i dont remember how i did it before ( it was a few years back ) and i did the same

One way is in the first link Underpants? posted under the dual-boot section, step 3.

[AmIdYfReAk]

i should start reading topic's before i reply...

[Kills On Site]

I was thinking about using GAG. I could put it on a floppy and then insert the floppy to get the choice. If I recall, to use this with Fedora Core 5 and Windows Vista I had to tell Fedora to install GRUB on the first part of the linux partition, as opposed to in the MBR or not at all. However, my distro of choice is a Knoppix, prolly Games Knoppix, or perhaps Fedora, but I have had some glitches with Fedora Core 5. I noticed that Fedora Core 6 is out, any word on how much it is improved over Fedora Core 5? I also have oddles of disks of Ubuntu.

[AmIdYfReAk]

i am running core 6 atm, and it has a nice amount of new stuff to be truthfully with you..

the Gui and setup is a little diffrent ( more control pannel like ) And the installer package has a larger database so you dont need to hunt around for random RPM's to try and get shit installed.

i am not sure what else i can say about it though.

[Kills On Site]

Well I installed Vista RC1 and FC6 and let the Windows MBR remain and told FC6 to install GRUB on the first part of the linux. By the way, this is on a computer of my own, just to test it out. It worked fine but then I updated all of FC6 (don't think that did it) I also was playing around and opened up a program called Kickstart, I don't think I saved anything or changed anything, but I might have. Then the next time I booted the MBR went to GRUB and loaded FC6. Do you guys think that Kickstart messed that up?

[^misantropia^]

Quite likely. kickstart is a utility to automate RH/FC installations. If you omit the action to be taken for an installation step, it tries to pick a (hopefully) sensible default. Such as making the linux partition bootable.

[^misantropia^]

The fix is pretty trivial btw. As root:

fdisk /dev/hda # Or whatever your main hard drive is called
p
a
1 # Or whatever partition needs to be bootable
w