ctsolutions Posted July 10, 2003 Share Posted July 10, 2003 I'm setting up a new server just for my own testing purposes/playground with the goal of eventually offering my clients the valuable tech service of helping them extricate themselves from** Because I need a Windows server testing environment as well, I intend to have a dual-boot system. FYI: I have a strong Windows admin background and no linux experience. I'm still trying to decide whether to use Mandrake or Red Hat. Any opinions on which I should use is appreciated, particularly insight on the suitability of their server products for a small business environment which does not have a full-time tech onsite, as I'm a consultant and am only there periodically.Another concern is which should be installed first - Linux or Windows? And should I use one tool to create all the partitions, or use Windows' tool for the NTFS patition(s) and something else for the Linux? I read something in Fred Langa's list recently about a partition manager that handles all common Windows and Linux partition types...I appreciate your input - this whole area is off my current map. Cheers,Melissa Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peachy Posted July 10, 2003 Share Posted July 10, 2003 Melissa,I would install the Windows server first. I would recommend installing Red Hat 8.0 or Red Hat 9 as there is a whole lot more information in books and on the internet about setting up a Linux server using Red Hat. You can use fdisk to create the partitions, just remembering that you need to set aside just an empty extended partition which the Linux install will partition for you. You can then use GRUB to dual boot Windows and Linux. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruno Posted July 10, 2003 Share Posted July 10, 2003 Hi MelissaWelcome to the Linux side of the forum !As for your questions: You should install Windows first, that is a golden rule, just leave enough free space open on your HDD and do not format it at all.Then install Linux, my choice would be Mandrake, ( I´d advice every new Linux user Mandrake ) it comes with Apache server software so there you´re in great hands.The installer of Mandrake will look for the free space and format it to a Linux filesystem of choice ( ext3 is the best we can advice at the moment )If you have a clean HDD to start with, you do not need a third party partition software, just prevent Windows from taking over the whole disk that´s all.For all you other questions about installing Mandrake we have enough expertise here to take you step by step through the install . . . . a thing actualy not really needed because it is pretty staight forward. I´m just saying: don´t be afraid to ask !! Bruno Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teacher Posted July 10, 2003 Share Posted July 10, 2003 There you have it! Peachy from Canada for Red Hat and Bruno from Amsterdam for Mandrake. I have been playing in Linux this summer trying to learn as much as I can. I like Mandrake. It is not hard to learn. However, here in the US, 90% of what you find information about is Red Hat. With the forum, you can go a long ways, so pick one and run with it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
havnblast Posted July 10, 2003 Share Posted July 10, 2003 ~whispers Knoppix~ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henderrob Posted July 10, 2003 Share Posted July 10, 2003 My personal preference is Mandrake and with the internet it really doesn't matter which is US or Int'l. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BarryB Posted July 10, 2003 Share Posted July 10, 2003 ~whispers Knoppix~ Hee Hee...like that..could add SuSE 8.2 Pro too Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruno Posted July 10, 2003 Share Posted July 10, 2003 Don´t want to add to the confusion, but Peachy is right RedHat has a very good name on the server market ( uses Apache too ).Both RedHat and Mandrake are 'easy' distro´s, both have the KDE and Gnome GUI.The choice is up to you . . . don´t want to burn my fingers in a distro-war, but Knoppix ( Debian ) is just to hard for someone taking her/his first steps in Linux. BrunoPS: You could always try them both . Also there is a ¨LIVE¨ MINI CD based on Mandrake 9.1, so you can see what it looks and feels like without installing it on HD ( runs directly from CD ) have a look Here Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prelude76 Posted July 11, 2003 Share Posted July 11, 2003 not that i'm biased (don't look at my avatar, don't look at my avatar ), but consider SuSE.They have a Enterprise Server edition. I just have the Pro version, but heard good stuff about their Server edition, though it's a bit pricey. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
havnblast Posted July 11, 2003 Share Posted July 11, 2003 Ran across this article today - FYI SuSE Linux plans to start shipping its Linux-based Standard Server 8 software worldwide in September.The German software vendor, a founding member of the UnitedLinux distributor consortium, will present a beta version of the new server software on Tuesday at the LinuxTag exhibition and conference in Karlsruhe, Germany, company spokesman Christian Egle said Wednesday."We also plan to present the software to users in the U.S. in the coming weeks before we start shipping it in September," he said. "We're in the final stages of testing the product."Standard Server 8 software is designed for small and medium-size enterprises and organizations, SuSE said Wednesday in a statement. The software will be available for 32-bit processors (x86) from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Intel. It will support up to two CPUs.The software package, which includes installation and system support, will cost about €450 ($509) in retail outlets, SuSE said Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fraser Posted July 11, 2003 Share Posted July 11, 2003 Melissa,You can do a multi-boot setup, with several versions of Windows + Linux - if you have the disc space. And if you intervene a bit during the various Windows installs.Here's how I set up a Win98se + Win2000 Pro + Redhat 7 on a single computer with 8GB hard drive. I built this as a workshop machine to help test customers' gadgets and various other bits & pieces. - FIRST install was Win98 onto the blank HD. You need to interrupt Setup's disc-partitioning procedure....tell it you DON'T want to use the entire drive. Instead make it create a primary partition of the size you want (in my case 2GB), to make it "active" (ie: bootable), and format it. Then continue with Win98 setup.Don't forget to remove Windows Scripting Host and Personal Webserver during the install. Unless you like sharing your system with every passing script kiddie... ;-) - SECOND install was Win2000 into a separate partition. It's not a good idea to install Win98 and Win2000 into the same partition and expect to run them both afterwards. Win2000 thinks it's doing an upgrade install and Win98 will complain that parts of itself are missing. Many other programs will get confused too. Put Win2000 into its own partition. Again, DON'T use all of the remaining drive space. I chose to use 3GB. I also chose to use FAT32 filesystem for Win2000 because I knew all 3 of the OSes could read/write files to it. The Win2000 version of NTFS was "read only" for Redhat 7 (they have since improved it), and of course invisible to Win98. I could foresee (correctly, as it turned out) that it would be convenient to access the Win2000 partition outside of that OS.The Win2000 install automatically detects the Win98 and adds a "Microsoft Windows" entry to the Win2000 start menu. If you select this, then -quickly- press F8 you will get the Win98 startup menu. Or leave it alone to start Win98 normally. Fire up the Win98 msconfig utility and tell it to "display the startup menu on every boot" if you like.In place of Win98 I could have used Windows 95 or Windows Me. I could also have substituted WinXP for 2000. Note that WinXP Pro, by default, installs itself to a partition that uses its own modified version of NTFS. If you want to put XP Pro on a FAT32 partition, use the Win98 FDISK & FORMAT commands to create the partition first, then install XP Pro into it. I think WinXP Home offers the option of FAT32 or NTFS during its setup. - THIRD install was Redhat 7 into the remaining space on the drive. I was very lazy and simply did "/" and "swap" partitions, and installed practically everything from the CDs. Because I can hear all the Linux experts muttering "newbie twit" on reading that, I remind 'em this was a workshop and experimenting machine, never to be exposed to the public Internet...so there... ;-)Important note when installing the Redhat boot loader (lilo or grub, your choice). Install it to the Linux root partition NOT the Master Boot Record. Or you will overwrite the Windows boot sequence. Microsoft OSes have this selfish need to begin from the very start of the first disc!I used lilo; which automatically detected the Win2000 boot loader and added it to the lilo boot menu.My final boot sequence then became: - turn power on. - at the lilo prompt, press the Tab key to see all its choices. - if I did nothing, Redhat 7 would start. - if I typed in "windows", the Win2000 boot menu appeared. - from the Win2000 boot menu, choose either Win2000 or Win98. Default was Win2000. - if I chose Win98, its Startup Menu would appear. From which I could choose its various options.This setup worked quite well but it had a flaw. I had used one of those Fujitsu hard drives that turn dodgey after a couple of years. The boot procedure for this computer now begins with a firm WHACK on the hard drive during the power-on selftest! To the great amusement of my kids :-)cheers, Fraser Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nlinecomputers Posted July 11, 2003 Share Posted July 11, 2003 As most everyone up topic has said your going to have to install Windows first to get this to work. Windows isn't very flexable about where/how it can be installed and it has to have the first primary partition or it can't work.I've have run both Red Hat and Mandrake. Mandrake is far easier to learn detects hardware better and has more GUI based tools then Red Hat. It is also Red Hat based so most concepts and tools that apply for RH also work in drake. OTOH Red Hat support is top notch so if your planning on buying one RH servers they will move heaven and earth to help you.I can't say about SuSE. I got a copy off SuSE 8.1 from a PC PLUS.UK DVD. It looks polished but it had problems detecting my DVD player. It kept putting mulitple references to it in fstab and YaST YOU was confusing. I never could get it to download and install the Nvidia drivers for my system that it insisted I needed. It seemed as problem prone as any other distro and I saw no real advantanges so I went back to Mandrake. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peachy Posted July 11, 2003 Share Posted July 11, 2003 As most everyone up topic has said your going to have to install Windows first to get this to work. Windows isn't very flexable about where/how it can be installed and it has to have the first primary partition or it can't work.Nathan et al,That's not technically true. Most Windows OSes can boot from any primary partition whether it is the first or the fourth one in the hard drive. Under DOS/Win9x it can only assign the drive letter C: to one primary partition; the others will be hidden. Windows 2000/XP can and does see multiple primary partitions on a disk. It will assign drive letters to them by default. Windows NT 4.0 on the other hand cannot boot if it is installed on a partition that is beyond the cylinder 1024 and normally is installed in the first primary partition. Although Microsoft doesn't support this, it has been demonstrated that Windows 9x and apparently Windows 2000/XP can be booted from logical drives. I haven't successfully tried 2000/XP that way, but I have a number of computers that boot DOS/Win9x from a logical drive. There is a very good web site, Understanding MultiBooting and Booting Windows from an Extended Partition, that explains how to do this, and they use, XOSL, which is necessary if you want to boot from extended partitions, cleanly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nlinecomputers Posted July 11, 2003 Share Posted July 11, 2003 Peachy,All that is true but that means you've got to add a third party boot loader to the mix. I don't see much benifit unless you want to run more then one Microsoft OS on your box.Will GRUB or LILO support booting a M$ OS from someother point? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peachy Posted July 11, 2003 Share Posted July 11, 2003 (edited) Peachy,All that is true but that means you've got to add a third party boot loader to the mix. I don't see much benifit unless you want to run more then one Microsoft OS on your box.Actually, I use XOSL to multiboot SuSE 8.2 Pro, Red Hat 9 and Mandrake 9.1. Given enough disk space I can easily add more distros without the install messing up the others because I install GRUB/LILO in the boot partition of each distro and leave the MBR to XOSL.Will GRUB or LILO support booting a M$ OS from someother point?GRUB can (haven't tried it with LILO, but most likely it will). Before I installed XOSL on the lab computers at work, one of the IT guys was using GRUB to multiboot Red Hat 8.0, Windows XP, Windows 2000 Server and Windows 98SE. Windows XP was in the first primary, Windows 2000 in the second primary and Windows 98SE in the third primary. Red Hat occupied an entire extended partition, / and swap partition only.These lab computers now multiboot using XOSL with NT 4.0 Server on the first primary, Windows 2000 Server on the second primary, Windows XP on the third primary, Windows 98SE on the first logical partition, Red Hat 8.0 on the second logical partition (/), Linux swap on the third logical partition, and a bootable DOS partition on the fourth logical partition. I can easily add another Linux distro in the free space in the extended partition.The bootable DOS partition brings up a DOS menu that runs different command line switches for Ghost. Each Ghost line is tailored to connect to a multicast server on the network and load the appropriate OS in the correct partition. There's also a Ghost entry that will Ghost the entire disk with all the images intact. I can use a boot floppy with the Ghost client and automatically or manually dump individual partitions or the whole disk to the Ghost server. This is a very sweet setup that I perfected within a month of learning how to use XOSL. Now there are some caveats about using Ghost with Linux. Apparently, Ghost improperly restores Linux partitions that have GRUB/LILO installed on them if the images are compressed. You can get around this by imaging the Linux partitions by doing a sector-by-sector copy, which is a pain because that's much slower and doesn't give you compression. I lucked out though because very early on I somehow managed to create Red Hat image that was compressed and restored properly without having to reinstall GRUB. Subsequent installs I've tested don't have that ability so I'm stuck with using a Linux rescue disk to reinstall GRUB after a Linux Ghost session, or sector copying. Edited July 11, 2003 by Peachy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nlinecomputers Posted July 11, 2003 Share Posted July 11, 2003 Not sure I followed all that about Ghost: other then mashing up your copy of Grub the linux partitions are intact? I assume you have to put Lilo or Grub on the partition itself and not the MBR so each copy of GRUB/LILO doesn't know or reconize the other distros? Do you hide any of the partitions or does everyone see everyone (except Windows seeing Linux of course)? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peachy Posted July 11, 2003 Share Posted July 11, 2003 (edited) Actually, I use XOSL to multiboot SuSE 8.2 Pro, Red Hat 9 and Mandrake 9.1. Given enough disk space I can easily add more distros without the install messing up the others because I install GRUB/LILO in the boot partition of each distro and leave the MBR to XOSL.Yes, the Linux boot loaders are installed in the Linux partitions themselves and not in the MBR. Ghost by default will try to patch GRUB and LILO put it will fail. Only a sector-by-sector copy of the partition can be restored without wiping out GRUB/LILO. Everything else in the Linux partition is intact, otherwise.XOSL lets you hide partitions when booting from Windows OSes (it doesn't do this for Linux, which is not necessary anyway.) So, each of your Windows OSes can boot, believing it is the C: drive! Edited July 11, 2003 by Peachy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nlinecomputers Posted July 11, 2003 Share Posted July 11, 2003 XOSL lets you hide partitions when booting from Windows OSes (it doesn't do this for Linux, which is not necessary anyway.) So, each of your Windows OSes can boot, believing it is the C: drive!Oooh.... Me like this idea. Thanks for the tip. Now look what you have done. There goes my whole weekend, cuz now I'll have to set up a box to play with this on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peachy Posted July 11, 2003 Share Posted July 11, 2003 Nathan,Just figured out why you were confused. I mean XOSL was installed in the MBR, not LILO. Fixed.Sorry about your weekend. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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