Multi-booting Solaris and other operating systems

V.6 Two hard disks, Solaris, Linux, Windows NT, Windows 98

Overview

As usually, there are many possible ways to install the system which satisfies criteria given in the title of this section. Exceptionally, we present two of them instead of one.

There are two hard disk drives on the machine and the following operating systems are installed: Solaris, Linux, Windows NT, Windows 98. In the first - Variant A Solaris boot manager is used to boot all systems, in the second - Variant B, Linux Loader LILO.

Partitioning - Variant A

Hard disks will be partitioned as follows (proportions are meaningless):

HDD-1

1. Primary - FAT-32
Windows 98


2. Primary - NTFS
Windows NT


3. Primary - Solaris UFS
Solaris
active

4. Primary - Linux ext2fs
Linux

HDD-2

1. Primary - Solaris UFS



2. Extended

		2.1. FAT-32

		2.2. Linux swap

		2.3. Linux ex2fs

		2.4. NTFS

		2.5. NTFS

Recipe - variant A

Connect hardware and configure BIOS, so that HDD-1 is the boot drive (see IV.1 for details).
Install Windows 98. Create one FAT-32 primary partition at the beginning of HDD-1. It should not exceed 1GB. It is enough to keep Windows 9x system files. Applications and user data may be stored on FAT-32 logical volumes within an extended partition (see notes on the size).
Install Windows NT. NT 4.0 will not recognize FAT-32 and Windows 98 installation contrary to W2K. In both cases create new primary partition and construct NTFS file system. It need not to be large since applications and user data can go to logical volumes on HDD-2.
Create one Solaris primary partition on HDD-1 and one on HDD-2. Leave some room for Linux and Windows.
Install Solaris.
Install Linux creating the fourth primary partition. This partition should start before 1024-th cylinder of the disk to make Linux possible to boot by the BIOS. This partition will be addressed by /dev/sda4. Take care not to destroy Solaris partition as Linux swap partition has the same ID - 0x82. Create an extended partition on HDD-2. Within that partition make FAT volume for data exchange, Linux swap partition and additional partition for /home file system. Linux swap will be /dev/sdb6 and home /dev/sdb7. See notes on Linux installation in V.2.
Install LILO into /dev/sda4.
Using Linux fdisk make Solaris partition active to instruct BIOS to load Solaris boot manager at the system boot up.
With NT Disk Administrator create NTFS volumes on HDD-2 for applications and user data. Assign drive letters according to your likes.
With Windows 98 fdisk and format utilities, or W2K Disk Administrator create FAT-32 volume on HDD-2 if necessary. Keep in mind there could be problems with mounting these FAT volumes under Solaris.
Under Solaris, create /share directory, and add the following line:
```
/dev/dsk/c0t1d0p2:c	-	/share	pcfs	-	yes	-
```
to /etc/vfstab file to mount FAT volume at boot up (see notes on mounting FAT partitions).
Under Linux, create /share directory, and add the following line:
```
/dev/sdb5	/share	vfat	user,rw,exec	0	0
```
to /etc/fstab file.

LILO as the default boot manager - variant A

Boot Linux.

Edit /etc/lilo.conf as in the example:

boot=/dev/sda 
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
compact
prompt
timeout=50
image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.0.39
	label=linux
	root=/dev/sda3
	read-only
other=/dev/sda1
	label=win98 
other=/dev/sda2
	label=nt
other=/dev/sda3
	label=solaris

Run as root /sbin/lilo to apply changes (see notes on LILO configuration).

Partitioning - Variant B

HDD-1

1. Primary - FAT-32
Windows 98


2. Primary - NTFS
Windows NT
active

3. Extended

		3.1. FAT-32

		3.2. NTFS

		3.3. NTFS

HDD-2

1. Primary - Solaris UFS
Solaris
active

2. Primary - Linux ext2fs
Linux


3. Extended

		3.1. Linux swap

		3.2. Linux ex2fs

Recipe - variant B

Connect hardware and configure BIOS so that HDD-1 is the boot drive (see IV.1 for details).
Install Windows 98 (see variant A step 2).
Install Windows NT (see variant A step 3).
With NT Disk Administrator create an extended partition on HDD-1. Within that partition create FAT-32 volume for data exchange, and NTFS volumes for applications and user data. Assign drive letters according to your likes.
Change BIOS boot sequence to boot from HDD-2 (do not swap cables).
Create Solaris primary partition on HDD-2 leaving some room for Linux.
Install Solaris. After selecting the disk for Solaris software installation, which in our case is HDD-2, you will be given an option to either: let Solaris to configure the boot device, or select it manually. Actually, both methods lead to the same result - the boot path for Solaris is not setup properly. It can be setup through the Boot Tasks in the DCA later.
Install Linux (see variant A step 5). Install LILO into /dev/sdb i.e. into MBR of HDD-2.

Configure LILO as follows (see notes on LILO configuration):

boot=/dev/sdb 
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
compact
prompt
timeout=50
image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.0.39
	label=linux
	root=/dev/sdb2
	read-only
other=/dev/sda1
	label=win98 
other=/dev/sda2
	label=nt
other=/dev/sdb1
	label=solaris

Under Linux, create /share directory, and add the following line:
```
/dev/sda5	/share	vfat	user,rw,exec	0	0
```
to /etc/fstab file.
Under Solaris, create /share directory, and add the following line:
```
/dev/dsk/c0t0d0p3:c	-	/share	pcfs	-	yes	-
```
to /etc/vfstab file to mount FAT volume at boot up (see notes on mounting FAT partitions).

NT Loader as the default boot manager - variant B

Reboot to BIOS setup and change boot sequence to boot from HDD-1.
Boot NT.
Use Bootpart program to add Windows 98, Solaris and Linux entries to the NT Loader menu.

Remarks: For IDE drives use hda instead of sda and drop t0, t1. If HDD-1 is SCSI and HDD-2 IDE, then HDD-1 is addressed by c1t0d0 and HDD-2 by c0d0.