how to set up a dual boot system

[Roland Smith]

On Sun, Feb 13, 2005 at 05:40:13PM -0500, Marty Landman wrote:
> I have a box with 3 ide's
> 
> primary master - 4 gb, win 98 currently installed @ 150 mb in size
> 
> primary slave - 4 gb, empty
> 
> secondary slave - 6 gb, empty
> 
> Can I install fbsd (5.2) and set up dual booting from where I'm at now? Or 
> should I install win 98 after fbsd? Also will I need to dedicate an entire 
> 4 or 6 gb ide to win 98? A quarter gb would be plenty for my intended use 
> of windows.

You can install FreeBSD on any harddisk. If you want dual-boot, you'll
need to install a boot manager. FreeBSD comes with one. This boot
manager is also necessary if you want to install FreeBSD on any but the
first drive. See §2.5 of the FreeBSD handbook, available on the website.

You should read at least chapter 2 of the FreeBSD manual _before_
starting the install.

Usually it's best to install Windows first, because it will overwrite
the master boot record anyway.

If you want to install FreeBSD on the first drive, you have to make room
for it. That means you need empty space not assigned to any partition,
or partitions that you are willing to give to FreeBSD. I think the
standard for Windows is to take the entire disk, so you'd have to shrink
the windows partition or repartition the disk and reinstall windows on a
new partition. There are free tools like parted available to resize FAT
partitions.


Hope this helps,

Roland
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