Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 14:09:22 -0400 (EDT) From: Jerry McAllister <jerrymc@clunix.cl.msu.edu> To: zzhang@cs.binghamton.edu (Zhihui Zhang) Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Install FreeBSD on a Windows XP box Message-ID: <200210241809.g9OI9Oq00693@clunix.cl.msu.edu> In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.4.21.0210241211001.834-100000@onyx> from "Zhihui Zhang" at Oct 24, 2002 12:13:12 PM
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> > > I have a machine preinstalled with Windows XP and I do not want to remove > it or reinstall it. Is there a way to install FreeBSD on the free space? I > do not have Partition Magic. Any free software out there that can > repartition without reinstallation? Thanks. There is a freeware utility that can do this with Microsloth file systems up through fat-32 but since it is XP and, probably, an NTFS partition, invest in a partition managing utility. I have used Partition Magic successfully and have seen BootItNG recommended. I haven't used BootItNG. Partition Magic is generally available in stores like Best Buy, etc. I would guess that BootItNG is also, but it can be had from: http://www.terabyteunlimited.com as well. Generally you want to squeeze the XP partition down to the front of the disk enough to give you what space you want for FreeBSD and have it make you an empty parition (called slice in FreeBSD PARLANCE) out of the rest of the space above it. Then you install FreeBSD in that empty slice. You will divide that FreeBSD slice up in to the FreeBSD partitions you will use for mountable filesystems and swap space. Note the difference in use of the term 'partition' between BreeBSD and MS. Choose to install the full boot manager when you do the FreeBSD install or get one of the other popular ones and install it. The FreeBSD boot manager will allow you to boot either OS just fine, but it does not know what to call XP on an NTFS system so it just labels it ?? in the selection menu. Some of the others are prettier and let you play with stuff a little more. Things to watch: Some older BIOSes will not boot stuff if the address is too high - around 8GB in most disks. It has to do with a cylinder counter not being large enough to count beyond 1024. Partition Magic warns you of where that point is on the disk when you partition it. Microsloth seems to like to have an extra partition or some kind of space at a high address on the disk that I don't know much about - seems to be some sort of scratch space. Make sure you don't wipe that out on a fully running system if it is there. Some vendors, such as Dell make their own sort of hidden space on the disk for their own maintenance utilities. I think that must be treated as a partition (slice) and protected from tinkering. Someone else can probably answer better on this. If you use Partition Magic and the MS stuff is an NTFS partition, you must first install Partition Magic, then make the two "rescue disk" floppies it tells you about (format two floppies ahead of time) and finally boot to the floppies and do the partition resizing from there. It doesn't seem to like to do it from the installed version on a running system - probably due to the scratch space thing I mention above, but it won't boot the rescue disk without the thing being installed, I guess as some sort of copy protection. I am guessing that BootItNG has to take care of similar housekeeping issues as the NTFS scratch space as well, but don't know how it goes about handling them. Now, of course, you can just have a complete separate disk for the FreeBSD installation if you like and you have the disk available. Then, forget all the Partition Magic or BootItNG stuff. Just make the second disk one big FreeBSD slice, divide it up in to appropriate FreeBSD partitions and then install FreeBSD in that. Still install the boot manager (which will still go in to the sector 0 MBR area of the first disk) so you can choose to boot either OS. ////jerry > > -Zhihui > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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