Installation of Red Hat and Win xp on same computer

[mankai]

I have decided to install RHEL(Red Hat Enterprise Linux) and Win xp sp 2 onto my pc,which has a 10 gb hdd. Please tell me how do i go about partitioning my disk drive, the required formats for each OS and also their sequence of installation (like what do i have to install first,linux or xp). I would also like to know about the format(s) that can be accessed by both Red hat and Win xp, because i would like to convert the remaining hd space to this format. Please tell me about the Disk Druid utility and how to use it.

Please do mention if i have to use any 3rd party partitioning software and where i can download it from.

Thank you

Regards...Brandon

PS.:I'm thinking of creating two 2 gb partitions and installing the os's onto each one. The rest of the 5-6gb shall be converted to the common format ( i guess its FAT or FAT16, but i'm not sure) The confusion arises about the sequence. My colleagues say that RHEL should be installed first. But some sites online say windows xp should be installed first. I'm in a dilemma and want this clarified.Thanks

[s7p9a2m4]

Windows must be installed FIRST on the first primary partition C:. Then go ahead and install linux. Linux will install it's bootloader to the mbr making an easy dual boot setup for you. It is much safer to have windows on the first partition C: in case of technical difficulties.

If you install linux first and then windows, you will not be able to boot linux because windows will overwrite the linux bootloader.

10 gigs is barely enough to install both operating systems. You will have very little room left for data.

You should have 10 gigs for Xp and 6 gigs for linux. You should have a separate partition formatted as fat 32, so that you can access the data with both operating systems.

You can do the partitioning in the Xp install or during the Red Hat install.

[Labora]

yeah... I remember times when Linux BlackCat just released..
Linux systems of our days are not so nice
It was really text-based systems, without graphics (just a little),
it was very interesting for me - working with my favourite "Cat" ver.6
hhmmm.. nothing to do. These times can not never comes again.

[sunlightforme]

I want to tell u that i have done the same thing yestreday but i used two separate hard disks. I installed win xp first on 160 gb hard disk and then linux on 40 gb hard disk. Then i was able to boot red hat linux 9 successfully but i was unable to boot to xp. I installed GRUB on MBR.
So i think u shouldn't go further without consulting any genius. If u want to proceed i suggest u to install GRUB loader on 1st partition of linux.Otherwiswe it may happen that u will not be able to boot either of the system. I am also doing the same so if i get any progress iw ill inform u.

[onespeedreed]

sunlightforme.

Installing Grub to the mbr is the standard. Some linux operating systems do not give you another choice.

If you install the boot loader to the root partition of linux you will leave the xp bootloader intact but you will not boot linux.

The xp bootloader is capable of booting linux but its a fairly complex setup.

Why grub chose not to boot your windows installation is a mystery.

[lucky_chouhan]

create 3 partitions
1. PRIMARY (For Windows)
2. LOGICAL (THEN LOGICAL CREATE 2 PARTITION)
Note : You can also create 3 Partition like C D & Ext2 - C = winxp, D = win2000, Ext2 = Linux)

IN LOGICAL 1 FOR DATA AND 1 FOR LINUX (THIS IS EXT2)
LINUX ASK WHICH DRIVE YOU WANT TO INSTALL THEN SELECT EXT2 DRIVE
AND SELECT AUTOMATICALLY PARTITION IT CREATE 3 PARTITION
1. SWAP 2. ROOT 3. HOME

AFTER INSTALL IT ASK YOU WANT TO OVERWRITE MBR ON GRUB SELECT YES FINISHED.
AFTER REBOOTED MENU IS ENABLE
1. DOS (THIS IS YOUR XP)
2. LINUX (THIS IS YOUR RH9)

Partition Magic is use for Hole Process of the partitions.
(This is My Setup :- C:\Winxp, D:\Win2003, Ext2:\Redhat4AS)

[Embolism]

Latest linux distros have NTFS support so no need to partition in fat volumes as both can be NTFS,which allows for greater folder size and write ability,especially with dvd writers.
10 gb is about right for 1 operating system for 2 it`s pretty pointless except as an engineering excersise,as windows is 2+gb and Linux is about 1.6 gb+ swap 1 gb so before you have started and without updates and service packs you are almost 5gb down to start with.
It is easily done but not very practical!!
you may consider getting a second hard drive to give you some storage capacity before very long. (:^D)
You have a couple of different partition managers which will do the job,anaconda usually does it for me without problems though.good luck.

[Embolism]

Partitioning seems to frighten a lot of people so here is a Tip,instead of going out of your way to pay or download other softwares some of which could potentially threaten your systems.
I personally endorse Gparted or any parted managers (aparted I believe in Kanotix),they are free,partitioning is a snap for either windows or Linux,they actually prompt you so you cannot really FUBAR your HDD ,unlike some other managers.
They have a decent user GUI and are open source,spyware free and gratis.
For all open source take a look in sourceforge.net under projects/system,although have a good look about at games and comms and lots of other things.
Sourceforge is a development site for applications under the GNU license and is a good place to help out and start projects,one of my own contributions is responsible for PARG`s IRC plugin for decentralised torrents,taken from an idea I had regarding security offered by the fact that the irc nodes open and close behind making tracking impossible,hence if an application could send and receive through this method much could be accomplished through many machines.Had the idea from antsp2p the application was dead slow compared to modern torrenting ,but the security applications showed promise so I had a talk with its developer and he had Paul Graham set to doing the plugin,its been in use in azureus/Vuze for several years now.