Windoze... why?

 

Sometimes, you will want to upgrade the BIOS on your motherboard.  For some motherboards, this can only be done in Windows.  There is also, occasionally, some utility to being able to boot Windows on a Linux system.

 

So if you want a system that has:

 

- A full Slackware Development system

- Windows XP

- Cache drive for unRAID

- Swap partition of Linux

 

Here are the (abbreviated) instructions:

 

First, make sure you have a bootable DVD drive.

Install a hard drive that will be your CACHE drive for unRAID.  Put it on a controller port that can be booted, and set your BIOS to boot this drive.

 

Boot DOS from CD or floppy

====================

Run fdisk /mbr

Run fdisk and wipe out entire partition table

 

 

Boot Slackware from Slackware DVD

====================

Run fdisk and create 4 partitions:

 

1. Linux (for cache)

2. Windows

3. Swap

4. Linux (for Dev)

 

Set #2 active (bootable)

 

Boot WinXP for CD

====================

Install Windows to #2

 

Boot Slackware DVD

====================

Make #4 active (bootable)

Run Sackwarre setup.

Create swap on #3

Make #4 your root fs.

Format #1 with reiser

 

DO NOT INSTALL LILO TO MBR!  Install it to the Linux root partition (option 1).

 

Proceed with complete Slackware install.

 

Reboot.  Lilo should give you option to boot Windows (default) or Linux.  Boot Linux and change lilo.conf to make Linux the default if you want.

 

Congrats!  Now you can use the Wiki instructions to add unRAID to the Linux system and build a new kernel.

Hi

 

This makes a lot of sense.  I have a 1TB drive that I am using for cache.  Now that I have moved my files to the the server I will not need this amount of space.  How well does this work with 4.7?  I inquired on another thread and they said multiple partitions on the cache drive wasn't working well yet. 

 

This raises another question.  My cache drive was formatted NTFS.  I converted it to completely for unRaid yet it shows that there are two partition sdc (no space) and sdc1 with 1TB.

 

When converting a NTFS disk for Linux should I first run fdisk before I put it into my array?

 

What is the purpose of the swap partition?

 

Can I use a USB attached cd drive to load windows XP?

 

I have read that there is some software that will remove a lot of XP components, I don't recall the name right now, but is this an option?

 

Tunetyme

newbie 

How well does this work with 4.7?  I inquired on another thread and they said multiple partitions on the cache drive wasn't working well yet. 

Multiple partitions on the cache drive have always been permitted.  I think the 1st partition is used for the cache drive, the others "were" ignored, up until the 5.0b6 release, where its re-write  of the disk allocation and assignment scheme broke the ability to have multiple partitions.  (It will not recognize it as valid and re-partition it with a single partition)

 

That bug should probably be fixed in the next release of unRAID.  So, if on 4.7 with multiple partitions on the cache drive, DO NOT upgrade to 5.0b6a.

 

unRAID will format the first partition on the disk as reiserfs for use as the cache drive.

 

That bug should probably be fixed in the next release of unRAID.  So, if on 4.7 with multiple partitions on the cache drive, DO NOT upgrade to 5.0b6a.

 

unRAID will format the first partition on the disk as reiserfs for use as the cache drive.

 

Has this been fixed in the current beta (14) ? I tried to search the forums for more info but this old post was the most relevant recent item i could find on the matter.