From: Cottrell, Eric (ecottrell_at_doble.com)
Date: Mon Jul 01 2002 - 15:27:26 EDT
Hello,
I decided to go with Windows 2000 and Linux when I upgraded to a 30 GB drive
recently.
Getting Win2k and Linux to play together was easier than I thought. I did
have fun trying
to figure out how to get the configuration I wanted. I wanted a small fat
boot patition, a
NTFS system patition, a NTFS apps patition, and a NTFS data patition.
The first hurdle was getting the small boot patition as this was not plainly
documented.
It is obvious but I have learnt that Microsoft does not always go the
obvious path 8->.
Install W2k to the big NTFS D: drive and the install will put some of the
boot files on
the C: drive. I started with a 550 MB boot patition and decided to shrink
it. This
messed up the NT boot and I could not recover from it. It appears changing
from
a fat16 to fat12 confused things and put a zero length patition entry in
W2k's patition list.
Even with the right patition number specified in the boot ini file it would
not boot!
I had to reinstall. My new C: partition is about 15 MB which may be too
small.
I was able to test out the patition image software for linux
(http://www.partimage.org).
It does not handle fat12 patition (W2k Boot) but I was able to use the dd
program instead.
I guess I should have made the boot patition 50 MB or so. I made a bootable
CD with
the W2k boot and system patitions as well as disk patition information on
it. I was able
to boot and restore the patitions. It is neat to have a bootable CD that
can easily restore
the system. I made a image of the installed and updated system patition
before I added
applications so I can go back and start from a clean W2k system. This is
not really a
"Plug and Play" solution (is anything really?) but I can apply the same
procedures to
all my systems and burn CDs.
One feature of patition image that is really neat is the save and restore
across
a network. I am thinking of using a computer as an "image server".
Possibly
I can burn a DVD of image files from that server to free up disk space and
mount
a restore DVD on the server to restore across the network. It will be
better when
I get DVD drives on all my systems that can read DVD-R and DVD-RW disks.
The network solution is not too bad an alternative.
So far I am happy with Win2000 (as far as you can be with a M$ product 8->).
I am
starting to use linux some more with the current project being an IMAP mail
server
with SPAM filtering and server side sorting of messages into folders. This
will allow
me to use the Thinkpad 600 or any of my other computers to read mail without
having
to keep the mail filters on each machine in sync. I am learning about
procmail
and found a good program called SpamAssassin to filter spaml. This stuff is
not plug and
play but it is interesting learning how email works.
73 Eric ecottrell_at_doble.com
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