Stephen Hill Oct 2000
PLEASE
NOTE: This is simply a set of notes about how I setup my Picturebook. There is no guarantee at all that the same
will work for you. If you’re not confident you can get yourself out of trouble
if something screws up then just please stick with the Windows installation
which came with the computer or get someone who knows more to help.
I’ve got
Linux and Win98 to dual boot on a Sony PCG-C1XD Picture book. This is the
European name for the C1XS Picture Book.
Whenever I get a new computer the first thing I do is reinstall the
OS. I do this just to make sure that I can do it again should the need
arise. It's a way to make sure that the
computer came with all the necessary manuals, installation disks and drivers
whilst the company that sold it to me still has a vague interest in helping me
make it work. I didn’t really want to
pay the extortionate price Sony wanted for the bootable VAIO PCMCIA CD-ROM
drive. Especially as I have a perfectly good USB CD-RW already. I also didn’t want to have to copy windows
onto hundreds of floppy disks. I did
have an ethernet PCMCIA card so I set out to do the installation entirely over
a network connection. This wasn’t
particularly difficult but it was a bit fiddly so I though I’d write down the
steps.
I should
point out there are probably easier ways to install a dual boot system, even
without buying Sony’s CDROM. I
deliberately wanted to install everything from scratch to make sure I could do
it. If you’re not afflicted with this
sort of masochistic tendency, then you could use the preinstalled version of
windows, which is already on the computer to start you off. I imagine using partition magic or a similar
tool to repartition the drive whilst not destroying the original windows
installation would allow Linux to be installed without having to jump though
all the hoops below.
I decided
to install Redhat 6.2 (Standard Ed) even though 7.0 has just come out as there
isn’t much information on the web about getting X–4 (which comes with Redhat 7) up and running on the
Picturebook. This may have been over
cautious, but it worked!
Starting
from scratch, I couldn’t use my USB CD-RW drive as it only had drivers for
Win98. Windows is pretty hopeless at
installing from anything but CDROM. But, Linux is much better at pulling itself
up from its boot strings. So the plan
was to install Linux and then use that to help install Win98. Here are the
basic steps:
1)
Re-partition
the hard drive to give two large partitions one Windows and one for Linux plus
an extra 640Mbyte (CDROM size)
partition.
2)
Install
Linux using a network install.
3)
Use
Linux to copy the VAIO Windows re-install CDROM onto the 640MByte partition
4)
Re-boot
from a DOS system disk and run the install program from the 640MByte partition.
NOTE: This works OK for the Sony re-install disk,
as this is an image file of what should be on the C: partition rather than a
Microsoft Windows install disk. I'm
note sure if a similar scheme could be used by somehow running the setup from
normal Windows installation disk.
1)
You
need:
·
Sony VAIO external floppy drive (supplied
with picture book)
·
a
PCMCIA Ethernet card which is recognised by Linux (I used a LinkSys EtherFast 10/100+56K modem card)
·
Another
Linux / Unix machine with an exported directory which can be mounted from Linux
installed on the Picturebook.
·
RedHat
6.2 installation CDROM image copied to exported directory
·
Sony
re-install CDROM image copied to exported directory
·
A
Bootable DOS/Win98 floppy with "format" executable copied on to it.
·
Linux
PCMCIA boot floppy (see Redhat installation guide for details about how to make
this)
2)
Plug
in network PCMCIA network Card, attach to network, plug in floppy drive, boot
from Linux PCMCIA floppy.
3)
At the
"Boot:" prompt type "text".
RedHat 6.2 should recognised my linksys card and moved straight on to the
"Choose a language" section.
Click though this and the keyboard
selection until you get to
"What type of media". Here
choose "NFS Image"
4)
At
"Configure TCP/IP" I used a
fixed I/P addresses as dynamic IP configuration didn’t work for. It might for you, but it depends on the
network you’re on.
5)
At
"NFS setup":
NFS server name: servername.domain.com (use
fully qualified name of server with exported directory)
Red Hat directory: /public/RedHat_Image (this is the path to the
exported directory on the server called "servername")
Getting the directory with the Redhat CDROM image properly exported was the
biggest pain of this whole procedure.
In the end I had to plug another Linux machine into the network and make
sure I could see the Redhat image from that before I got everything sorted out. Once I could see the image from the other
Linux machine the Picturebook picked it up with no more problems.
6)
"Installation
type" choose "CUSTOM"
7)
"Disk
setup" CHOOSE "fdisk" "edit"
I used the following partitions:
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/tmp/hda1 * 234 1467 9912105 c Win95 FAT32 (LBA)
/tmp/hda2 1 134 1076323+ 83 Linux
/tmp/hda3 135 151 136552+ 82 Linux
swap
/tmp/hda4 152 233 658665 c Win95 FAT32 (LBA)
8)
Write
updates and return to install.
9)
REBOOT
from DOS floppy
10) Format the two windows
partitions. From A: type
format c:
format d:
11) Write windows boot loaded into
master boot record. From A: type
fdisk /mbr
12) REBOOT from Linux pcmcia install
disk
Go through same steps as before only this time at "Disk Setup" just
select "done"
13) At "current Disk
Partitions" set mount points as follows
hda1 /win
hda2 /
hda4 /cdsize
14) "Choose Partitions to
Format" => "/dev/hda2 /"
15) "Lilo configuration" [I have to turn off linear mode]
Install boot loader on /dev/had Master Boot record
Installer should pick up windows on /dev/hda1 and linux on /dev/hda2
16) Carry on through installation. I
have to skip making a boot disk, as Linux didn’t recognise the Sony USB floppy.
I also skipped starting X as I figured I could go back a sort this out once
everything was installed.
17) In Linux Copy Sony install disk
image onto cdsize somehow (tar it, ftp it, untar it or setup nfs and copy it).
Make sure you use Sony CDROM 1
18) Shutdown and reboot from a dos
floppy.
19) Switch to drive d (type
"d:") then run
>d:
>cd sony
>restorer "c:" "d:\sony.img"
–v
(note: you need the double quotes)
20) Reboot and you should come up in
lilo with a option to start linux or dos.
Run dos the machine will Reboot – run dos again and your into win98 !
21) Now, if like me you had to skip
making the start up disk then it’s quite hard to get back to Linux. One way is to re-install it all over again.
Another is to use the pcmcia install disk to boot from but Type
"Boot: linux single root=/dev/hda2
initrd=" this should the allow you to run lilo to reinstall the linux/win98
dual boot loader.
That’s it …
hope it works for you as well as it did for me.