I have tried to install Suse Linux 10, from the DVD in the book "SUSE Linux
10 Unleashed" by Michael McCallister. I tried to install it on a separate
harddrive, not the main harddrive on which I have WindowsXP. According to
the book, "If YaST detects the presence of another operating system, it will
ask whether you want to replace that OS with SUSE Linux or dual boot both."
But it asked me no such thing. Perhaps it would have if I had tried to
install it onto the same harddrive with Windows, but that's not what I'm
doing. YaST did the "base installation" onto the second harddrive. Then,
as the book says it would do, it rebooted. But the book implies that, after
this reboot -- after, presumably, "all the packages" have been installed --
it would move on to creating the root user. But it does no such thing. It
simply goes back to square one -- offering me the chance to start the
installation all over again. If I bypass that, my pc boots to Windows. If
I remove the Linux DVD and reboot, it boots directly into Windows. It may
well be that the Linux base installation is properly installed in my second
harddrive, but my pc ignores it, and nowhere have I been given the option to
configure it for a dual-boot. Nor can I find a way to complete the Suse
Linux installation that presumably follows the "base installation". After
the base installation it simply reboots and starts over again.

Thanks for any suggestions,
Ben Crain

Ben Crain wrote:
> I have tried to install Suse Linux 10, from the DVD in the book "SUSE Linux
> 10 Unleashed" by Michael McCallister. I tried to install it on a separate
> harddrive, not the main harddrive on which I have WindowsXP. According to
> the book, "If YaST detects the presence of another operating system, it will
> ask whether you want to replace that OS with SUSE Linux or dual boot both."
> But it asked me no such thing. Perhaps it would have if I had tried to
> install it onto the same harddrive with Windows, but that's not what I'm
> doing. YaST did the "base installation" onto the second harddrive. Then,
> as the book says it would do, it rebooted. But the book implies that, after
> this reboot -- after, presumably, "all the packages" have been installed --
> it would move on to creating the root user. But it does no such thing. It
> simply goes back to square one -- offering me the chance to start the
> installation all over again. If I bypass that, my pc boots to Windows. If
> I remove the Linux DVD and reboot, it boots directly into Windows. It may
> well be that the Linux base installation is properly installed in my second
> harddrive, but my pc ignores it, and nowhere have I been given the option to
> configure it for a dual-boot. Nor can I find a way to complete the Suse
> Linux installation that presumably follows the "base installation". After
> the base installation it simply reboots and starts over again.
>
> Thanks for any suggestions,
> Ben Crain
>
>
>
If I understand you correctly this sounds like a problem with where the
linux boot loader was placed during your installation.

Ben Crain wrote:

> But the book implies that, after
> this reboot -- after, presumably, "all the packages" have been installed --
> it would move on to creating the root user. But it does no such thing. It
> simply goes back to square one -- offering me the chance to start the
> installation all over again.

This for you still have the DVD, and that is "only" an installation media,
what really is left is that your configuration of Novell Linux.

> If I bypass that, my pc boots to Windows. If
> I remove the Linux DVD and reboot, it boots directly into Windows.

Due some reason the bootloader has been installed on your secondary hard
drive, as the primary hard drive has only the microsoft bootloader, it will
always only allow you to start microsoft.


> It may
> well be that the Linux base installation is properly installed in my second
> harddrive, but my pc ignores it, and nowhere have I been given the option to
> configure it for a dual-boot. Nor can I find a way to complete the Suse
> Linux installation that presumably follows the "base installation". After
> the base installation it simply reboots and starts over again.

Go into your BIOS and change the boot order for your hard drives, this way you
will boot into Novell Linux and complete the configurations. If there aren't
any boot option for microsoft, you either add one or use the BIOS as a boot
loader (this is a bit bad as you reboot each time you change boot order).

In your case I think this should fix it, add this last to your
/boot/grub/grub.conf (if missing that use /boot/grub/menu.lst)

title microsoft
root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

Here is a mini howto for grub
http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-mini/...with-GRUB.html


--

//Aho

Thanks. It's still a bit unclear just exactly what I should do, but with
the help of the link you provide I'll try to work it out.

BC

"J.O. Aho" <user@example.net> wrote in message
news:51gn7cF1jo1jhU1@mid.individual.net...
> Ben Crain wrote:
>
>> But the book implies that, after this reboot -- after, presumably, "all
>> the packages" have been installed -- it would move on to creating the
>> root user. But it does no such thing. It simply goes back to square
>> one -- offering me the chance to start the installation all over again.
>
> This for you still have the DVD, and that is "only" an installation media,
> what really is left is that your configuration of Novell Linux.
>
>> If I bypass that, my pc boots to Windows. If I remove the Linux DVD and
>> reboot, it boots directly into Windows.
>
> Due some reason the bootloader has been installed on your secondary hard
> drive, as the primary hard drive has only the microsoft bootloader, it
> will always only allow you to start microsoft.
>
>
>> It may well be that the Linux base installation is properly installed in
>> my second harddrive, but my pc ignores it, and nowhere have I been given
>> the option to configure it for a dual-boot. Nor can I find a way to
>> complete the Suse Linux installation that presumably follows the "base
>> installation". After the base installation it simply reboots and starts
>> over again.
>
> Go into your BIOS and change the boot order for your hard drives, this way
> you will boot into Novell Linux and complete the configurations. If there
> aren't any boot option for microsoft, you either add one or use the BIOS
> as a boot loader (this is a bit bad as you reboot each time you change
> boot order).
>
> In your case I think this should fix it, add this last to your
> /boot/grub/grub.conf (if missing that use /boot/grub/menu.lst)
>
> title microsoft
> root (hd0,0)
> makeactive
> chainloader +1
>
> Here is a mini howto for grub
> http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-mini/...with-GRUB.html
>
>
> --
>
> //Aho

Ben Crain wrote:
> Thanks. It's still a bit unclear just exactly what I should do, but with
> the help of the link you provide I'll try to work it out.

1. When booting up the computer (when the screen still is quite black and
microsoft not yet been loaded, press your 'Delete' button) you should enter
the BIOS menu, here you have the option to choose which device to boot from in
first place.

Here is a short howto: http://www.cyberwalker.com/article.php?id=28


--

//Aho

Thanks for your continued help. The Cyberwalker article is nice, though I
was already familiar with how to get into BIOS. In fact, after I
encountered this problem I went into BIOS to see if my second hard drive,
where the Suse 10 base installation is presumably stored, could be made the
first one in the boot sequence. But it wasn't clear from the listing just
which thing is my second hard drive -- or even if it was in the sequence at
all. (But I'll look at it again.)

In any event, I'm quite annoyed -- almost to the point of throwing Linux in
the trash -- that this kind of problem can arise. I pay good money to get a
book with a Linux distribution that, by now (Suse 10!!), should be
configured for easy installment, so novices like me can get straight to
working with Linux itself, and not have to worry about Grub and things like
that, at least not at the outset. Morever, the book (and others I've looked
at) all say that installing Linux on a second harddrive, and thus not having
to partition the harddrive containing Windows, is the "ideal" solution. The
installation, and directions in the book, should be configured to easily
handle the "ideal" solution. But it says almost nothing about how to set-up
a dual-boot, other than just remarking that YaST will give you to option to
do that. (Which it emphatically does not!) Moreover, the Suse help web
page has disappeared, being replaced by rather confusing/convoluted help
pages at Novell, for all Novell products. And I can find no way to contact
the author of the book.

I appreciate your help, and will try a few of the things you suggest, but if
it requires me to dig into technical details about bootloaders and whatnot,
it's just not worth it. Simply installing the thing should be mature,
seemless technology, by now!

BC


"J.O. Aho" <user@example.net> wrote in message
news:51h9ilF1ie3hhU2@mid.individual.net...
> Ben Crain wrote:
>> Thanks. It's still a bit unclear just exactly what I should do, but with
>> the help of the link you provide I'll try to work it out.
>
> 1. When booting up the computer (when the screen still is quite black and
> microsoft not yet been loaded, press your 'Delete' button) you should
> enter the BIOS menu, here you have the option to choose which device to
> boot from in first place.
>
> Here is a short howto: http://www.cyberwalker.com/article.php?id=28
>
>
> --
>
> //Aho

Ben Crain wrote:
> But it wasn't clear from the listing just
> which thing is my second hard drive -- or even if it was in the sequence at
> all. (But I'll look at it again.)

As I don't know what bios you have and even if I did, I'm not sure I would be
able to find information to tell how. You can play around it, just remember
how it was before you started to play.


> In any event, I'm quite annoyed -- almost to the point of throwing Linux in
> the trash -- that this kind of problem can arise.

This is the first time I have heard that this could happen. You have to keep
in mind that one distribution isn't representative how every other
distribution will work.


> I pay good money to get a
> book with a Linux distribution that, by now (Suse 10!!), should be
> configured for easy installment, so novices like me can get straight to
> working with Linux itself, and not have to worry about Grub and things like
> that, at least not at the outset.

You have hardly payed more than the cost for making the DVD, which would be
less than US$1 of the books price, but I agree with you that it should have
handled the installation of Grub a lot better. I know that the
RedHat/Fedora/CentOS distributions gives you a really good option where and
how to install Grub, where the default option is the first detected hard drive
(usually hda, primary ide master).


A Morever, the book (and others I've looked
> at) all say that installing Linux on a second harddrive, and thus not having
> to partition the harddrive containing Windows, is the "ideal" solution. The
> installation, and directions in the book, should be configured to easily
> handle the "ideal" solution. But it says almost nothing about how to set-up
> a dual-boot, other than just remarking that YaST will give you to option to
> do that. (Which it emphatically does not!) Moreover, the Suse help web
> page has disappeared, being replaced by rather confusing/convoluted help
> pages at Novell, for all Novell products.

*nods* One reason why I call it Novell Linux, but that's not always been the
case, I think it was last year that Novell bought SuSe.


> And I can find no way to contact
> the author of the book.

Try with the publisher, they usually forward messages to the author.



> I appreciate your help, and will try a few of the things you suggest, but if
> it requires me to dig into technical details about bootloaders and whatnot,
> it's just not worth it. Simply installing the thing should be mature,
> seemless technology, by now!

You can try any other distribution, Kubuntu/Ubuntu seems to be a popular
beginners distribution, personally I'm not that much for debian based
distributions. Fedora it's okey, but lacks built in support for MP3, this has
to do with the license for MP3 and they don't anymore supply the kernel-source
package (you have to build it from the kernel.src.rpm). A good source for more
information about different distributions is of course www.distrowatch.com


--

//Aho

I'm willing to try a different distribution, and you seem think Fedora
should work. Here's what I understand the problem might have been with the
Suse:

It asked me where I wanted to put the installation, and I chose the second
drive. So it put everything there, including Grub. But Grub (as I've now
read a bit about) should be on my primary harddrive -- the one that comes
first in the boot sequence, and where Windows is. I can probably put that
hard drive first in the boot sequence, but if I do, but will Grub then give
me the option of booting to Windows, or will it just automatically boot to
Linux? The Suse book implied that Grub would detect the presence of Windows
and give me that dual-boot option -- but maybe it won't, if it's been
installed on the second drive, where there is no Windows. Suse didn't seem
to offer the option of putting Grub on one harddrive and the rest of the
installation on another. Perhaps it did: there was an option for
"customizing" the partitions, but it came with a warning that that was only
for experts who knew what they were doing, so of course I didn't choose
that.

Before I jump to another distribution I'd like to be confident that this
problem won't happen with that other distribution. This morning I've
visited a bookstore and browsed thru a couple of recent books -- one with
Fedora Core 6, the other with Ubuntu (both contain DVD's with the
distributions). Both said, or implied, that dual-booting would be no
problem, but neither, as best I could tell, actually addressed the issue of
putting Grub on the primary harddrive, and Linux on the second harddrive.
So I'm a bit wary of them, and didn't buy either.

BC


"J.O. Aho" <user@example.net> wrote in message
news:51hgpdF1joq3gU1@mid.individual.net...
> Ben Crain wrote:
>> But it wasn't clear from the listing just which thing is my second hard
>> drive -- or even if it was in the sequence at all. (But I'll look at it
>> again.)
>
> As I don't know what bios you have and even if I did, I'm not sure I would
> be able to find information to tell how. You can play around it, just
> remember how it was before you started to play.
>
>
>> In any event, I'm quite annoyed -- almost to the point of throwing Linux
>> in the trash -- that this kind of problem can arise.
>
> This is the first time I have heard that this could happen. You have to
> keep in mind that one distribution isn't representative how every other
> distribution will work.
>
>
>> I pay good money to get a book with a Linux distribution that, by now
>> (Suse 10!!), should be configured for easy installment, so novices like
>> me can get straight to working with Linux itself, and not have to worry
>> about Grub and things like that, at least not at the outset.
>
> You have hardly payed more than the cost for making the DVD, which would
> be less than US$1 of the books price, but I agree with you that it should
> have handled the installation of Grub a lot better. I know that the
> RedHat/Fedora/CentOS distributions gives you a really good option where
> and how to install Grub, where the default option is the first detected
> hard drive (usually hda, primary ide master).
>
>
> A Morever, the book (and others I've looked
>> at) all say that installing Linux on a second harddrive, and thus not
>> having to partition the harddrive containing Windows, is the "ideal"
>> solution. The installation, and directions in the book, should be
>> configured to easily handle the "ideal" solution. But it says almost
>> nothing about how to set-up a dual-boot, other than just remarking that
>> YaST will give you to option to do that. (Which it emphatically does
>> not!) Moreover, the Suse help web page has disappeared, being replaced
>> by rather confusing/convoluted help pages at Novell, for all Novell
>> products.
>
> *nods* One reason why I call it Novell Linux, but that's not always been
> the case, I think it was last year that Novell bought SuSe.
>
>
>> And I can find no way to contact the author of the book.
>
> Try with the publisher, they usually forward messages to the author.
>
>
>
>> I appreciate your help, and will try a few of the things you suggest, but
>> if it requires me to dig into technical details about bootloaders and
>> whatnot, it's just not worth it. Simply installing the thing should be
>> mature, seemless technology, by now!
>
> You can try any other distribution, Kubuntu/Ubuntu seems to be a popular
> beginners distribution, personally I'm not that much for debian based
> distributions. Fedora it's okey, but lacks built in support for MP3, this
> has to do with the license for MP3 and they don't anymore supply the
> kernel-source package (you have to build it from the kernel.src.rpm). A
> good source for more information about different distributions is of
> course www.distrowatch.com
>
>
> --
>
> //Aho

Ben Crain wrote:
> I'm willing to try a different distribution, and you seem think Fedora
> should work.

I think it should ask you a bit more than what you have described that Novell
did, but I haven't tested to install Fedora for years, so they could have
change things since I last tested it.


> It asked me where I wanted to put the installation, and I chose the second
> drive. So it put everything there, including Grub.

Thats really suxx, it should have asked you where to store grub too.


> But Grub (as I've now
> read a bit about) should be on my primary harddrive -- the one that comes
> first in the boot sequence, and where Windows is. I can probably put that
> hard drive first in the boot sequence, but if I do, but will Grub then give
> me the option of booting to Windows, or will it just automatically boot to
> Linux?

I can't answer how it's in Novell, but most other distros will find microsoft
during install and add it to the grub configuration. Assuming that Novell done
that too, then it should be enough just to switch boot order of the hard
drives in the BIOS and everything should be solved. Of course if they didn't,
you would need to edit the grub configuration to fix that (see my first reply).


> Suse didn't seem
> to offer the option of putting Grub on one harddrive and the rest of the
> installation on another. Perhaps it did: there was an option for
> "customizing" the partitions, but it came with a warning that that was only
> for experts who knew what they were doing, so of course I didn't choose
> that.

Customizing slices (partitions) shouldn't have anything to do with grub, it's
more for telling how you want the slices to be, how big, as you may not want
GNU/Linux to take over the whole hard drive, as you could install Mac OS x86
on it too.


> Before I jump to another distribution I'd like to be confident that this
> problem won't happen with that other distribution. This morning I've
> visited a bookstore and browsed thru a couple of recent books -- one with
> Fedora Core 6, the other with Ubuntu (both contain DVD's with the
> distributions). Both said, or implied, that dual-booting would be no
> problem, but neither, as best I could tell, actually addressed the issue of
> putting Grub on the primary harddrive, and Linux on the second harddrive.
> So I'm a bit wary of them, and didn't buy either.

You can make it somewhat easy for you, join the alt.os.linux.ubuntu or go to
www.ubuntu.org and join the forum and ask around, for Fedora
alt.os.linux.redhat or alt.linux.redhat or linux.redhat and I think you can
find a link to some forum at fedora.redhat.com

You can also download the first CD in the Fedora Core 6 installation CD setup
or/and ubuntu LiveCD. Then you can start the install, see if you get to a page
where you can select where to install grub and break the install at that point
(I think you can get there without the installed does anything on your system,
but I'm not 100% sure as my current distro don't use automatic installer).


--

//Aho

On Sun, 21 Jan 2007 15:05:30 +0000, Ben Crain wrote:

> Thanks for your continued help. The Cyberwalker article is nice, though I
> was already familiar with how to get into BIOS. In fact, after I
> encountered this problem I went into BIOS to see if my second hard drive,
> where the Suse 10 base installation is presumably stored, could be made the
> first one in the boot sequence. But it wasn't clear from the listing just
> which thing is my second hard drive -- or even if it was in the sequence at
> all. (But I'll look at it again.)
>
> In any event, I'm quite annoyed -- almost to the point of throwing Linux in
> the trash -- that this kind of problem can arise.

I'm quite annoyed that you're acting so juvenile about this. You have the
book, but you obviously didn't read it before doing the installation. If
you had, you wouldn't be having these problems. I have three books on SUSE
10.0 open in front of me. Every one has step by step instructions,
including screen shots, of every stage of the installation, with button by
button explanations of how to go about the installation. Every screen shot
shows that instructions are clearly given as to what your options are at
every stage of the installation. The problem is that you have to read
them, then follow them.

> I pay good money to get a book with a Linux distribution that, by now
> (Suse 10!!), should be configured for easy installment, so novices like
> me can get straight to working with Linux itself, and not have to worry
> about Grub and things like that, at least not at the outset.

How stupid is that last statement? Grub is your boot loader. Without that
you can't boot the system. It's imperative that you deal with grub
immediately, if you want to have a running system. If you'd have read the
book, you'd know that, and where and when the installation asks about
where you want grub installed, and why it gives you choices, and what
those choices are.

This is not a Novell/SUSE thing. This applies to any Linux operating
system. If you were to choose lilo as the boot loader, you'd still have to
know the same things. SUSE gives you that choice also. You just didn't
look. Paying good money for a book is not important. Reading that book,
and understanding what you've read is.

> Morever, the book (and others I've looked at) all say that installing
> Linux on a second harddrive, and thus not having to partition the
> harddrive containing Windows, is the "ideal" solution.

It is, and having that drive as your boot drive is the most ideal
solution, as it eliminates the possibility of Windows overwriting the
Linux boot loader. Windows will do that, if you do any repairs to it. It
will not warn you, it will just do it, if it gets the chance. You need to
know how to fix it, or avoid it beforehand. If you want a dual boot system
you need to learn about your boot loader now, not sometime later, when you
feel like it.

> The installation, and directions in the book, should be configured to
> easily handle the "ideal" solution. But it says almost nothing about
> how to set-up a dual-boot, other than just remarking that YaST will give
> you to option to do that. (Which it emphatically does not!)

Bull****, bull****, and more bull****. That "Expert" tab you were too
afraid to even look at is where all that valuable information is at, in
great detail. You should have looked. If you had really read the book, you
would have known that too. You can look at every tab, and every button, to
see what it offers. You can try every option, and every page offers you the
option to say "never mind," and go back and try again, until you have
everything exactly as you want it, before you commit to the actual
installation. The book says so, and every window of the SUSE installation
says so. The information was right in front of you, all you had to do was
read it. Those buttons and tabs are not put there for decoration. They're
meant to be clicked on, and explored.

> Moreover, the Suse help web page has disappeared, being replaced by
> rather confusing/convoluted help pages at Novell, for all Novell
> products.

Did you think to use google?

http://en.opensuse.org/Welcome_to_openSUSE.org


Second item on the hit list, with the only entry in the search dialog being
"suse". You might try clicking on that link. The answers to your questions
are obviously not going to be on that first page. You'll need to try the
various links.

You might also have much better luck getting good help about SUSE 10.0 on
alt.os.linux.suse rather than here. If you wish to check that out, I would
advise you to lose the whiney attitude first, and not start out making
claims that the SUSE installer is somehow missing components that everyone
there knows exist. Some of the people that hang out at a.o.l.suse are the
same people that put together the opensuse.org web site, contribute code
to, and build packages for the openSUSE distribution. As such, they are a
great source of help, but won't listen to, or but up with any bull****
stories about YaST. They know it inside out.

> And I can find no way to contact the author of the book.

Trust me, he doesn't want to hear from you, and if he does, he'll tell you
to read the book. The answers are there.

> I appreciate your help, and will try a few of the things you suggest,
> but if it requires me to dig into technical details about bootloaders
> and whatnot, it's just not worth it. Simply installing the thing should
> be mature, seemless technology, by now!

It is, and it will, if you just keep hitting the next button, do an
installation just like Windows does. No fuss, no muss. Of course, just
like Windows, it will blow away everything that previously existed on your
hard drive, but you will have a nice shiny new SUSE in it's place.

Or, you can choose to read the instructions, choose how and where you want
the installation to be done, and end up with a nice dual boot system. If
the latter is what you really want, get used the fact that you will have
to loose the attitude, and admit that you screwed up, not SUSE. No other
distribution is going to make up for your own mistakes either. You have to
be willing to make an effort, and learn some new ways of doing things. If
you screw up, figure out what you did wrong, and try again.

Linux is not Windows. If you're not willing to learn new things, there's
really no reason to install SUSE, or any other Linux distribution. Again,
Linux is not Windows. It's different, so it's a necessity that you learn
how to do things differently than you've been doing them with Windows.
That's not an opinion, that's a simple fact

J.O. Aho has been trying to help you, but does not run SUSE, so is
unfamiliar with YaST. If you say something was missing, or didn't work as
advertised, he must take your word for it. Same thing with grub, which he
also doesn't use. I on the other hand have been running SUSE since 6.x
days, with my first installation on my own machine being SuSE 6.4. I
currently have SUSE 10.0, 10.1, and 10.2, all installed on this machine,
as well as Mandrake 10.1, Mandriva 2007, PCLOS, and Slackware. I also use
grub as my boot loader, to boot all of these, and Windows too, if I choose
to put the Windows drive back into the machine. I've been using grub since
when SuSE 7.2 was new.

> "J.O. Aho" <user@example.net> wrote in message
> news:51h9ilF1ie3hhU2@mid.individual.net...
>> Ben Crain wrote:
>>> Thanks. It's still a bit unclear just exactly what I should do, but
>>> with the help of the link you provide I'll try to work it out.
>>
>> 1. When booting up the computer (when the screen still is quite black
>> and microsoft not yet been loaded, press your 'Delete' button) you
>> should enter the BIOS menu, here you have the option to choose which
>> device to boot from in first place.
>>
>> Here is a short howto: http://www.cyberwalker.com/article.php?id=28

This is good advise. You need to set the disk that supposedly has SUSE on
it as the boot device, to see if grub was actually installed there. If you
then get a grub menu, you need to hit the down-arrow key, to stop the
default timer, insert the installation DVD back into the drive, and then
pick SUSE to boot. SUSE will then complete the installation process, if you
didn't accidentally abort the installation midway. It's hard telling,
what really happened, from what you posted.

Your reply to J.O. Aho would be -- here -- if you had not top-posted.

--
imotgm
"Lost? Lost? I've never been lost... Been a tad confused for a
month or two, but never lost."

On Sun, 21 Jan 2007 17:45:38 +0000, Ben Crain wrote:

> Before I jump to another distribution I'd like to be confident that this
> problem won't happen with that other distribution. This morning I've
> visited a bookstore and browsed thru a couple of recent books -- one with
> Fedora Core 6, the other with Ubuntu (both contain DVD's with the
> distributions). Both said, or implied, that dual-booting would be no
> problem, but neither, as best I could tell, actually addressed the issue of
> putting Grub on the primary harddrive, and Linux on the second harddrive.
> So I'm a bit wary of them, and didn't buy either.

Forget it. You're a top-posting win-droid moron, and you just absolutely
will never be able to handle using Linux, much less installing it.

You're the bottom of the foodchain, and there's nothing you can do about
it. Go update your virus definitions or something, and leave Linux to
those equipped to handle it. Run along now, boy.

--
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me".