On Mon, 23 Apr 2001, Jim Osborn wrote:
Actually, from SuSE/Win3.1 to SuSE/Win95, with apologies... :) Since I know very little about Windows (it's a wrapper for the one and only app I run on that machine) I'll impose on this learned group for advice.
I'll try to help.
I must change the Windows side of my dual-boot machine to Win32, (the app must change) and a friend has graciously let me inherit his Win95 CD. The machine is a venerable old 486 which I'm sure would choke on Win98 or NT or W2000, but some have said should handle W95. I hope.
It's currently partitioned: sda1 dos 460M sda2 ext2 420M / sda3 swap 128M sda4 ext2 200M /home and dual boots (dos/win default) with lilo. Nice and easy with just four primaries, first one dos, root is less than 1024 cyl, etc.
I believe I can fit the new Win32 software into the current space, so theoretically, repartitioning should be unnecessary. I shouldn't need to run fdisk, either Win95's or linux's, should I?
No, that should not be needed.
Can I just install the Win95 onto that dos partition without telling it about the other partitions, then boot to SuSE using a boot disk (better make sure I've got one of those made...) and re-run lilo to get my dual-boot back? Any changes I'll need to make to lilo.conf?
Yep, that should work... And lilo.conf should not need to be changed. If you find out too late that you don't have a bootdisk, you can boot on SuSE CD#1, type manual at the boot: prompt, and select "Boot installed system" somewhere in the menus. This has saved me a couple of times.
I assume Win95 will reformat the dos partition, but other than wiping out its data, that shouldn't hurt anything. I should still be able to mount that partition under linux, same as before?
You might want to change the partition type in /etc/fstab to vfat if it is not vfat already.
I think some TCP/IP capability may come with Win95, which should allow me to communicate with this box even when it's in Win mode. That's a matter of studying up on Samba, isn't it?
If by "communicate" you mean have the Win95 box read files on other computers then yes. Otherwise, you'll have to tell us exactly what it is you want to do.
Any other gotchas I should know about, but don't know to ask?
Not that I can think of.
Apologies again for bringing the evil empire into discussion, but I do need to make this change quickly, and any help from the good linux folk might really speed me along.
I would say that this sort of question is quite on-topic for this list, because you are basically asking: "How can I be sure to still have a working SuSE install after upgrading the other OS?" Good luck Ole