[Gnumed-devel] Dual-boot Windows XP / debian sarge

[J Busser]

A few questions as I prepare to try this, if anyone is in a position to advise:

- if I only wish to run one version of Windows (namely Windows XP) on 
a dual-boot drive, installing Sarge as the second OS, will I still 
require to use one of lilo or grub and has either any key 
shortcomings (I think debian uses grub)

- there exists free software bootpart which can permit the addition 
of a linux partition to a Windows NT/2000/XP Multiboot menu although 
I gather Lilo may be a dependency for this to work
http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm

- presumably Windows XP needs to be on the primary partition and 
Linux boot/home/SWAP would be in an extended partition (as would any 
additional partitions meant to be accessible to and used by Windows). 
Would this arrangement prevent what I am told can be a problem of 
Windows in cases wanting to "over-write the boot sector [Master Boot 
Record?]" and/or is the section in the following URL, called 
'Grabbing the boot sector" something that must be done for a proper 
dual-boot system, but maybe only applies to multi-disk systems?
http://www.highlandsun.com/hyc/linuxboot.html
an older link (dual-booting Windows 2000) here
http://arul.telenet-systems.com/info/dualboot.php

- am I correct to think it may be desirable/useful to have a drive 
partition that can be read and  written-to by both Windows XP and 
Debian, and is there a format type (FAT-16? FAT-32?) and position 
requirement recommendation for such a partition?  Probably it is best 
(or only) created from Windows -- maybe after Linux is installed? -- 
using FDISK?

(apparently Linux can read NTFS but maybe can't write to it except to 
overwrite files provided their size does not change)