Installation order for VISTA/RH5 dual boot

[Scott Ruckh]

This is what you said Wartnick, James
> So does the "/boot" partition need to occur before some cylinder/block
> value in order to work (i.e. within the first 500MB of disk)?
>
I think it depends on the BIOS of your system.  I have had systems that
would not boot after install when installed further out on the disk.  On
the other hand I have had success on other systems installing Linux
anywhere on the disk.

If doing this from scratch I recommend using XOSL (Freeware Boot Manager).
 Install XOSL in it own dedicated small partition (7mb).  Then create a
main primary partition for windows (at least 20GB).  Install Windows, and
create an extended partition with the remaining disk space (unless you are
going to have multiple windows versions installed; then you might want to
create another primary partition).  Create any logical disks you want to
create in windows (leaving some space in the extended partition for
Linux).  Then install Linux (with at least /boot, /, and swap file
systems).  When choosing place for boot loader (grub) on linux don't
choose the mbr, but instead the main partition where you are booting Linux
(ie../dev/sdb3).

Set up all your booting in XOSL (show and hide partitions as needed).

If you ever come back and have to install windows and it overwrites the
mbr, just run the xosl install program again and have it restore the XOSL
boot loader (with all of your previous boot-loader changes in tact).

This combination has worked for me for many years.  Of course this is just
one persons suggestion which may or may not be right for you.