[OpenIndiana-discuss] OI new user questions

[Gary Mills]

On Sat, Dec 05, 2020 at 04:02:24PM +0000, Kalle Anka via openindiana-discuss wrote:

> So I should not install BIOS OI and UEFI W10 for dualbooting on the
> same disk. I learned this the hard way. I had a Win10 and Solaris
> 11.2 dual booting install, on the same disk using BIOS, i.e. MBR
> disk. Then an W10 update silently changed the disk to UEFI (GPT
> disk), and Solaris 11.2 was still on MBR. So I could boot W10, but
> not boot Solaris. It took me a long time to figure out why Solaris
> would not boot. I had to reinstall Solaris using UEFI.

I've used dual booting of Windows and openindiana on a laptop that
only had one disk.  It works, but is annoying.  The laptop is 64-bit
x86.  It came with Windows 7 installed on FDISK partitions.  I later
upgraded it to Windows 10.  I booted a live DVD and used it to shrink
the large NTFS partition.  Then I created an empty FDISK partition
that used all of the newly-freed space.  I installed OI on that new
FDISK partition.  At that point, it booted into OI.  Once I configured
the OI loader to chainload the Windows boot partition, I could select
the new entry in the OI loader menu to boot Windows.  Both Windows and
OI were installed for BIOS boot, of course.

The problem I had was entirely with Windows.  Windows updates would
fail with a mysterious error message because it was unable to mount
the boot partition.  The only solution I found was to make the Windows
partition the active partition.  After that, it booted directly into
Windows and the update succeeded.  To get back to dual booting, I had
to make the OI partition the active one.  After a while, I grew tired
of switching active partions, and left it in Windows.

> To solve my problem of BIOS os and UEFI os, I wonder if this might
> work: I remove all disks except one, and install Win10 using
> UEFI. Then I remove all disks, and insert another disk to which I
> install BIOS OpenIndiana. Then I insert all disks, and when I boot
> my PC, I choose which OS to boot from the disk boot menu by pressing
> F11. Do you think this could be a way to have both BIOS OpenIndiana
> and UEFI Win10 on my PC, but on different disks? I have read that
> you should not install BIOS and UEFI oses on the same PC, even on
> the different disks - but I dont know why. I cannot find information
> on this. But if I choose the different disks to boot in the boot
> menu, this could work? Anyone know?

Yes, that should work.  I do exactly that on my T2000 (SPARC) system.
You may not even need to remove disks, although that's the safest
thing.  On x86, you can choose the disk to boot from the BIOS boot
menu.

If you want Windows and an illumos distribution to run simultaneously,
you will have to use some form of virtualization.  That's the only
way.



-- 
-Gary Mills-		-refurb-		-Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada-