[plug] Nifty idea for dual booters

[Craig Ringer]

> I have about 10 different configurations backed up like this.
> When I want one I just zcat it through dd and reboot into it.

There's another handy use for this trick: after installing any MS OS, 
disk image and bzip2 it then write the image to CD/DAT/hdd. When the OS 
goes FUBAR you can just dd across the image and not have to mess around 
installing the OS, apps, configuring, securing etc. I use this a lot for 
the win9x workstations at work - it helps to make a 2G or so C: 
partition for windows etc to keep things managable. Of course WinXP 
might manage to find a way to object, but I don't and won't use it anyway.

I used to use win9x for gaming and had a 400mb bzip2'd image on my linux 
partiton that I'd dd across whenever anything got flaky. Usually easier 
than uninstalling a game or whatever, and I kept nothing of value on the 
fat32 partition anyway :-)

I did have to use fips to restore the fat32 partition to full size after 
the restore, but it was never problematic.

> Oh yeah, I boot with lilo and just chain to the hda2 bootloader.

Works really well. I just whacked win2k on my laptop (the only MS OS 
I'll willingly use as secondary, but not SP2 thanks, allergic to evil 
EULAs) and discovered that I can hibernate win2k, reboot into linux, 
work, then reboot back into win2k when I need the modem and it restores 
from hibernation as if nothing had happened. This rocks. I can't wait 
for full, reliable ACPI for linux so I can do this in the other 
direction too.

-- 
Craig Ringer
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