Dual Booting Guidelines

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Unix at UW CSE  Standard Issue Unix  Software  Unix GWS Usage  Administering Your    Own Unix System  Dual Booting

There is no policy against dual-booting a PC with Unix and MS-Windows, but it does present maintenance problems, so the CS Lab does not officialy suppport dual-booting configurations. What that basically means is that we won't come running when something goes wrong. If you want to configure the machine, install the OSes and keep them up to date, you are free to have at it. However, you will need to follow all the departmental guidelines for Unix systems administration. The reasons for not offering support (coming from the Unix side of the house) are: We like to deal with big masses of machines since this considerably reduces the total cost of management. There are very few good reasons for dual-booting a machine, which means they are rara avis. We like all those machines to be configured consistently with regard to system disk space and paritioning, devices, drivers, etc. We really hate maintaining different kernels, configuration files, etc. We like to work with the assumption that when we need access to a machine it will be up and running. If it isn't running that means trouble. A side-effect of dual-boot machines is to invalidate this assumption. When something goes wrong, we like to know for sure which operating system is really involved. We are not big fans of potential OS cross-talk and differences in security models. We like to know who is responsible for maintaining a system. Dual-boots by their nature (and that of our support structure) will have two maintainers. So, in summary, we just don't like special cases and exceptions. And the combination of dual booting and laptops are one of those cases. OTOH, if you (the owner) want to give it a whirl, we'll be more than happy to loan you what manuals we have when you install the software. It will probably be advantageous for you to become familiar with them. And because you will become the systems administrator for your Unix system, you will need to follow all the departmental guidelines for Unix systems administration. Details for how to get set up for dual-boot operation are here. One more thing: your dual-boot machine should use IP address assignment consistently across the boots, whether it is dynamically or statically assigned. If you want to discuss IP address assignment issues, please contact Voradesh Yenbut (yenbut@cs).

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