Coding Day

They are many documents on the web for doing that. However most of them needs to have an installed linux based system to do that. Installing linux without destruction your harddisk is possible for years. I assume that you have windows installed. Here is the walkthrough to do that.

1. Allocate space for linux partition. The main partition for linux has to be primary partition just like your windows partition. You might need a partition tool to resize and change partition type to do that operation.
2. Install linux on the partition that you have just created. On the installation screens, for the boot loader, select the partition itself as the partition (don’t select mbr). When the installation has finished, your computer restarts and windows will be restarted. Don’t be afraid linux is somewhere in your disk.
3. You need dd for windows to set linux to the boot manager.
4. Extract the contents of dd in a folder and run

   dd --list

   D:\Tools\dd>dd –list
   rawwrite dd for windows version 0.3.
   Written by John Newbigin
   This program is covered by the GPL. See copying.txt for details
   Win32 Available Volume Information
   \\.\Volume{c5d941f0-8093-11da-b7d7-806d6172696f}\
   link to \\?\Device\HarddiskVolume1
   fixed media
   Mounted on c:\
   \\.\Volume{c5d941f1-8093-11da-b7d7-806d6172696f}\
   link to \\?\Device\HarddiskVolume3
   fixed media
   Mounted on d:\
   \\.\Volume{5c5aa360-7406-11da-b7c2-806d6172696f}\
   link to \\?\Device\CdRom0
   CD-ROM
   Mounted on e:\
   \\.\Volume{23c0e842-75dd-11da-a45d-000e3536c876}\
   link to \\?\Device\CdRom1
   CD-ROM
   Mounted on x:\
   NT Block Device Objects
   \\?\Device\CdRom0
   \\?\Device\CdRom1
   \\?\Device\Harddisk0\Partition0
   link to \\?\Device\Harddisk0\DR0
   Fixed hard disk media. Block size = 512
   \\?\Device\Harddisk0\Partition1
   link to \\?\Device\HarddiskVolume1
   \\?\Device\Harddisk0\Partition2
   link to \\?\Device\HarddiskVolume2
   Fixed hard disk media. Block size = 512
   \\?\Device\Harddisk0\Partition3
   link to \\?\Device\HarddiskVolume3
   \\?\Device\Harddisk0\Partition4
   link to \\?\Device\HarddiskVolume4
   Fixed hard disk media. Block size = 512

   
   to find the linux partition.

5. Once you think you’ve found it just use this command to generate the boot file.

   dd if=\\?\Device\HarddiskVolume2 of=linux.boot bs=512 count=1

   D:\Tools\dd>dd if=\\?\Device\HarddiskVolume2 of=linux.bot bs=512 count=1
   rawwrite dd for windows version 0.3.
   Written by John Newbigin
   This program is covered by the GPL. See copying.txt for details
   1+0 records in
   1+0 records out

   Here Partition2 is the linux partition. You need to feel that from the dd –list output

6. Move the generated file to the root C:
7. Then add

   C:\LINUX.BOOT="Linux"

   to boot.ini file.

Vista Update

The above process is still working for Windows Vista beside boot.ini file. Instead we need to bcdedit to add the new entry.

Run cmd and execute the following commands to add the linux entry

bcdedit /create /d “Linux” /application BOOTSECTOR
bcdedit /set {LinuxID} device boot
bcdedit /set {LinuxID} PATH \LINUX.BOOT
bcdedit /displayorder {LinuxID} /addlast
bcdedit /timeout 5

Here you are you have used windows boot manager to do that inside windows.

There is two live cds especially designed for mono on linux.

1. Monoppix
2. Mono Live

Both distributions include mono librarires and tools. Mono Live distribution includes some applications written in mono like beagle or tomboy. Also it includes some known ASP.Net web applications. As a result it is 200Mb more than monoppix.
These cds are live cds meaning that you can boot from them and work on them without the need of a harddisk. As .net developer you will probably use windows and maybe you want to give a try to the opensource alternative. It is difficult to switch to live cds than go back to windows. Instead there is a tool to emulate your processor on windows (on linux as well actually) called qemu. This tool can also work on windows. You can download qemu in windows. You can boot any live cd distribution with this tool.

Simply just edit your .bat file
qemu -L . -m 300 -cdrom ./monoppix.iso
qemu -L . -m 300 -cdrom ./monolive.iso

First sentence of programming world…

I will share my programming experiences, you will meet coding side of my fabulous life…

Console.WriteLine("Hello World");