To determine what is feasible, you first need to know the limits. The partition style is, of course, Master Boot Record, which limits each data carrier to four bootable partitions or a total size of no more than 2 TB.

In addition, Windows 98 SE in its original state cannot address drives with a capacity of more than 137 GB; installation is not possible. To do this, you must enable 48-bit LBA support and then create (and burn) a new installation medium. Furthermore, 98 does not work correctly with more than 512 MB of RAM—this can also be circumvented, but only after installation. Until then, 512 MB or less should be installed in the system.

What is feasible now?

Each system has two hard drives installed, which would theoretically allow for 8 operating systems. Sounds like a lot, and it is a lot. It also doesn’t make sense. Nevertheless, there are many:

Hard drive #1:

• Windows 98 SE (32-Bit), FAT32
• Windows Vista Enterprise (32-Bit), NTFS
• Debian 12 Bookworm (32-Bit), EXT4
• 4 GB SWAP

Hard drive #2:

• Windows 2000 Professional (32-Bit), NTFS
• Windows XP Professional (32-Bit), NTFS
• Linux Mint 19 Tara (32-Bit), EXT4
• 4 GB SWAP

So six operating systems, all 32-bit – the total RAM installed is 4 GB and the Celeron D doesn’t even understand 64-bit instructions. Getting everything to work was a complex task, especially as the old operating systems tend to be very finicky. As with other multi-boot operations, the golden rule is always to install from old to new.

During installation, only the planned hard drive was connected, and the partitions were created at the very beginning using GParted in a live session booted from CD. Although I have a lot of experience in this area, it took me several attempts to get everything to where it is now. The fact that Windows 98 occasionally blue-screened during setup wasn’t particularly helpful.

Of course, it was more of an academic challenge than a real benefit. Windows Vista runs really poorly with only a slow core from a PATA hard drive. Debian Bookworm has bad graphics glitches.

So here is the system information under all the different operating systems on the P4 system:

And the same again for the Celeron D system:

More RAM for Windows 98

There is a really good patch for this from R. Loew. For a long time, this patch was available for a fee, but since the good man has sadly passed away, his heirs are now making it available free of charge. Applause for that.

The OS is first installed with 512 MB or less RAM; I had 128 MB in the system (one bar). After successful boot, the patch is run once and the system is shut down. Now more RAM can be installed and the system runs as if nothing had ever happened. It couldn’t be better. The 4 GB of RAM are of great benefit to all other operating systems.

Bootloader?

To avoid overloading the boot loader, I used a little trick:
I used the original loader from Windows Vista. This was modified with EasyBCD – the trick is to “chainload.” Since Windows 2000 and XP both use boot.ini in conjunction with bootmgr, I combined these two. Linux Mint and Debian both use GRUB 2, so these were also combined. The result looks like this:

Der Beitrag <h5>Medion PC-MT6 #5: </h5><h3><b>Operating systems</b></h3> erschien zuerst auf flohs blog.

Some internal changes have been made to Debian, including the handling of network interfaces. This meant that I was no longer able to establish a network connection in any of my Bookworm VMs. To fix this, the following steps are necessary:

network/interfaces

First, let’s see what has changed:

su
nano /etc/network/interfaces

su
nano /etc/network/interfaces

If the interface names are not in the format “ethX”, replace each occurrence of the newer format with the old one (it should look like this afterwards):

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

source /etc/network/interfaces.d/*

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
# This is an autoconfigured IPv6 interface
iface eth0 inet6 auto

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

source /etc/network/interfaces.d/*

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
# This is an autoconfigured IPv6 interface
iface eth0 inet6 auto

In Nano, the file is then saved with CTRL+O and the editor is closed with CTRL+X.

Set GRUB parameters

In order for the old format to be interpreted correctly again, a parameter must be set in the bootloader configuration. The file is located here:

nano /etc/default/grub

nano /etc/default/grub

In line 7 of this file, the parameter “net.ifnames=0” must be added after “quiet” for “GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT”. Previously:

# If you change this file or any /etc/default/grub.d/*.cfg file,
# run 'update-grub' afterwards to update /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
# For full documentation of the options in these files, see:
#   info -f grub -n 'Simple configuration'

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`( . /etc/os-release && echo ${NAME} )`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

# If your computer has multiple operating systems installed, then you
# probably want to run os-prober. However, if your computer is a host
# for guest OSes installed via LVM or raw disk devices, running
# os-prober can cause damage to those guest OSes as it mounts
# filesystems to look for things.
#GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false

# Uncomment to enable BadRAM filtering, modify to suit your needs
# This works with Linux (no patch required) and with any kernel that obtains
# the memory map information from GRUB (GNU Mach, kernel of FreeBSD ...)
#GRUB_BADRAM="0x01234567,0xfefefefe,0x89abcdef,0xefefefef"

# Uncomment to disable graphical terminal
#GRUB_TERMINAL=console

# The resolution used on graphical terminal
# note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE/GOP/UGA
# you can see them in real GRUB with the command `videoinfo'
#GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480

# Uncomment if you don't want GRUB to pass "root=UUID=xxx" parameter to Linux
#GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true

# Uncomment to disable generation of recovery mode menu entries
#GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true"

# If you change this file or any /etc/default/grub.d/*.cfg file,
# run 'update-grub' afterwards to update /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
# For full documentation of the options in these files, see:
#   info -f grub -n 'Simple configuration'

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`( . /etc/os-release && echo ${NAME} )`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

# If your computer has multiple operating systems installed, then you
# probably want to run os-prober. However, if your computer is a host
# for guest OSes installed via LVM or raw disk devices, running
# os-prober can cause damage to those guest OSes as it mounts
# filesystems to look for things.
#GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false

# Uncomment to enable BadRAM filtering, modify to suit your needs
# This works with Linux (no patch required) and with any kernel that obtains
# the memory map information from GRUB (GNU Mach, kernel of FreeBSD ...)
#GRUB_BADRAM="0x01234567,0xfefefefe,0x89abcdef,0xefefefef"

# Uncomment to disable graphical terminal
#GRUB_TERMINAL=console

# The resolution used on graphical terminal
# note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE/GOP/UGA
# you can see them in real GRUB with the command `videoinfo'
#GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480

# Uncomment if you don't want GRUB to pass "root=UUID=xxx" parameter to Linux
#GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true

# Uncomment to disable generation of recovery mode menu entries
#GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true"

Afterwards:

# If you change this file or any /etc/default/grub.d/*.cfg file,
# run 'update-grub' afterwards to update /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
# For full documentation of the options in these files, see:
#   info -f grub -n 'Simple configuration'

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`( . /etc/os-release && echo ${NAME} )`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet net.ifnames=0"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

# If your computer has multiple operating systems installed, then you
# probably want to run os-prober. However, if your computer is a host
# for guest OSes installed via LVM or raw disk devices, running
# os-prober can cause damage to those guest OSes as it mounts
# filesystems to look for things.
#GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false

# Uncomment to enable BadRAM filtering, modify to suit your needs
# This works with Linux (no patch required) and with any kernel that obtains
# the memory map information from GRUB (GNU Mach, kernel of FreeBSD ...)
#GRUB_BADRAM="0x01234567,0xfefefefe,0x89abcdef,0xefefefef"

# Uncomment to disable graphical terminal
#GRUB_TERMINAL=console

# The resolution used on graphical terminal
# note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE/GOP/UGA
# you can see them in real GRUB with the command `videoinfo'
#GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480

# Uncomment if you don't want GRUB to pass "root=UUID=xxx" parameter to Linux
#GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true

# Uncomment to disable generation of recovery mode menu entries
#GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true"

# If you change this file or any /etc/default/grub.d/*.cfg file,
# run 'update-grub' afterwards to update /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
# For full documentation of the options in these files, see:
#   info -f grub -n 'Simple configuration'

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`( . /etc/os-release && echo ${NAME} )`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet net.ifnames=0"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

# If your computer has multiple operating systems installed, then you
# probably want to run os-prober. However, if your computer is a host
# for guest OSes installed via LVM or raw disk devices, running
# os-prober can cause damage to those guest OSes as it mounts
# filesystems to look for things.
#GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false

# Uncomment to enable BadRAM filtering, modify to suit your needs
# This works with Linux (no patch required) and with any kernel that obtains
# the memory map information from GRUB (GNU Mach, kernel of FreeBSD ...)
#GRUB_BADRAM="0x01234567,0xfefefefe,0x89abcdef,0xefefefef"

# Uncomment to disable graphical terminal
#GRUB_TERMINAL=console

# The resolution used on graphical terminal
# note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE/GOP/UGA
# you can see them in real GRUB with the command `videoinfo'
#GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480

# Uncomment if you don't want GRUB to pass "root=UUID=xxx" parameter to Linux
#GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true

# Uncomment to disable generation of recovery mode menu entries
#GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true"

Here, too, save the changes with CTRL+O and exit the editor with CTRL+X. Then update the GRUB configuration and restart with the commands:

su - root
update-grub
reboot

su - root
update-grub
reboot

Der Beitrag Fixing network configuration issues after upgrading to Debian 12 (Bookworm) and 13 (Trixie) erschien zuerst auf flohs blog.

We run several virtual machines with (mostly headless) Debian, so an in-place upgrade is the most sensible way to update to the new Debian 13, codenamed Trixie. Here are the necessary steps. Several upgrades have been successfully completed as described.

Preparations

First, make sure that everything is up to date on Debian 12 “Bookworm.” To do this, execute the following commands one after the other as root:

su

apt update
apt upgrade
apt full-upgrade

apt --purge autoremove
reboot

su

apt update
apt upgrade
apt full-upgrade

apt --purge autoremove
reboot

Update repositories

All entries must be updated from Bookworm to Trixie. To do this, perform the following steps one after the other after the previous restart:

su

sed -i 's/bookworm/trixie/g' /etc/apt/sources.list
find /etc/apt/sources.list.d -name "*.list" -exec sed -i 's/bookworm/trixie/g' {} \;

apt update

su

sed -i 's/bookworm/trixie/g' /etc/apt/sources.list
find /etc/apt/sources.list.d -name "*.list" -exec sed -i 's/bookworm/trixie/g' {} \;

apt update

Perform upgrade

Now the actual upgrade can be performed:

apt upgrade --without-new-pkgs
apt full-upgrade

apt autoremove
apt autoclean
reboot

apt upgrade --without-new-pkgs
apt full-upgrade

apt autoremove
apt autoclean
reboot

View results

After rebooting again, you can use this command to display the release information and see whether the upgrade was successful:

cat /etc/os-release

cat /etc/os-release

Der Beitrag Upgrade Debian 12 (Bookworm) to 13 (Trixie) erschien zuerst auf flohs blog.