An easier way to dual boot under Indiana

Ever want to run fdisk(1) on a machine just to label a partition?

Recently in the February FROSUG meeting I was being a less than polite speaker as Ginnie Wray was presenting. I felt bad about my lack of manners, but I think Ginnie knows me well enough to understand I was wanting to make a cool tool, to – I hope – make someone’s day a bit better.

Ginnie was presenting on how to dual-boot Windows Vista and Project Indiana Developer Preview 2. This isn’t supported by the installer directly, however, the installer will happily install into a Solaris partition if one’s available. The steps required are:

1. Create a new partition on the disk (which one can do live, while running Vista)
2. To boot the Indiana live CD (or live USB)
3. To find the root disk’s /dev/rdsk/ path
4. To run fdisk(1) on the root disk
5. Then change the partition type for the newly created partition to Solaris
6. To Install Indiana

Ginnie in her talk, very nicely, showed how one could use the terminal, and find the root disk, and give the proper arguments to fdisk(1), change the partition type, and then finally install Indiana. However, it seems a graphical tool would make life easier for someone.

So, if you would like a graphical fdisk(1) launcher utility here you go. (One may need to hold the right mouse button down, and click save as to download; then run by simply double clicking.)