Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Installing Backtrack 3 to dual boot with XP


I was recently asked to upgrade a laptop's drive(Dell Lattitude D600) from an 80Gb to a 120 Gb and to install Backtrack 3(Linux) in a dual boot with Windows XP. Backtrack 3 is a Linux distribution focusing on wireless security. The website for it is here called Remote Exploit. After I had successfully cloned the drive over using XXClone software, my next task was to configure the dual boot. I first tried to find some video's on Youtube on the subject or at least some instruction on the web. Though I did find some, many were a bit confusing even contradicting. 90% were for Ubuntu which though similar wasn't quite the same setup. For some reason didn't even think to try main website (Remote Exploit) so I ended up there and sure enough I found a tutorial video on dual booting XP and Backtrack. This was done by one of the developers Mati Aharoni(user: muts). It's a good tutorial though he's a bit quick though. I had to stop the video several times to follow along. I basically copied how he did it. Needless to say it was successful and the laptop now is configured to dual boot both Windows XP and Backtrack 3. There were a few moments when I held my breath because of a couple of goofs(though mostly my fault, Mati did a couple too) one was one line that had something like "root/root/" and all that was needed was one "root/" command. There were a couple of other's but I can't remember them(sorry).

I was happy that I was successful though it was tedious entering all the settings manually. It's not for the faint of heart. Most importantly(Even Mati emphasizes this) is to have a backup. I had just cloned the drive so basically I had a backup in case I messed up. You should too if you attempt this. Also if you attempt this I suggest have a good chunk of time and coupled with a whole lot of patience.

Source: Wiki page for Backtrack 3

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