Booting Mandrake Linux and WinXP and 98

[MrBurns]

I now have Win98SE and XP installed in dual boot. Win98 is on C: and XP is on D:. I want to install Linux on E: and I want to have a boot menu, where I can choose between these 3 OSes. All partizions are FAT32 and I dont want to change tha, because I want to access all partitions w/ all OSes.

You should also know, that I am a Linux n00b. I mainly nred to learn Linux because I need it for the uni.

 

[drag]

Well your going to be most limited by wanting to stick with FAT32 for the linux partition. FAT32 doesn't provide the nessicary posix-style functions to keep Linux happy, however people have worked around this issue and use a thing called UMSDOS filesystem, which provides the functionality to make FAT32 work for linux. The extra information that FAT can't handle is stored in special files. THis is transperent to the end user, but these files show up to windows.

Plus you get a big performance penalty.

THere are specific distros designed to handle this, for example peanut linux, phat linux, and dragon linux. But these are cut down OSes designed to be run from the same partition as windows. A kinda trial-style distros.

They are OK for trying stuff out, but nowadays we have something better.

Linux live CDs are CD's that contain a complete OS that can run without installing anything (or like SUSE only a couple easy-to-delete files). You have SuSE live-eval CD, and Knoppix are ones that I am familar with. Mandrake has one, as does Gentoo (which have a couple game-based ones, too)

You can get these thru links from Linuxiso.org.

Otherwise try out one of the UMSDOS-based linux distros.


If you want to use Linux "for real" its much more preferable to have a native partition running ext3 or one of the numerous filesystems that Linux supports. (for performance and reliability)

 

[MrBurns]

Can I use fdisk to split the E: partition in one small partition 5GB, which I will convert to ext3, or will I also loose the data on the other logical drive of my secondary DOS-partition (D?

I have about 100MB data on D:, but I dont have anything installed for XP yet, so I could copy the data back to C:.

I could also use partition magic, but I dont want to do that, because I made a bad experience w/ this program (crash during resizing partition, which caused my partition to be destroyed).

Is there also a program that does what PM would do (splitting the E: partition w/o deleting any of the other partitions) on the Mandrake CD?

I will definitely not use the whole 32Gb partition for the Linux file system, because I dont think, that I will ever use mor ethan 5Gb for Linux and I cannot afford wasting 25GB+ of HDD space. I would rather use an emulator like vmware to run Linux than loosing so much HDD space.

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: MrBurns
Can I use fdisk to split the E: partition in one small partition 5GB, which I will convert to ext3, or will I also loose the data on the other logical drive of my secondary DOS-partition (D: )?

fdisk isn't smart enough to split anything, but I don't understand why you need to. Is there data you need on E:? If not, just delete the E: logical partition, and create 5 GB and 27GB partitions in its place. Better yet, since you'll want a swap partition, create 5 GB, 1 GB, and 26 GB partitions in its place. If you do have data on E:, try to move it to another partition temporarily, repartition, then copy it back over.

I have about 100MB data on D:, but I dont have anything installed for XP yet, so I could copy the data back to C:.

Don't see why this is necessary in this case.

Is there also a program that does what PM would do (splitting the E: partition w/o deleting any of the other partitions) on the Mandrake CD?

Mandrake comes with some partition resizing tools, but it's always better not to use them unless you have to. Especially, in my experience, when it comes to messing with logical and extended partitions.

I will definitely not use the whole 32Gb partition for the Linux file system, because I dont think, that I will ever use mor ethan 5Gb for Linux

We'll see...

 

[MrBurns]

Originally posted by: cleverhandle Better yet, since you'll want a swap partition, create 5 GB, 1 GB, and 26 GB partitions in its place.

Why should I use a swap partition? afaik it only makes a difference in performance when you have it on a faster HDD. I also would need 2GB, because I have 1GB RAM and use twice my RAM for swap, because most people recommend the 1.5-3 fold of your RAM, so I decided tp use the 2 fold.

 

[drag]

2 times your ram is a bit old. That was the standard back in the OMG you have 64MEGS??!! That's more then you'll ever need!-Days.

A 500 Meg swap file is great. By the time you use that much up your machine will be dragging so much that you wouldn't want to have much more going on.

With 2.4 kernels you can actually get away with NO swap file, but disk space is cheap.

 

[MrBurns]

Originally posted by: drag
2 times your ram is a bit old. That was the standard back in the OMG you have 64MEGS??!! That's more then you'll ever need!-Days.

I know, that I will never need so much swap space, but I have read, that the performance is better when you have it at that size. Dont ask me why.

 

[MrBurns]

I have done this now: I deleted the logical drive E: w/ fdisk (no data was lost on D: because of this) und I made 3 new logical drives instead of the old one: one w/ 2GB as swappartition, one w/ 3GB for Linux and the rest as a FAT32 partition w/ 27GB. The first two I made to the swap and native partitions and the setup program automatically converted them to ext2.

Now I can choose different Linux-bootoptions and Windows in the bootmenu. When I choose Windows, I get the WinNT bootmenu, were I can choose between WinXP and Win98.