EDITED: OK Linux guys, I need your help in partitioning...BIG TIME!!::::AH HA, figured it out!!!!

[JackBurton]

OK, I'm multibooting 98SE, 2000 Pro, XP Pro and Linux Mandrake 8.1. The first three OSes are install and are running perfect. However, I'm lost on how to install Linux on the last partition. This is a 20GB drive with each OS using 5GB. So I have 5GB to work with Linux. I know I need to set up four partitions for Linux (/boot, /, /swap, and /home) but I don't know in what order I need to put them in or how much space I should give each one. If you guys can just get me set up and booting Linux from a floppy, I can take care of the rest (have it boot from MS bootloader). THANKS!

 

[Nothinman]

All you really need is / and swap, having /home is preferred but not necessary and /boot was used originally to make sure the kernel stayed above the 1024 cylinder mark, which isn't necessary any more.

Since you have 5G I would probably do swap 1.5x memory, / 3-4G /home the rest.

 

[JackBurton]

OK, but when I let the system take over the install, it puts "/" and "/swap" in the last partition but writes over the MBR! :| I want to have Linux boot from a floppy so I can go into Linux later and then edit my boot.ini file on my C: (which has 98SE on it) and have it point it to the last partition (Linux). So far I have been unsuccessful. After the Linux install completes, I can ONLY boot into Linux (obviously it is writing over the MBR). I just can't seem to get it to give me the option to boot off a floppy. :|

 

[MarcusAsleep]

Every linux distro I've used gave an option during install to have lilo (the linux boot program) install on the boot sector of it's root partition. This is what you want (or the boot floppy like you said). If you're not finding it, don't let Mandrake do an automatic install, but just choose "custom" or whatever and accept the defaults until you get to the lilo install part then look for the above. Their instructions would be more specific but this should be about it.

Mark.

 

[cleverhandle]

Three comments:

1) The maximum swap file/partition size that can be utilized is 128MB. You can set up multiple swaps if you wanted to, but if the machine is new, I doubt you'll need it.

2) A thought... you can't boot directly off LILO on a logical partition boot record (you would need a logical linux partition, since you've got three primaries already). Now, in your case, I don't know if this is a problem, since you're not booting directly from LILO, but rather feeding its info to the MS loader. I think it should work, but you may want to inquire further.

3) Check if the future linux space is inside an extended partition created by XP. I don't know if XP always does this, or if I did something strange during my installation, but my XP install created an extended partition spanning the remainder of the disk, and created a logical partition for itself within it. XP then had serious issues when I used cfdisk to make a linux partition within the extension. If this happened already, and you don't want to reinstall the Windows OS's, you can get around it by creating the future linux partition through XP's tools. It doesn't seem to mind you cfdisk'ing its partition afterwards.

edit: typos

 

[FUBAR]

Don't believe that swap line in the last post. You SHOULD have at least the same swap as your ram, most unicies and RedHat for sure will complain if otherwise. You can get by with less or none but you should really have it. Reason being that it is a performance gain to be able to completely page out the system ram to disk. Since you have 512, go for that or more.

 

[JackBurton]

OK, this is exactly what I want to do. I want to install Linux on the last partition. When I boot up my system, I want to boot into Linux with a floppy disk. Now if I take the disk out, I want it to boot to the MS bootloader. This way I can make the adjustments I need to Linux later to get it to show on MS bootloader. I just can't figure out how to set it up like that. This version of Mandrake doesn't even mention LILO if I go by the "recommended" install. :| If you haven't noticed yet, I am VERY new to Linux. I want to install it this way so I can practice on it but not have a dedicated Linux machine until I get more familiar with it. I just need a set-by-step to get me started here.

This machine is a PII400 with 384MB of ram and a 20GB drive. The 20GB drive partitioned is as follows:

1. Windows 98SE
2. Windows 2000 Pro
3. Windows XP Pro
4. Linux - Mandrake 8.1 (hopefully)

 

[Nothinman]

1) The maximum swap file/partition size that can be utilized is 128MB. You can set up multiple swaps if you wanted to, but if the machine is new, I doubt you'll need it.

Wrong on both counts, the 128M limit was with 2.2 kernels I believe it's now 2G, maybe larger. And because the VM is still less than perfect it's recommended to have atleast as much swap as you do physical memory because it's a lot less agressive about freeing swap so it's possble to run out if you run programs that use a lot of memory.

Go through the expert install, it should ask you then if it's not already.

 

[cleverhandle]

FUBAR: Hmm... seems I've been living in the Dark Ages on swap limits. Since 2.1, i386 swap partitions can be up to 1 GB. Sorry for the misinformation. I can say that I've never really noticed any thrashing, though I'm no expert in memory usage, so I can't say whether my usage is representative.

Jack: It seems very odd to me that Mandrake doesn't give you that choice somewhere... but then I've never used Mandrake. If you can't figure anything else out, just do this:

1) Install Mandrake - let it install LILO if it really wants to.

2) Once installation is finished, run "/sbin/lilo -u" to uninstall LILO from wherever Mandrake put it.

3) Format a floppy with "fdformat /dev/fd0"

4) Find your kernel - it's probably /boot/vmlinuz, or maybe just /vmlinuz.

5) Make your bootdisk with "dd if=/boot/vmlinuz of=/dev/fd0 bs=8192" (substitute your kernel location if it's different).

There 'ya go...

 

[NorthenLove]

<< Jack: It seems very odd to me that Mandrake doesn't give you that choice somewhere... but then I've never used Mandrake. If you can't figure anything else out, just do this: >>



It does give you a choice near the end were you need to configure lilo/grub all he has to do is to use the drop the menu and pick fd0 intead of hda1 and insert a floppy disk.

 

[JackBurton]

OK, I figured it out. Ya, Mandrake 8.1 didn't give me the option to choose where I wanted to install LILO. Why? Because I needed to be in expert mode! :| WTH? I'm no expert, so I didn't chose it the first few times I installed it. Well I installed it and had LILO installed on the hda7 partition. I just boot from a floppy and I'm good to go now. And I can take the floppy out and have my other Oses available to me now.


Thanks for your help guys!