partition prob.

[littlebig]

i have a 40G harddisk. I want to use 10G for win98, 15G for win2k and 15G
for linux.
I have already installed win98 and win2k.
But since there is prob. for linux partition larger than 8.4G, I make a 30M
/boot and 255M swap. But I cannot have any more primary for the /. How to
solve this prob.?
thanks!
:confused:

[x]

You can have totally 4 primary partitions, one can be a so called extended partition.
An extended partition is a partition that will hold logical drives, the reason for this is a BIOS limitation workaround.

So what you do is:
Delete the SWAP partition, which I guess is primary, and instead create an extended partition using all space left on your HD.
Then create new logical volumes as needed, in normal use you won't see the difference between logical volume & a "real" partition.

Rereading your question, I'm not quite sure if you understand the problem - or am I misunderstanding you?
Anyway, if your BIOS isn't brand new you must have the /boot within the first 8 GB! I don't think there is an 8 GB limit for ext2-partitions, although I'm not sure (never used this size).
This means that you will have to split the first partition to make room for /boot.
Use fips, included with every distribution I have seen.
It isn't difficult, just read the instructions.

I hope this answers your question?

[Craig McPherson]

First of all, use an LBA32-compatible bootloader and you won't NEED a seperate /boot partition. I also recommend that newbies don't have a seperate swap partition -- I like swap files much better. It's up to you, though.

If you really don't want to use an LBA32 bootloader, then just make your first three primary partitions small, one for each OS, and make your fourth primary partition an Extended partition that takes up the rest of the disk, and create all your other partitions as logical drives inside the extended partition.

I'd recommend not having more than four logical partitions inside your extended partition, since you'll have Win98 on the drive, and Win98 has been known to sometimes eat extended partitions containing more than 4 logical partitions. Linux has no problem with them, of course: I think it can handle 32 logical partitions per drive or something like that. It's either 32, or 256, or 65536, or somewhere in that neighborhood.

[Cuthbert]

There is no 8GB limit for ext2.... I've got a 10 and a 20 GB partition.