Installing Red Hat 7.1 into unpartitioned space?

[Alex Ethridge]

I have never successfully installed Linux on a system with another OS and every time I try, I am hit square in the face as to why I've never been successful at this.

I have a hard disk with one 60-Gig drive. It is currently partitioned into two FAT-32 partitions leaving about 18 Gigs as unpartitioned space. When attempting to install RedHat 7.1, I am presented with screens offering to install Linux on existing partitions already containing Windows 98 and 2000. I get no ther options. I went to what is known as NHF files; but, I am so far down the ladder of knowledge I do not understand what I read in them well enough to get Linux to install into the unpartitioned space.

Can someone point me in the direction of a "How-To" file that will tell me this?

[pbharris]

Hello,
I am not sure a how to exists but I can tell you what I owuld do.
When you are installing look for an option to use fdisk - for me this was in some corner of the install screen almost hidden. Use it to create the linux partition and a linux swap partition. There are already three partitions, one primary, one extended and one logical. You will need to create two more logical drives, this can and should be done in the un-used space. Here is a thread from another board which I hopefully was pretty clear in.
http://www.sysopt.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=71650

[Dark Ninja]

Yeah - you should create a Linux partition - which is specifically designed for Linux. (Swap file partition is good also.) I know that Mandrake can do this for you if you want. It's very easy to do. If you aren't comfortable with fdisk, you can also buy Partition Magic and it should work very nicely for you.


Dark Ninja

[xh3g]

Dark Ninja's right about Partition Magic. i had a hard time trying to learn , from scratch, everything about cylinders and blocks, so i just bit the bullet and paid for Partition Magic 5. Partition Magic 6 is out now and probably offers more in the way of filesystems to format with. Partition Magic really does make partitioning 'point-and-click' easy.

[Alex Ethridge]

Well, if it is all that complicated, I guess I had better ask a different question: Where can I find a manual on FDisk and partitioning under Linux--one that will explain all the terms it uses well enough for a Windows convert to understand?

So far, everything I read is sort of "Catch 22". The writers use terms I don't understand to define terms I don't understand.