I tried loading Fedora Core 1 supplied by Linux user, but have got stuck at firstbase.

I have a single 80Gbyte drive with Wndows XP professional on it, which has all the space with NTFS file system.

Loading fedora disk one I get stuck at the disk druid. It does not appear to have a simple option of installing Fedora. (XP loaded all but the last 8 mbyte).

Can I use the druid reduce the size of the XP to half the disk space and use the other half
to Fedora?

I know you can with Mandrake, but I have a friend who tried to load Fedora into the mandrake partition and then lost his windows -he was left with a dos window.

Anyone, help explain the best way to go about loading Fedora on a single disk, or do I really have to add another drive and keep them seperate?

resizing an NTFS partition is never fun.. it's quite likely impossible, you would want to resize the partition using a windows tool to do this, and then restart the installation.

i'm not sure you can do it just with windoze. i think you can do it with partion magic? i maybe wrong there though.

otherwise ya gonna have to either use another harddrive like i did or re partition the disk and start again.

G

I tried to resize my XP NTFS but it had those locked files in the end of partition that could not be moved so I tried something called boot defrag or something (Partition Magic and some other program) but it didn't move them either. Finally I just reinstalled XP and made the partitions on install. I don't think it's possible without reinstall but you can try if you have lots of free time.

Partition Magic on windows is the way to go.
Firstly defrag your harddisk this will help save time during the resize operation also run scandisk or chkdsk to ensure theres no errors in the filesystem
Then you can shrink down your C drive (windows partition). This is quite striaght forward using partition magic. It will take a while to do. Once its completed, you should be left with whatever size you need free space, you can then install Fedora. I've used this method many times now, and never had any problems.
Most Importantly remember to backup those important files incase you screw it up...

Is there a bootable-Linux utility that will reduce the size of the NTFS partition? I'd rather not use Partition Magic since its not freeware. I'd rather do this process entirely on Linux.

I've never used the Mandrake Installer, can someone shed some light into that? I could be talked into using the Mandrake Installer to resize the partitions, and then rebooting with my distro-of-choice to install.

But, really, I'd love to find a bootable Linux that did all of the partition handling separately. It would be a GREAT tool to help show people Linux. (After they see it run with Knoppix on their system, of course....)

Both SUSE and Mandrake can resize NTFS partitions.

NTFS is not (AFAIK) a documented system- and I believe it is patented, thus to resize it requires some reverse engineering to be able to do so. Red Hat (for very good reasons) does not want to have stuff like this in their distros- same reason there is no MP3 suppport- the legal waters are too deep. (See Fedorazine- http://www.fedorazine.com/content/view/82/38/)

Also- a friend of mine who is really smart kernel-wise was telling me that support in the kernel is still beta...... I'm not a kernel guy, so I don't know.

Go to Red Hat's web site and do a search on "NTFS", NTFS support", "NTFS legal" and so on. There are some interesting discussions there. I didn't find a definitive statement from Red Hat, but I only search for 2 or 3 minutes.
And I found this here (http://www.rhil.net/kernelstuff/modules.html):
"WARNING: The "read/write" versions of these modules are very dangerous to use. Writing to an NT filesystem from Linux is almost certain to cause the system to run chkdsk on that partition when a Windows operating system is booted, and it is entirely possible that the filesystem may be corrupted beyond chkdsk's ability to repair it. We at the Unofficial RedHat Install List Website do NOT recommend using the read/write modules. We provide them only for the sake of completeness."


So why does every other distro do it? (And MP3s?) I don't know.

Anyway......

Sounds like it's a "scary thing".

Even though it's a pain, from the standpoint of seeing what market Red Hat is pursuing (enterprise/business) it makes sense. Why include such an option if it's going to put you in legal hot spots? Or destroy data? And more to the point- how many businesses buy Red Hat only to dual boot? This wouldn't make sense from a server standpoint, and if a desktop really needed Linux & Windows, you're more likely to be more productive with something like VMWare or Crossover Office. Red Hat is *really* focused on a particular market's needs- something which people spending big IT bucks really like.

As far as *reading* NTFS, you can compile the kernel to do so, though it is not the default.

From a practical standpoint- a home user wanting Fedora AND XP- here's what I did. (YMMV)

I had XP on the box. I started a setup with Mandrake. I resized the NTFS partition, then bailed on the Mandrake install. I then installed Fedora. Everything went fine. (Do this at your own risk. I've done it 3 times on 3 boxes without a hitch..... but ya takes ya chances..... backup, backup, backup before attempting.)

Yes- there are better ways of doing this that don't require having Mandrake. And you can certainly say "Why not just install Mandrake?"

Simple- I wanted Fedora. :-)

And I'm lazy. ;-)

Partition magic works too. And there are command line tools to do this also.

But "Mandrake as partitioning tool" worked just fine for me, also.

Also- when I did set up Fedora, I set up a small partition (1 GB) formatted as VFAT so that Fedora and XP can see it. I haven't actually used it, but it's there.

Cause admit it- we really only need XP for gaming, right? ;-)

Resizing an NTFSpartition impossible? No way! LOL! Just get Partition magic 8.0! No problem! just resize your 80 gig partition back to 60 and use the remaining for Linux. I reccomend 100mb boot partition 1200mb swap and the rest for /. I've found that to be the ideal for my system. Anyways, good luck with that.

Kazaa Lite has PT 8.0. 48.9 MB (be sure to scan anything you get of p2p with an a-v program.

You could download the first installation disk for Linux-Mandrake 9.2.
I believe that the code Mandrake uses to resize the windows partition was written by partition magic. But I couldn't guarantee that you data won't be currupted, so backup your important data first.
Run the install for Linux Mandrake. Elect to partition the drive yourself, and use the diskdrake program to resize the XP partition.
Or go out and buy Partition Magic. Be sure to get the newest one. It will work with XP's NTFS file system and ext3 partitions.

why buy for one instance? try the trial or get the full free off of a p2p. Shareaza, edonkey, emule, limewire, kazaa lite...blah blah blah