I have never attempted to install to ext4, although I would like to try it. I learned elsewhere that GRUB will not boot an ext3 partition, which is making this install more complicated than my previous successes.

Somewhere, it is listed the recommendation for:

1. A swap partition
2. A /boot partition
3. A / partition

I've been through it before with swap partitions, primary partitions, and logical partitions, but never saw an option for a type "boot" partition option in the drop-down list. I know much less about the boot process, and then I have never had to deal with a conflict between the system and the boot partition.

I had set up my system partition to be formatted ext4, with the mount point "/". This is not good enough for the installer, I need another partition to boot my system, with the ext3 format, but what must I do to tell the installer that this is my boot partition and don't try to boot "/"? Do I need to do more than establish a mount point "/boot" in the ext3?

Anyway, with another distro on my hard drive, I guess when my computer boots the /boot partition, I will still need to select from the GRUB menu of systems to run. Would I be able to do a setup without creating another partition (however small, I know), and set it up to boot an existing ext3 partition instead, and then run the fedora system? If so, how would I make it do this, and would it cause any disadvantages?

One more question - do I need more than one swap file for all the distros on a hard drive?

Thanks.

Yes, establishment of a mount point "/boot" all that it needs
To create a /boot partition:
1. Create a new partition (100MB should be more than enough)
2. Format it as ext3 (since you need the /boot partition to be ext3)
3. Mount it as /boot

You are done....

Thanks! You wouldn't believe what I went through, just for not understanding that one fine point of how the boot system relaties to the partition mount point. I suppose it's obvious to engineers, but this Joe User thinks it really ought to be spelled out in the how-tos.