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Any problem to install Linux in my /dev/hda4?

Hi,

Here is how my disk is partitioned:

Code:

Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40060403712 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4870 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes



  Device Boot      Start        End      Blocks  Id  System

/dev/hda1              1        974    7823623+  83  Linux

/dev/hda2            975        1097      987997+  82  Linux swap

/dev/hda3            1098        4137    24418800    5  Extended

/dev/hda4            4138        4870    5887822+  83  Linux

/dev/hda5            1098        4137    24418768+  83  Linux

I have Gentoo in /dev/hda1, working fine so far, but wanted to try Debian. Is there any problem to install it in my /dev/hda4? I tried, but is fails.

Thank you very much in advance!

PS: What about removing /dev/hda4 and creating it inside the extended partition? Would it be possible/impossible? I ask this because that was what I had in the beginning, but since the installation failed I changed it to a primary partition. Thanks again...

Someone more knowledgeable than I am, please correct me if I am wrong.
If you are using one hard disk, you may have one primary partition, and an extended partition which may be divided into as many sub-partitions as you desire.
I have a 40 G disk set up with one primary, and one extended partition, which is divided into six sub-partitions of the extended partition. I have three OS's installed; one in the primary, and two in the secondary (set up with six sub-partitions) and I have no problems with booting.
So. I'd recommend that you delete hda4 and hda5. Then increase the size of the extended partition to take up the free space. Then partition the extended partition to re-create hda4 and hda5.
I recall something about having only one primary bootable partition, and an extended partition with bootable sub-partitions, but I don't recall what that document was nor where I found it.
My own setup is one primary bootable, an extended with two bootable sub-partitions, and other partitions. Namely, the two extended bootable are the root of their respective OS's, plus partitions for /home and /usr.
At any rate, it works for me.

I think you can have 3 primary and one extended

You can have up to 4 primary partitions on one drive. If you require more than 4 you have to make one an extended partition and then create logical partitions on that one. You're showing 3 primaries, 1 extended, and 1 logical.
You should be able to install a Linux on hda4, at least I can't see a reason why not with that information. What error are you getting?

Well it fails to create the filesystem. I tried ReiserFS also and didn't work. Well... didn't work until I restarted. I was able to install Debian, but not tu run it. I put

Code:

title=Debian

root (hd0,3)

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.27-2-686 root=/dev/hda4 initrd=initrd.img-2.4.27-2-686

in my menu.lst for grub. It is able to load the kernel, but then hangs claiming that the root is not properly set. I thought it could be something very stupid (as the kernel without support for ReiserFS), hence tried ext3 again today morning, and got the same problem than yesterday. It fails to create the file system.

Thank you...

Found that the problem appeared only when started with kernel 2.6. Anything worked fine if 2.4 was used.