Hello. I use slackware 10.1-current with the 2.6.x kernel.....

i've realized that i need to suddenly require dual boot and i was wondering if i could re-partition my reiserfs drive and free some space up so i can create a fat32/vfat partition for dual booting into slack10 and windows xp... the issue i am having is....

i read that "parted" would be a great program to work, but under slack, there is no parted... so .. what would I use to resize and free up some partition space?

also, i want to use lilo as the bootloader, and not the windows bootloader... will installing windows affect the way i have lilo installed? lilo is located in the MBR.

hope you guys can help

parted is not part of a distro normally, it is just another 3rd party tool, that will run on any distro. most distros will include reiserfs tools package though, containing resize_reiserfs, which if it is only a reiser partition you wish to play with, you should be fine. Note that the filesystem and the partition within whyich the filesystem exists are two seperate entities, and as such would be resized seperately (unless somethign expleicitly does both at once).

as for lilo... installing windows WILL nuke your MBR without any way to avoid it at all. Your best bet is to get a fully functional boot disk for your current installation and check it works just fine to access Linux. Then go install windblows and reinstall lilo from Linux afterwards. Note you will need to add the windows entry yourself.

Probably the nicest-to-use partitioning tool is the Mandrake partitioning thingo which you can get by either booting your computer of the Mandrake install CD (and going up to the partitioning step) or booting it off the Mandrake Move or PCLinuxOS LiveCDs and then going into the Mandrake Control Centre.