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partition placement

I currently have this setup:

/dev/hdb1 - /boot 500MB
/dev/hdb2 - / 15GB
/dev/hdb3 - swap 1 1GB

and i wanted to create another / partition for installing another linux distor.
where would i place the new / partition for the next linux install?

After the swap or before it or where?

You will need to shrink a partition and create a new one, or completely repartition your drive in order to do it properly.
It doesn't matter where the partition is located though as long as you keep track of it's location:

Standard ide drive setups only allow 4 partitions, to overcome this we use one of them as an extended partition containing all other required partitions. A possible scenario for you:

hdb1 /boot
hdb2 extended
hdb3 swap
hdb5 / [distroA]
hdb6 / [distroB]

Note that in this scenario, hdb2 (now hdb5) has been shrunk to accomodate hdb6, hdb5 & 6 are physically before the swap which remains where it is - at the end of the drive.
Use the distro installers' partition manager (in manual or expert mode) to sort this out during install of the other distro. Backup important files first though!!

edit: alternatively, just shrink / then create a new partition in the empty space; swap becomes hdb4. The first example is a bad idea as the location of / changes for (the original) distroA.

Make the changes to /etc/fstab to reflect this change before you decide to do it.

what if i restart and format the drive? how would i setup the partitions for mulitple installs

How much space do you have to work with? Are you using a single 16.5G drive, or do you have more? The more details you can provide, the better. BTW Tuttle's comments are a great summary. Along those lines, your /boot partition probably doesn't need to be any larger than 128Mg, and I wouldn't recommend a swap any larger thnn 256Mg, tops, regardless of the amount of RAM you have. The fact is that in 2005, if you've got at least 256Mg RAM and are using a reasonably current kernel, your swap usage is almost certainly minimal.

In any case, good luck with it -- J.W.

thx man

its a 60 gig hard drive that im using to play with linux distros.

im new to this and i just wanted to be safe so i gave the extra space.
i know that im not going to get exactly 60 outta the drive but did that just to make it simple.

so if i do this:
/dev/hdb1 - /boot 128MB
/dev/hdb2 - / 20GB
/dev/hdb3 - /20GB
/dev/hdb4 - /19.5GB
/dev/hdb5 - swap 256MB

i could do 3 installs ?

Yes, that's fine. Most linux distro's use the same naming conventions for naming the drives, just write all the details of your chosen hard disk layout on a piece of paper so you don't forget what your plans are during installs. With that layout you can easily install 3 distros, bear in mind that once you get familiar with how linux can use drives, you might want to more finely tune you disk layout.
Here is the output of the command "df" on my computer:

Code:

bash-3.00$ df

Filesystem          1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on

/dev/hda7              779092    131640    647452  17% /

/dev/hda8              4883572  2781316  2102256  57% /usr

/dev/hda10            1590344    32848  1557496  3% /tmp

/dev/hda9              979896    58052    921844  6% /var

/dev/hda11            7815344  3387556  4427788  44% /home

/dev/hda12            7815344  5159464  2655880  67% /mnt/archive

/dev/hda13            7815344  1518064  6297280  20% /mnt/archive2

/dev/hda14            13968052  11604920  2363132  84% /usr/local/games

/dev/hda1              3076412  2131344    945068  70% /mnt/C

/dev/hda5            24567392  16069744  8497648  66% /mnt/D

/dev/hda6            40955680  32916768  8038912  81% /mnt/E

bash-3.00$

disk = 120Gb
C, D & E are windows partitions (C for win2000, D for program_files and E for media) while hda11, 12 & 13 provide flexability for moving stuff around during major changes. Hidden is /dev/hda2 (for the linux boot loader as i have the freBSD loader in mbr), hda3 (extended) and hda4 (ad0s4 for freeBSD).
The possibilities are endless!!

sweet thx for the help guys.