I just found out that RH comes with parted, so that's probably already installed on your machine as well, and yes masterc is right, it looks easy enough.

Anne

An other question:
Is it possible to share boot partition?

I will install debian far beyond the 1024 cilinder and quite frankly I'm not sure wether my machine is able to boot from beyond the 1024th, so I want to play it save.

btw: is there a way to check wether I can boot debian from beyond the 1024th? I use the Grub bootloader.

Anne

is there a way to check wether I can boot debian from beyond the 1024th? I use the Grub bootloader.
It has more to do with your BIOS than your bootloader. If your box is only a couple yrs old, that shouldn't be a problem.

Is it possible to share boot partition?
Totally, and to give you an example off how it works, you could have only one kernel in a boot partition and use it on different installs on different partitions.

I've never done it [...so you might wanna get a second opinion] but I probably would feel more comfy to do it manually by copying the 2nd install's kernel into the boot partition and editing fstab after the fact as opposed to letting a 2nd install write to /boot during install...but it's probably safe anyhow.

So I could just try installing everything on the root partition and then if it turns out that I can't boot from there copy the kernel to my exisisting boot partition.

Right?

Anne

If you've got 1 working distro, then test away. The worst that will happen is you will only have the one working distro...

Cool

You got it.
If worst comes to worst, you could always use the booting kernel [...existing install] to boot the FS that's past the 1024th cyl.
It's just a matter of writing the right menu.lts [...or grub.conf for R-H???] entry.
That way you could salvage your install, let alone the fact that you can always use your install CD's rescue or the existing install in "chroot" mode.

btw, the same principle can be applied to /home if your distros are close, app-version-wise, but /boot is a sure bet.

NIce info guys......

Thanxx guys. I think that now my pre-installing questions are answered.
I've dedicated coming sunday to installing debian on my to be created new partition.
I'll keep you informed on the progress.

Anne

Woohoo, good luck! Don't get too discouraged, it's unfamiliar, but only slightly...

Cool

An update:

I succesfully resized my existing partitions and added a root partition for debian and a /docs partition for them to share. (thanks to RH for putting parted on their rescue disk)

Then I installed Debian......which is where problems began
-install went ok except: I selected es1370 as my audio driver only to find out afterwards that I should have selected es1371 (ooops!!!) Can I just add a module to fix this?

-I got confused at the interface of taksel resulting in me breaking of the config programm early by accident. (no idea what is installed and what isn't)

-It kept asking me questions I knew nothing about (networking dial-up configs and such) I hope I didn't do anything irreversible and that (after I install the modem drivers-I have a Intel ham modem) I can get my connection up)

-I can't get in to X (trying to fix that by comparing the XFree86 files of RH and Debian)

I'm going back at it this evening...

Anne

You can just copy the working XF86Config from RH to Deb!
And don't forget to visit http://forum.nedlinux.nl !!

I know I could, but then I would get a bloated config file (due to some major experimenting I did in RH)
I'll do it for now though and I'll save the old file so I can always clean up the mess later.

Anne

Anne did you manage to get Slackware up?.. I know I did .. I had a little trouble getting up my DSL connection.. But its working fine now... And let me know hows debian.. As I left about 9GB free for new distros.. Right now I have RH8 and SLack.. ANd maybe I'll try freeBSD

I put installing Slackware on hold for a while b/c I caved in to the pressure of some seriously debian addicted coleagues of mine.
But how knows, maybe that'll be my next project.

First experiences with Debian are good.
Install went easier than expected and I only ran in to problems after the base-system already had been installed. Trouble began running taksel (to select which packages to install and which not) b/c I didn't understand the interface gave enter and it went right in to installing packages I didn't want (like KDE) leaving me with a somewhat bloated system which I'll have to clean up.
Also the post-install confronted me with some network and serverrelated questions I knew nothing about. So I'm so hoping that I'll be getting my internet up.
Which leads me to the last problem I encountered, which is related to the fact that Debian assumes you have a hardware modem which it can set up itself, but I have a linmodem which I have to install manually, so much of the post-install config I had to skip and i'm hoping I'll get it right manualy after I install the modem.

Also setting up X was kind of tricky for a while but copying my RH XF86-config file to Debian solved the issue

That's my report on debian experiences so far...

Anne

Ok check this out ; Link

It's helped me a lot !!!