Yet Another Linux WinXP Dual Boot Question...
 

OK! So I bought Redhat 9.0 today, didn't want to, but I formatted my entire 40gig drive. I got Linux on, and its running fine. I currently have three LINUX partitions in this drive now. So now, I REALLY need to dual-boot with XP! So I set BIOS to boot from CD, blahblabhblah, go through the WINXP setup insructons, when I get to the prompt asking me where I want to put XP, I see the three partitions of type "Unkown" which is fine, cuz it doesn't know what the LINUX part's are. So when I installed linux, I made sure to make 30gigs of type, "FREE SPACE" so this is unpartitioned stuff. So it shows up on the XP install menu. I hit enter, and it says," Can not create partition because maximum amount of partitions have been created on this disk." um, I dont like that. Is there a way around this? or what? I only need to make one NTFS Partition out of this space. Could sum1 help?









ALSO: Another question, how can I STOP pretty much ALL sound from playing through my system speaker in linux?

you can only have 4 primary partitions on a disk

one of these should be an extended partition if you plan on having more than four so it can be split up into logical drives.

in other words make three primary partitions and one extended partition

The thing to do is to install XP first. Then install linux and partition the remaining free space for linux.

you could have done it the other way if you had left a primary partition for windows.

One solution is to move one of your linux partition contents to /

this will free up a partition and you will not need to reload linux

the freed up partition can be deleted, then an extended partition could be created from it. then you could move some of your linux stuff to one of the logical drives, possibly mounting the folder you moved to / back on a logical partition instead of the primary it's on now

in order to reclaim the free space the partition you choose to delete must be either immediately before or after the free space on the drive


the goal would be to move things around as to free up a primary partition for windows and reclaim the free space

To stop the sound from the speaker turn off the volume for it in aumix

Im a noob, can I get a step-by-step for anything here?

We could give a better idea of what needs to be done if you post some info on the partitions

the output of this...

fdisk -l /dev/hda

providing /dev/hda is you hard disk

and also the output of this ...

mount

and the output of this...

cat /etc/fstab

and the output of this...

df

OUTPUT OF THE CAT COMMAND:

LABEL= / / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL= /boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hda3 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/cdrom1 /mnt/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0

OUTPUT OF MOUNT:

/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/hda2 on / type ext3 (rw)
none on /proc type proc (rw)
usbdevfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbdevfs (rw)
/dev/hda1 on /boot type ext3 (rw)
none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)

OUTPUT OF DF:

Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda2 8056524 1894524 5752748 25% /
/dev/hda1 101089 9326 86544 10% /boot
none 256048 0 256048 0% /dev/shm

Thnx all, I REALLY need help!

Cool

we are going to need this

fdisk -l /dev/hda

bash: fdisk command not found. LOL, thats wierd, so do I issue the FDISK commands in the terminal? because thats what I did, as root and everything.

Yeah, for some reason it seems RH doesn't put the path fdisk resides in in the root's path by default, try:
whereis fdisk
And when it returns the path use that. It might be:
/sbin/fdisk
For example. So you'd execute with:
/sbin/fdisk -l /dev/hda

Cool

Cannot open /dev/hda uh oh

What? What does a generic:
/sbin/fdisk -l
return then?

As for muting your volume, open up a mixer. If you go to a terminal type:
aumix
If nothing, then type:
gmix
If still nothing, try:
kmix
One of those should be installed and in your path. So then, once one of them come up, I think muting it should be self explanatory. If not, I'll be glad to walk you through it ;)

Cool

try it like this, it might work. Some do and some don't.


/sbin/fdisk -l

I AM SO FRUSTRATED ARGH! This is what I get:

[cody@dhcp-1422-5 cody]$ /sbin/fdisk -l
Cannot open /dev/hda
Cannot open /dev/hdb

My accounts name is cody, so thats why it says cody. Even when I cd into sbin, it wont work.

All I want to do is a simple dual boot, I know its been done before! arghhhhhhh!

You must be root to do those things ;) That's probably why you are getting those errors...

Cool