My hard disk is divided into three partitions right now: hda1 (4688 M Win95 FAT32), hda3 (30675 M Win95 FAT32), and hda5(2805 M Win95 FAT32), or so the Disk Druid program on my Red Hat Linux installation disk tells me. Windows ME corroborates, telling me of C:, a backup partition, and a partition I created with FIPS it can't access. I wish to delete hda3 and install Linux on the space created. When I do, I have to add a /boot partition so the / partition can access all of the disk I want it to be able to. / and /boot can co-exist just fine, but Disk Druid won't let me make it happen without having a swap partition, too. When I add the swap partition, the program shoots an error message my way, saying that the / partition is unallocated for the following reason: 'No free primary'.

I'm stuck. Can I create an extended partition in Disk Druid, or will I have to use FDISK? Will the FDISK on my Red Hat 7.1 CD-ROM work? I assume the LILO I have on the Red Hat 7.1 CD-ROM is relatively new. Does it really need the /boot partition? Do I need the /boot partition? A simple walkthrough to fix this problem would be greatly appreciated.

And I just ran FIPS like a pro, too...

IIRC the /boot partition was a workaround for the cylinders > 1024 limit. A small (around 24MB is plenty) /boot partition could be made _under_ the 1024 cylinder limit so as to allow the system to get the kernel loaded. Now if what I've been reading is correct, the 'lba32' directive in the lilo.conf is supposed to get around the limit but I've never tried it without having my /boot as a separate partition (old habits).

Any users out there ever mounted an entire / partition without the /boot as a separate partition using the 'lba32'???