I am dual booting Win98 and MDK 8.2,and would now like to install RH 7.3
on some free space on my 40 GB HD,but I keep on getting these error
messages,when I try to run Disk Druid or Auto.Partitioning.

Warning: Boot Partition /boot may not meet booting constraints for your
architecture.Creation of boot disk highly recommended.

/ could not allocate requested partition.Partitioning failed.Could not
allocate cylinder based partitions.
The partition table looks like this.

Drive /dev/hda (Geom 4865/255/63) Model ST340016A

/dev/hda
Device Start End SizeMB Type Mount Pt Format
/dev/hda1 1 1913 15006 VFAT NO
/dev/hda2 1914 3917 15720 EXT
/dev/hda5 1914 2562 5091 VFAT NO
/dev/hda6 2653 2596 267 EXT3 NO
/dev/hda7 2597 2646 392 SWAP YES
/dev/hda8 2647 2662 125 EXT3 NO
/dev/hda9 2663 3173 4008 EXT3 NO
/dev/hda10 3174 3247 580 EXT3 NO
Free 3248 3917 5256 Free Space
Free 3918 4865 7436 Free Space

Looking in bios the HD primary,master table looks like this.

Options Size Cyls. Head Precomp Landz Sector Mode
2(y) 40018 4865 255 0 19157 83 LBA
1 40022 19158 16 65535 19157 255 Normal
3 40010 2394 128 65535 19157 255 Large

I have tried installing in both of the free spaces,but still have the
same errors.

I hope someone can point me in the right direction.

Thanks

Lachlan

Dear Laughlan,

The problem you are experiencing is due to the fact that you have two different types of partitions; primary and secondary. The numbers 1 to 4 are primary partitions. Five and up are secondary. The secondary partitions rest on top of the primary partitions, so you may not be able to add any more secondary partitions without adding another primary - IE 3 or 4. So to use up all the space on your disk, you have to add another primary partition.

You may find using fdisk, which comes with some Linux distros like RedHat, much better for doing complicated partitioning tasks. You can work directly on the disk, instead of hoping the automatic partitoning tool has done it right. The control is greater, but the risk is higher too, so don't say I didn't warn you.

Also, I think you can only put four secondary partitions on each primary, and I'm unsure if it's wise to go above eight partitions in total, but this is beyond my limited knowledge of things.

Hope this helps,

Harry

PS: You should always keep track of what partition is your /home partition so you don't lose all your work each time you upgrade.

Hello Harry,
Thanks for the info,I have now got them up and running.I used partition magic to to give me a win98 C drive of less than 8GB,made the rest of the drive unallocated space and installed RH 7.3 first, using grub as my boot loader and putting it into mbr,no problem.Installed MDK 8.2 next,ok,with the exception that at the moment I can only boot from a bootable floppy.
Created a win98 D drive at the end of my hard drive(so my original cdrom (E) drive letter stays the same.
I now just have to find a way to boot MDK 8.2 using grub.

Cheers

Lachlan