Not enough partitions to add both primary linux and swap to existing windows 7

BrotherRufus · 11-27-2011, 05:52 PM

I shrunk Windows partition to free up 130G for slackware.
fdisk shows 3 primary partitions:

Code:

sda1 27 Hidden NTFS WinRE (recovery 20G)
sda2  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT   (100MB)
sda3  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT   (150G)

In other forum questions on dual booting, the first hidden partition is not assigned a number, so adding a bootable primary partition and extended for swap would not be a problem.

Since it is given a number on my box, how can I have a primary partition for linux and another extended partition for swap?
Am I correct in thinking that the bootable linux partition should be primary, not extended?

I am new to Win7, would like to keep it for the time being, don't have an install disk for Win7, and the disk burning software I have (NTI free edition) seems to make bootable cds by putting an unusable dos boot on it that drops to A:\ with outdated drivers, so it can't read the disks or the cd.

This is my first ever forum question, so I hope this is the right place for the thread and I have given enough info.

I have installed other linux and slackware in single and dual boots before without a hitch, but this is new to me and frustrating. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated

syg00 · 11-27-2011, 06:33 PM

No, you are not correct. The fallacy that bootable partitions must be primary is only perpetrated by companies and distros stuck in the past. Windows and anything using "slices" for instance.
Grub will happily boot from a logical (not extended note) partition. I'm sure lilo will these days as well. Create an extended using all the free space, then use logicals as needed.

BrotherRufus · 11-27-2011, 08:52 PM

sig-->You presume a lot

First off, thank you!!! That is exactly what I was missing. I now have a dual boot.

It also explains why fdisk gave a warning when I tried to make the extended partition bootable. Frustration can make it difficult to see this hints from the system. Anyway, all of this had been following 3 days of trying to get it to work on top of a long string of frustrations in trying to set up windows to be useful.

In case anyone else is having similar difficulties, a few more notes:
1. Win7 won't backup to network drives (which I have), unless you upgrade to professional. It will read/write to them, though from Home Premium (at least) and let you (despite what the msdn board said) assign drive letters to network shares. Same as XP.
Anyway, I copied over my home directory and documents. I also exported my firefox passwords and bookmarks and copied them to the network drive as well.

2. After booting the slackware cd, I mounted a small usb drive and wrote out the master boot record and partition table to it. In hindsight, I should have done that before repartitioning, but worked out OK, except that...

3. I used windows to shrink the big partition size initially. None of the partitions line up to the proper boundaries--none, not even the ones it came with new. This may lead to problems later. Thankfully linux can read all of the partitions and back up everything to a network drive.

4. The small 100MB partition is the one used to boot windows, so if it's not sda1 (as in my case), lilo.conf needs to updated to point at that partition (sda2 in my case).