Greetings all,

So, I'm back to an attempt on getting FC2 onto my system. In order to avoid the partition table problems with installing and dual-booting with another OS, I've since purchased Norton's PartitionMagic 8.0 and have used it to alter my 2nd hard drive's (160 GB) partitions to look like this:

root = Ext3 = 2,000.2 MB (primary)
SWAPSPACE2 = swap = 2,055.2 MB (primary)
boot = Ext3 = 102.0 MB (primary)
* = Extended = 148,467.9 MB (primary)
tmp = Ext3 = 1,004.0 MB (logical)
home = Ext3 = 10,001.4 MB (logical)
usr = Ext3 = 15,006.0 MB (logical)
opt = Ext3 = 14,888.3 MB (logical)
Sub1 (F: ) = NTFS = 67,570.2 MB (logical)
SWITCH (H: ) = FAT32 = 10,001.4 MB (logical)
* = Unallocated = 29,996.4 MB

BootMagic is installed on hard drive 1 in its ~50 MB FAT partition and is assigned the drive letter G: (a 32 MB DellUtility partition comes before it). It will be used to dual-boot my system between WinXP and FC2. The rest of HD1 is NTFS holding WinXP (80 GB C: ).

I have a few questions about this set up.

1. First up, which partitions do I need to set as "Active" (if any) on the 2nd HD in order for FC2 to boot? Yesyes, it seems like its an obvious answer (boot), but since /boot is usually in the root, I wasn't sure if both had to be active or just the boot. Do I need to even set it as active before the install or will the install program handle that for me? Remember, I am not using any of the partitioning or dual-boot software that comes with the install of FC2. I just want to put the OS onto already established partitions.

2. Since I can easily reconfigure the partitions on HD2, can anyone give any advice on whether the set up I've designed is good enough to play around with FC2? I put them all as Ext3 for simplicities sake, I don't mind the extra journalizing, and I think I have the sizes decent enough for programs and files, since most of my stuff will still be in WinXP for the time being. Any suggestions on size or file system type changes, if any?

3. Is there anything else I need to do in order to simply install FC2 to HD2? I'm assuming that I can point the install program to all the proper locations for individual directories (ie. root = /, boot = /boot, tmp = /tmp, etc) during the installation itself. Besides setting up BootMagic after the install, shouldn't that be it before booting to FC2 and continuing with setting up my hardware?

Thanks for your time and any advice. I was going to wait until the dual-boot/partition table corruption issue was corrected, but I'm anxious to get going with Linux so would finally like to get it on my system.

1) Don't bother about 'active' partitions. You only need to do that to install windows. When you boot from your Fedora cd/dvd choose "custom" setup and choose to do the partitioning yourself. Once you're there what you do is edit the partitions you have already prepared to include the mount points you want them linked to (/boot, /tmp, /home ...). At this point you can also choose the filesystem you want to use.

2) Looks huge to me. I did an install with a /boot of 100Mb and I'm only using about 35. /home is also quite sizable, ezpecailly since you also use a fat partition as switch, but nobody better than you knows how much your personl files in linux will take up.

3) During install you'll be able to configure GRUB to reflect any system you have already installed. Make sure you know on which partition it should load and everything will go like a treat

Thanks linmix, that's what I wanted to hear. Without having to worry about active partitions or the size of the partitions, and the ability to configure grub to install to the /boot/grub partition (where I'm told it goes), I'll be able to go ahead with a little more confidence.

Trying to piece together all the advice, even when it contradicts other advice, is best decided through experience, I guess.