Booting 4 OS's with three primary partitions..
 

I would like to boot XP, kanotix, knoppix, and mandrake and want to know how to do it with only 3 primary partitions. I have to use a primary for xp because I resize my original windows partition to make room for the other. I need to get the other distros to boot with only 2 more primary partitions. It is my understanding that linux only boot from primary partitions. So with that in mind I need to get the kernels on one small partiton(extended or logical) and boot them from there. How do I go about doing that? Please be descriptive because I am pretty new to linux.

I had my system configured once to boot xp,kanotix, and mandrake but I tried to fix it and now mandrake wont boot anymore so I want to fix it again by repartitioning and reformatting and getting it right the first time around. Any help would be appreciated.

You don't need to have all paritions primary, you can use the bootloader on one of your primary partitions to boot an os on any partition.

How do I go about doing that? I don't understand.

Not true, linux does can boot from a logical partition.

I was told the kernel has to be on a primary partition and the rest of the files can sit in any other partition. I just need help getting these 4 OS's to load correctly. I can get three to load but when I try to load the fourth I get an error. I posted about that error and was told that linux can only boot from primary partitions. So I switched 2 linux OS's around and now the one on the primary loads correctly and the one on the other partition does not. I'm believing that this is true. Any suggestions appreciated.

Can you post a copy of your current bootloader config file, the error you are getting and your partition layout.

good luck buddy linux is not all it's cracked up to be

I found out the hard way after many woes

For instance if I have linux on partition /dev/hda9. On hda9 the lilo.conf looks something like this:

boot=/dev/hda9
image=/boot/vmlinuz
root=/dev/hda9
label=Linux
initrd=/boot/initrd
read-write
I run lilo from /dev/hda9 and it installs on the boot sector for /dev/hda9. Then in my linux distro on /dev/hda2 I have another lilo.conf that has an entry something like this:

boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
default="Linux"
keytable=/boot/us.klt
prompt
nowarn
timeout=100
message=/boot/message
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
suppress-boot-time-BIOS-data
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="Linux"
root=/dev/hda2
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="panic=15 acpi=ht splash=silent"
vga=788
read-only
...
...
other=/dev/hda9
label="Knoppix"

I got it to load. I reinstalled the kanotix to the mandrake partition and then reinstalled the mandrake to the kanotix partiton(which is and extended partiton) and used the mandrake lilo to boot. I know how to config lilo better than grub so it worked out properly. I also got rid of 98 and used that partition space for my recovery partition. Now all boot and loads and works great. Thanks for the help. Will post lilo.conf when I get to linux. In XP now.