is /boot ,/swap and / partition unable to be created under the second active partion(first is 4G)? , there are two active partition on my harddisk,the first(4GB size) is used to hold windows2000 and the second (10GB)is to install RH9.

on the 10GB disk,divided it into / and /swap is fine,but for the recommend purpose , when I meant to divide the 10GB into three partition : a /boot, a /swap and /, system always report error message: "could not allocate requested partitions: Partitioning failed:Could not allocate partitions" no matter how many times I adjust their sequence,

what is it ?? I know sometimes the /boot partition can't be create outside 1024 cylinders(maybe the first 2GB size), and if that is the problem or else ,what should I do to resolve??

The installer can not create additional partitions because the entire disk is already allocated.

Delete the second partition and let RH create the partitions for you.

Be carefull not to delete the windows partition.

For your information you can only have one partition set to active.

when I relocate the three partition ,I have delete(free the 10GB disk)using sfdisk, so it means that divided partitions on the free disk space , and so is the error message .

Can you further explain how you are trying to create the new partitions?

List existing partitions i.e.
sfdisk -l /dev/hda

you can't have more than 4 partitions without one of
them being an extended partition with logical drives in
that. make one extended partition with the rest of
your free space, and make all of your linux partitions
logical drives in that.

I also got stuck here. I have a 4 gig HD. I started in windows, then deleted it all and I end up with the basic partitions and 2 gigd free psace, which were windows. I formatted over the 2 gigs of windows to use for linux. When I tried to add, or name, using free space up ( /var, /usr /home /tmp etc.) I only got one or 2 in and it wouldn't let me go any further.

just an example. a really bad one for a beginner to
look at, but notice the type 85 extended, then all
the logical drives in that.


Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 9964 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 260 2088418+ 6 FAT16
/dev/hda2 1000 2500 12056782+ c Win95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda3 7501 9964 19792080 83 Linux
/dev/hda4 2501 7500 40162500 85 Linux extended
/dev/hda5 2501 3200 5622718+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 3201 3400 1606468+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda7 3401 3600 1606468+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda8 3601 4300 5622718+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda9 4301 4400 803218+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda10 4401 7500 24900718+ 83 Linux
Partition table entries are not in disk order

is it means that I have to assign / or /swap or both into the extended partition?? and so that I can allocate /boot on the second partition??

they can all be in a logical drive. it doesn't matter.

you can have all your linux in an an extended drive.
i can't remember how many logical drives you can
have in an extended, but it's a lot. and you can put
lilo or grub in the mbr. any way you want to do it.
you can have 3 primary drives and 1 extended with
30 logical drives in it if you want, with each logical
drive being part or all of a linux install.