Heh... okay, getting there... one thing at a time

Alright, I'm in cfdisk right now, and I can set my free space to a new partition, called /dev/hda3 now. However, this raises another question, which I'd like clarified before I bite the bullet and write to the partition table

I now would have three partitions, but /dev/hda1 and /dev/hda3 would both be Type: Linux. Shouldn't hda3 be Linux Extended? Can I really have two Linux types on my system?

Oh (groan) one last thing, hda1 doesn't have the bootable flag set. Should I set it?

In closing, of course, thank you thank you thank you thank you (ad nauseum)

okey dokey..

you can have however many ext2/3 partitons as you want. well actaully you can have 4, but that's above linux's control. and the bootable flag is not used under linux, it's much more controlled than that.

you do seem to have got into a little bit fo a scrape since you removed that partition tho.... this space is at the fron tof the drive is it not? then it should surely be hda1.. i'm a bit lost there... it should be alright tho. make the partition, and be prepared that your system might not work properly (if the partition numbers have changed) you'd just need to get in with a rescue disk and edit /etc/lilo.conf and sort out fstab, and you should be ok. it's not fun for a newbie tho... also yuo may want to make sure you are loading your partitions by label rather than by number before you make it, it'd most likely make things a bit easier. check the /etc/fstab file for LABEL=/BOOT (or similar) entries. if there are none ther, i'd recommend using e2label to give your partitions names, meaning that their partition number can change without causing problems.

Okay, thanks so much for your help, here's where I'm at:

I've got a new(ish) partition called /dev/hda3 that's ext3 formatted. Yeah, it's at the beginning of the drive, and I don't get that either but I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

So now everything seems nice, and I've only got one more question:

If I want to use this new partition as my /home directory, how do I set it that way? Do I change fstab to mount it as /home instead of /mnt/hda3 (or /mnt/whatever)?