Hello everyone. This is sort of a complicated problem, and I am looking for recommendations.

I have an AMD6400+ 3.2 Gig proc, 4 gigs DDR2 RAM, Asus Crosshair mobo,
and FOUR hard disks.

SATA1 on mobo = SATA drive, which is Sda
SATA2 on mobo = SATA drive, which is Sdb
SATA3 on mobo = EIDE drive with SATA converter, which is Sdc
SATA4 on mobo = EIDE drive with SATA converter, which is Sdd

If you see an error in my logic above, please let me know. I am just a little bit confused as to where everything needs to go...please read on

I have XP Pro on SATA1
I want run Fedora Core 8 on SATA4
I want to Grub to boot me from SATA1, giving me the choice to launch into either Xp or Fedora.

One question is, do I have to have the /boot and /swap partitions on SATA1 drive (which has XP on it already?) in order to do what I want to do (use SATA4 as my Linux hard disk)?

Is the /root partition the partition that goes onto the SATA4 drive?
This would be Ext3, hard disk with the actual O/S on it. So if I set my system up right, I am thinking that Grub should boot from the MBR on (hd0,0). Also, XP should boot from (hd0,0). And also Fedora should boot from (hd0,0) [if /boot and /swap are on Sda as Sda1 and Sda2]. If this is wrong, please say so.

At this point, I am just a little confused about terminologies and hopefully one of you can help me get my head straight about this.
I hope I have been clear enough that I want to have Fedora 8 on
SATA4 hard disk.

Thanks everyone. Jim

I am not positive, but I am reasonably sure you want GRUB in the MBR (on sda) and everything else on sdd. For more information, check out the Slackbook chapter on partitioning:
http://www.slackbook.org/html/instal...titioning.html

Regarding GRUB, here is a good place to start:
http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/grub/grub.htm

PS: As I recall, Anaconda (the Fedora installer) will help you with most of this. It should be reasonably intuitive when running the installer.

LOL. Thank you. I think I am more confused now than ever. What I need is like a diagram, then I would understand all of this better.
However, there is no way to DRAW a diagram on this forum that I know of.
I would have an excellent understanding if I could visualize these details with pictures. Perhaps you would be willing to help me a little further with this if I send my email addy to you to do a drawing?

Thanks - Jim

I think you are trying to make things more complicated than they are. It may help to see what the screens will look like. Here is an example:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Insta...lf-70446.shtml

Cogar - The problem is that I want grub on Sda MBR but I don't want to wipe out my XP Pro which sits on Sda. I have four ATA drives and I want Sdd to be the drive with Fedora Linux on it. If I was simply going to only have a Linux box, it wouldn't be a problem, but I want a dual boot computer. I don't want to partition Sda to contain both Linux and XP.

So I need to know which hard disk to put the swap, /boot and /root on and if I can figure that out, I will be fine. I also want to know if swap has to be the first partition (within the first 1024 cylinders)
of Sdd.

This means I can't take the default Fedora install suggestion. I have to do a manual paritioning.

Thanks for your help. Jim

I had a similar issue, and rather than even touch the windows drive, I put everything on the second drive and told my bios to boot from that rather than drive 0 (ie grub plus F8 install on, say, sdb)

Note that you'll need a slightly niftier grub entru (you need to map drives to confuse windows) but you'll find that on LQ somewhere.

So the easiest way would be nominate which drive you want F8 on, then let anaconda automatically partition.

Let me know if that doesn't work for what you are trying to do.

ps - you may want to change the bios prior to install, because I think anaconda will then install grub on the correct drive.

When Anaconda installs the bootloader, it will only affect the MBR. Windows XP Pro and all your files will still be there and accessible via GRUB. In other words, a dual-boot situation is the "standard" configuration if you do not choose to take over the whole computer (which most people do not). Incidentally, I just installed Fedora 8 on a machine running Windows XP Pro and both boot and operate fine. (Well, Flash Player sucks in Fedora, but that is a separate issue. )

You are correct that you need to choose the "Create custom layout" option when partitioning. Unless you have never done partitioning, it is straightforward. Choose the free space on the drive of your choice, click New, and set the parameters. You would create / (root), /home, and swap partitions as you would with any other install. I would recommend leaving /boot as a subdirectory in /, which is the default anyway. Incidentally, swap can go pretty much anywhere.

PS: The GRUB screen on the install I did listed "Fedora" and "Other." In my case (and yours), "Other" will be Windows. You can safely edit the name.

Note - possible grub entry, assumes Windows on sda, grub on sdb

title Windows
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
makeactive
chainloader +1