Just as an aside, would having the swap file on the second HD( if your linux distro is installed on the first HD) adversely effect the running of the system ? OP's linux seems to be running fine, but I was just wondering if having the swap file setup like this is good, bad or makes no difference ?

Thanks,
Uncle-c.

In one of the boxes where I run 150+ systems with 5 hard disks I have one swap hda5 common to all the Linux spreading over different disks. Never notice a difference as I also run other boxes with much less systems and in the same disk.

I believe the hard disk controllers are pretty good nowaday because we can plug a ATA133 500Gb as a slave to a ATA33 2Gb master hard disk without being dragged down to the lower speed. My Bios always reports the disks run at their own UDMA modes even on a same ribbon cable. Thus whether the swap in the same disk should hardy matter.

The other factor is we normally have 1Gb+ memory and the swap partition rarely get used. Many veterans Linux users are against using a swap larger then 256Mb saying even at that size it is still rarely in use.

Thanks a lot guys for replying.

Actually if you went through my very first post you could have an idea about my hdd. See originally I had a 20 GB hdd. It was divided into 4 partitions.
In Windows language,
C:\(4.67 GB, FAT32, Primary partition,Win 98SE installed here),
D:\(4.62 GB,FAT32, WIN XP Professional installed here),
E:\(6.99 GB, FAT32) and
F:\(2 GB, FAT). Also around 370 MB space left unallocated.

Then recently, I bought a 80 GB hdd. I didvided it into 3 partitions, 20 GB each.
They are:-
J:\(19.53 GB, FAT32, Extended)
K:\(19.53 GB, FAT32)
L:\(19.53 GB, FAT32)

And the rest space was for linux....I planned to install here.
And by the way, both of my hdd was ATA as my intel 845glva does not support SATA(as I was told).

Well, that was before installing linux.

Now while installing I tried my best to keep the swap file on the same partition, after allocating root, I allocate 512 mb for swap. But surprisingly disk druid said it cannot allocate swap on that partition....I don't know why? May be I did something wrong. So instead I allocate swap file on the other hdd, something around 375 mb(remember the unallocated space?). Thats the story of my hdd.

And for uncle-c, I used mount and for your information it is Win98 that is on /dev/hdd1, Win XP is on /dev/hdd5. I used mount and verified that.

Thanks to both of you, I mean uncle-c and saikee....wao, I cannot believe two of the linux gurus took so much interest in my problem. I believe its my sheer luck.
And saikee, you deserved the good words.

Now I'll try the solution provided by uncle-c and saikee....by experimenting with menu.lst using map. I'll come back to you with the outcome.

Thanks again friends.

Just for quriocity, I noticed mount cannot work on extended partition(atleast I cannot make it work)....is it true? If it is then why?

One more thing. When I'm logging in using KDE, a window comes with the Title Informational - artsmessage with an exclamation mark saying Sound server informational message:
Error while initializing the sound driver:
device: default can't be opened for playback(invalid arguement)
The sound server will continue, using the null output device

I guess there has been some problem with the audio, but on sound verification, my speakers are working ok. So what is it all about?

Sorry if I'm asking too much questions. Or should I open another thread for this sound related query?

I am a mere newbie. I am learning all the time from gurus such as saikee.
All that I have told you is from saikee's excellent tutorials. You should start a new thread for your sound problem so that it gets maximum exposure.

uncle-c, may be you are not as experienced as saikee, but atleast you are helpful enough to mere nebies like me

Thanks for that and I'll start a new thread regarding my sound problem.

I am passing knowledge that members of the forum taught me. Most of the posts are receiving good attention. I intervene mainly if I believe my experience may contribute a better understanding of the subject. I cannot be right in every case and other members can step in to point out my mistakes, so I get something out of it just like every newbie.

My explanation on why an extended partition cannot be mounted is as follow

We always mount a partition to read/write a filing system but an extended partition is "empty".

Extended partition is in name only. It has nothing inside. Its partition table is used to define the hard disk positions of the first and the last logical partitions.

In PC standard a hard disk can only have 4 primaries. If a user wants more he/she must give up a primary to convert it into an extended partition to hold logical partitions. A maximum of 11 logical partitions is allowed in Linux with any SCSI/Pata/Sata/USB disk. It is always the logical partitions that store the data and the extended partition is just their border.

Each logical partition carries the hard disk address for the next logical partition down the line and must be in a continuous chain.

If you read a partition table by terminal command "fdisk -l" you can see the starting cylinder number of the first logical partition (always starts at the 5th position) matches exactly the starting cyclinder of the extended partition. This should be the same with the last cylinder of the last logical partition matching with the finishing cylinder of the extended partition. If there is a difference then there is still un allocated empty space inside the extended partition with which you can create more logical partitions.

In PC standard only one extended partition is allowed. You can use tricks to overcome it though for special applications.

Thanks for your approach.
And from your explanation of extended hdd, its clear to me now why linux canot mount any extended partition.

By the way, i've started a new thread in Linux Hardware forum with my audio device driver problem...as you suggested.

By the way, the sad thing is windows xp still not booting.

I just followed your code and did edit grub.conf file like this:

And now one thing happens...after booting, when I press any key, two options come: fedora and WinXP. when I select WinXP and press enter key, then Windows menu comes with separate entries for Win98 and XP as it was before.

Now if I go for 98, it boots....

But on selecting XP....XP giving the same error message that the file <windows root>\system32\hal.dll is corrupted. Please reinstall a copy of that file. So basically the error remains.

Just one thought, you tried that code thinking winxp is on the 1st partition of the 2nd hdd while win98 resides there....win xp was on /dev/hdd5 as I already said. So do I need to change the code?

Then again it boots after all....I think, may be its because if win98 and winxp installed on the same hdd, win98 may be taking precedence over xp?
Although I'm not sure.

So??? What next?

Well you can boot into your win98 which is a good thing ! You do not need to change the code in your menu.lst as it seems the "hal.dll" problem commonly occurs in systems where you have 2 different Windows installs.

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_haldll_missing.htm

The above link should shed some light on the problem and help you further.

Uncle

I think there is a good chance that your problem would disappear if you map the drive instead of just map the Win9x partition. This is to say revise your menu.lst to
Please report the result.

Saikee, I wonder if you could explain this if you do not mind. One can map drives / partitions together and/or separately ?

I will point out that fdisk for OP's drive hdc shows three extended partitions on it, though only the first of these is actually being treated as an extended partition, with a logical partition in it (hdc5).

OP's WinXP installation apparently is in a partition that is defined as extended in the partition table but evidently not treated as extended by fdisk, in that there is no logical partition present.

While the Windows boot loader might not care about this peculiarity, I suspect that grub does care and this could very well be why XP won't start.

If OP changes the partition definition to a physical partition with the appropriate filesystem, it *might* work, and in any case the change would be reversible if it doesn't work.

When there is more than one MS system a NT type boot loader will multi boot. It does so by planting the boot loader with the first partition detected. In this case it is the Win9x. So Xp was booted by booting Win9x first. Within Win9x there is a NTLDR that hosts the booting menu. The XP partition actually has no boot loader inside.

Both Win9x and XP were booted from a first boot disk position and will have a record like "I was installed in the 1st partition of the 1st disk" and "I was installed in the 2st partition of the 1st disk" for Win9x and Xp.

The OP now use a another disk as the 1st boot disk known to Grub as (hd0) and the disk with Win9x/Xp is (hd1).

The two map statements will tempoararily reverse the boot disk order, making MS systems believe they are still in the 1st boot disk position. However the OP has limited it to only the two partitions of (hd0,0) and (hd1,0). This works for Win9x because it is the first partition of the 2nd disk (hd1,0). XP did not get re-mapped and so it did not boot.

By re-mapping the whole drive both systems should boot according to the theory. It is now up to the OP to tell us if this is the case.

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jiml8 ,

Do not be fooled by the OP description that XP being a "D" drive will be the second partition. It is actually hdd5 (by it size) and no OS can be installed in an extended partition.

There may be typo errors in Post #12 suggesting hdc1, hdc2 and hdc3 are all extended partitions whereas only hdc1 is. The partition Type c is an indisputable evidence that hdc2 and hdc3 are fat32 partitions.

The OP hdc disk partition table is healthy except he/she now got 1.3Gb dead space after hdc4 because hdc1 was used up for creating the logical partition hdc5 and its end boundary was closed down by hdc2. As all 4 primaries were used up the excess hard disk space after hdc4 is now unsable. It could be absorbed into hdc4 by Gparted though. May be that is why the OP created a swap in the other disk.