hey guys, could one of you PLEASE give me some directions here... im trying to add redhat 9 to my notebook which has winxp pro. i have split the 40 gig drive in two using fdisk and installed xp on partition 1. i want to now install redhat on the second partition... Ive got as far as placing the redhat images on c: drive on my windows partition and boot from cd(cannot install from the external cd drive) then install from images on harddisk... I am able to get as far as the redhat partition screen where im asked if i want to use auto partition or disk druid.. Now i would like to have linux autopartition the second partition i made for it, but it looks like im left with no choice but to manually partition the second logical disk using disk druid, in disk druid i see my mbr (fat) at hda1, my windows partition (extended) at hda2, and then the space i want to use at hda5 (fat)... now how the heck to i set the partitions within hda5??? im so lost... thanks! -James

as for the auto partion, i can't help you, i've never used it-- i don't trust ANY program to dick around with my partion table without my input. autopartioning when you have another os on the machine sounds like a doubly bad idea.

now on to the rest of it, i'm a little unclear how you went from 2 partions at the beginning of the post to 5 at the end. if you used fdisk (the dos version) to make 2 partions, then installed windows on the first one, then windows should be on /dev/hda1. the mbr shouldn't be showing up as a partion at all, afaik. you should then be able to split /dev/hda2 into whatever partions you need. i'm not understanding what happened to hda's 3 and 4, either. do you think you could write down what you're seeing for the entries in disk druid for all of these hda's?

your problem is that you created a second partition from windows
Big NO NO.
go back to winxp delete the second partition including the extended so that all that shows is unpartitioned space in computer management in mmc
then install redhat and it will create its own partition with in the free space.

dbkluck: the hda2 gets used by the ext partition then logical drives usually always range at number 5-9

i'm posting as if when you said "mbr at hda1" you meant "boot partition at hda1"...

dbkluck is right, the usual way is to have windows on hda1 and not on hda2... but it should work fine anyway...

i think you'd wanna put linux after hda2, so delete everything after that (hda5), and then, in the free space, create your new linux partitions as, for example (mounted at the given locations):

/dev/hda5 ------> /root
/dev/hda6 ------> SWAP
/dev/hda7 ------> /home

you'd probably want to keep your boot partition also, you could nuke it and set the way for lilo or grub, if you want...

/dev/hda1 ------> /boot

the only partition you shouldn't touch (as in delete, format) is the windows one... of course you could mount it somewhere like /mnt/windows if you want quick access to it from linux...

the sizes you assign to your partitions are up to you... i'd suggest 2 - 7mb for "root", depending on how much software you plan to install... 200 - 1000mb for "swap", depending on how much ram you have... the rest for "home"...

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/l...titioning.html


<START MANDRAKE LINUX PITCH>

i suggest if possible, use the reiser file system for root and home.

it's VERY nice (lots of advantages over other filesystems).

http://www.namesys.com/

if red hat 9 doesn't do riserfs out-of-the-box (i suspect it doesn't, but i'm not sure right now) and you really want it, you could use mandrake linux, it comes with support for reiserfs and xfs (from silicon graphics) and many more... it's installer allows partition re-sizing (even NTFS), and it's found by many to have the friendliest partitioning tool.

http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/

<STOP MANDRAKE LINUX PITCH>


i have nothing against ext3... i think it's a perfectly decent file system. the only thing is that it's really just ext2 with a journalizing layer on it... it's not a "natural" journalizing file system.

it sucks when, like, for example, you have to wait 2 or more minutes for your downed server using ext3 to finish fscking your disks, and then when it finishes it tells you you have to reboot also (that use to bring me flashbacks of one "popular" os that always asks for reboots, ahem)... on most of my computers, reiserfs does a check in like in 1 or 2 seconds (literally) and has never asked me for a reboot so far... plus the performance boost compared to ext3 is quite noticeable sometimes.