Hi

I'm going to try to install Mandrake 9.1 onto a 10GB HDD sharing with Win98SE. system RAM 394M. plan to use a common FAT32 data partition for now.

i've been RTFMing for a while and just can't get this straight in my mind...

where does the /boot partition go?


i've read that it must be within the first 1024 cylinders of the HDD, also that it can be anywhere on the HDD. if it DOES have to be in the first 1024 cylinders, then how does this fit with the requirement for all linux partitions to be continuous on the HDD?


secondly, this is my plan:
first win98 FAT32
2.5gb = win98SE on primary partn
2.5gb = data logical partn
880mb = swapfile on logical partn
then linux
/boot = 100mb
/swap = 128mb
/ = 2gb
/var=1gb
/home whatever's left.

does this seem reasonable?
do i have the swap sizes too big for win and too small for linux?

grateful for any help

ben

issues about the location of the boot image went out of the window years ago so that looks fine, i'd only give 20mb to boot but that's not exactly a matter either way and FYI swap is not a filesystem just "swap" no /swap... picky picky.....

wow that was quick - thanks chris and be picky as you like.

could i press you on the sizes of the swap files for linux/win98. i am a bit short of space for the time being...

cheers
ben

You don't need a seperate partition named /boot unless you are installing more than one LINUX distribution. Also you don't need /boot to be that big. My /boot is 16 megabytes. I have a few kernels and ramdisk images plus I have grub that I don't use. Still I have more space for more kernel files and ram disk images. It is optional to make a seperate partition for /var when using LINUX as a workstation or desktop OS. The size for /var is ok but my /var is under 100 megabytes and it is located on the same partition as /. You can save on space by placing /var on the same partition as /. Since you are using Mandrake 9.1 you don't have to worry about the 1024 cylinder limit if you are using LILO. Redhat has that problem with LILO so people have to resort on using grub.

You can try 500 megabytes for the swap file in Windows. Set both min and max to 500 megabytes so that Windows doesn't adjust the size. Also it makes it continous. I think 880 megabytes for a swap file is way to much even for 3D rendering programs, video editing programs, and graphic editing programs. You can use 380 megabytes for TEMP.

Windows 98 gets slower when using more than 128 megabytes of memory (I have 256 megabytes of memory on my Win98--its starting to run slow). You can use RAMDISK but Microsoft's ramdisk only allocates 32 megabytes. There are 3rd party programs such as xmsdisk that can allocate 2 gigabytes for the ram disk. I used in the past but some strange reason it saved my temp files and web browser cache without taking any space on the hard drive after I shutdown the computer and booted up. Overall no problems with xmsdisk. You can use 256 megabytes for your ram disk and use it for whatever you need like your temp directory and web browser cache. You can also copy your Windows directory and use it for ram disk. Don't use ram disk for swap memory.