Partitioning help - Win2k + Solaris(or BSD) + 1-2 Linuxes: Need help
 

Here is my short story - dilemma:

I have an older PIII 933/256 RAM box with a 30 GB drive in it. I have dual-booted before but wanted to try multibooting. I searched here extensively, and found these links to be the closest to an answer (here and here).

I was originally going to just do Win2K at 10 GB, Solaris (and maybe FreeBSD later) on ~10 GB, and one Linux on ~8 GB, with a shared FAT32 partition for all at 750 MB. I partitioned using cfdisk (I know, fdisk is better but I needed to see what I was doing better), and went to install Windows first. It went fine into my first partition (but tagged it as bootable, of course) and this is my partition table now:


(NOTE: I didn't see a UFS or Solaris partition type, so I was stuck there, but hda3 was supposed to be for Solaris)

However, now I am wondering what I was planning on using that extra 822 MB leftover for. I obviously didn't write it all out prior to partitioning, just kinda went with it. But all is not lost, I can repartition the rest without screwing up my Windows install, and it is the crappiest part.

Questions:

1) Do I need to repartition to create a Solaris partition type, and if so, what label do I use?

2) Can I put two Linuxes on here and have them share the swap still? I read that you can only have four partitions (primary) per drive, so could I change my size allocation and do something like a fourth Primary Linux partition and do maybe 8 GB for Solaris or BSD, then two 5 GB ones for Debian and Slack, with the same existing swap?

3) Any other advice or flaws that you see here so far?

yes you can share a swap. I don't know if it helps, but I went through same sorts of issues (though not with solaris) and I should be posting my thoughts on the process on my website soon.

titanium_geek

Thanks for the input. :)

To clarify, I can create a fourth primary partition and the swap can stay as a logical partition and both Debian and Slackware can be set to use the same swap, even if it is a logical and not primary partition?

(edited for typo)

yes, I think so... but I'm not sure- I have a funny feeling about this, but I can't put my finger on it.

titanium_geek