Hello all...I have a system with Fedora 8 and Win XP dual booting and working fine.Now I am trying to install OpenSuse and trying to triple boot.I am right now posting this from the OpenSuse LiveCD and I am stuck at the Yast partitioning step.This is my disk layout

DEVICE SIZE F TYPE MOUNT

/dev/sda 149 GB ST3160215AS
/dev/sda1 20 GB HPFS/NTFS /windows/C
/dev/sda2 129 GB Extended
/dev/sda5 43 GB HPFS/NTFS /windows/D
/dev/sda6 43 GB HPFS/NTFS /windows/E
/dev/sda7 2 GB F Linux swap swap
/dev/sda8 16.5 GB F Linux native(ext3) /
/dev/sda9 24.4 GB F Linux native(ext3) /home

The suggested partitioning says...

Delete partition /dev/sda7 (43.0 GB)
Create swap partition /dev/sda7 (2.0 GB)
Create root partition /dev/sda8 (16.5 GB) with ext3
Create partition /dev/sda9 (24.4 GB) for /home with ext3
Set mount point of /dev/sda1 to /windows/C
Set mount point of /dev/sda5 to /windows/D
Set mount point of /dev/sda6 to /windows/E

My best guess is OpenSuse is trying to overwrite in the existing Fedora partition(could be wrong), While I am trying to place OpenSuse in /dev/sda6. Please suggest what I should do to get all the OS's XP,Fedora and OpenSuse to show up in the boot option.

Well, don't use the YaST partitioner then. As I was reading what it wants to do, I'm really sure that it will cripple your current partitioning. If you can't tell YaST partitioner to do what you want, than use gparted instead. If it is not on the SuSE live CD, try to use something else, like PartedMagic (gparted included). It is a small 45 MB linux live distro, which is designed for partitioning.
In gparted just reformat sda6 to ext3 (if you want to put SuSE there), and leave the swap where it is. Now you will have an empty linux partition and a swap partition, which must be sufficient for SuSE installer. Start up SuSE again, and use the installer. Here don't start the partitioner, but try to choose the sda6 partition instead, so SuSE won't destroy the other partitions on your HDD.
Install SuSE, but be careful with the Bootloader (probably GRUB). Check the settings if your other linux and windows is added to the list.

It is possible to use opensuse partitioner to use sda6 by using customize or expert partition , the name is by each version different, it only a matter of pushing the wright buttons
You also can change where GRUb should written to , if you do not change it writes it in MBR
A more difficult thing is that opensuse do not recognize Fedora .
So if you are going to use opensuse GRUB than you have to add manually Fedora to the grub.list

Thanks for ur replies...I tried the expert partitioner and there are options like 'resize', 'create' and 'edit'. I clicked on /dev/sda6 and tried to format it to ext3 and set the mount point to '/' ...It says 'the mount point already exists'... I tried playing around with shrinking, resizing and stuff and all the time it(suggested partitoner) looks like its bent on overwriting my existing '/', '/home' and swap...

Looks like there are instances of people trying to do exactly the same as in

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/red...-opensuse.html

and even there it looks like Fedora was lost... I have nt gone up to the stage of specifying where to install grub yet...Thanks again.

You should not format it you should assign SDA6 to opensuse , and
ONLY SDA6
That opensuse do not recognize Fedora I know it , while I am was installing opensuse
What is wrong by using the swap for more than one distro ?
You only use one distro at the same time

There is nothing wrong by using the same swap. Only one distro is running at the same time, so only one needs it.

ok...I figured out a little bit...Will try now and post back..Thanks for your help so far

voila...I got it...was battling to understand YAST.When I did "create partition setup", the expert partitioner actually allowed me to choose the disk of my choice...was worried a little bit that there was no dialog box as to where to install grub, but when I rebooted all the OSs showed up in the boot option...no meddling with menu.lst.So Suse auto recognized Fedora unlike what Fedora is said to do...Thanks for the help people...I do understand that swap disk space is used for OS related activities like paging and as a backstore and the swap space is used by the kernel running currently. My doubt is my swap space is in another partition in my disk ie. /dev/sda7 and Suse is in sda6...will the swap space in another partition be still used by Suse or will I see a decrease in performance...Thanks all..

It does not matter where you,re swap file is .
As a example my swap is on SDB and opensuse is SDA two different HD