Hi,

I am stuck up with the most basic problem of partioning in LINUX red hat ver 9.0
I have a 2 hard-disks in my PC( 80GB and 10GB , both attached on IDE0)
on the 80GB HDD i have windows XP installed.My aim is to use the 10GB for Linux and have dual booting option enabled.When i start installation with bootable CD1, it starts detecting the partitions.HDDs are detected as hda and hdb.
Partitions for hda(in which winXP is installed) are indicated properly
As it checks for partitions in the unpartitioned hdb, it waits for some time and shows "dma_expiry_status ...0061" still it goes ahead.
Then i have selected "manual partitioning mode".
I made the following new partitions on hdb:
1) / (root) in ext3
2) boot in ext3
3) swap (512 MB)
Then i proceeded ahead....
A message" formatting / file system" pops on the screen
and it shows an indicator.But then it never goes ahead and sticks there...
In fact the screen remains there for one entire night( i had kept it for formatting the entire night...8 hrs)but it does not go ahead.
Similar situation arises even while choosing"automatic partitioning"

When i removed my hdb and tried installing linux on the same 80GB HDD on which WinXP is installed...by making a separate pattition on it
i could install it.
What could be the problem ? ....i strongly want to have linux on 10GB HDD
Please help me.. ..ragesh nair

I think that you could easily install Linux by temporarily disconnecting the 80 GB Windows drive and making the 10 GB the primary master. Then run your install. Finally, reinstall the Windows drive as either the primary slave (Don't forget the jumpers.) or the secondary master and configure the new GRUB/LILO boot loader, for the dual boot, on the smaller drive. If necessary, do that manually. This method should simplify the dual boot installation while protecting your Windows XP intallation and data.

I have had problems in the past putting windows on a non-primary-master drive. I know it's possible to configure but I think it's kind of hairy. I would try putting the 10GB drive on the secondary IDE channel (probably as master) and installing from there. It might also be worthwhile trying installers from different distributions. It's possible that the Red Hat installer is just being silly.

moved to suitable forum - linux - newbie.