Slackware Installation - Partitions!
 

Hey all !

I'm running windows xp on a 60GB HDD.. i've left 6GB unpartitionned for a linux (slack) installation.. 1gb swap (i have 512mb RAM) i've downloaded the distribution and copied the 4 CDs..

My question is this: I'm pretty confused with the way linux recognises partitions.. I'm running 2 under XP: C:\ & F:\, obviously NTFS ... when the time comes for me to run fdisk, how do i tell the installation where i need linux to go? i mean, should it be dev/hda3, meaning primary 3rd partition? or am i getting this totally wrong?

Help? i'm fed up with xp but as a gamer i need the OS to stay on my system.. but i need a change and the future is open :)

My question is this: I'm pretty confused with the way linux recognises partitions..

Linux is quite straightforward on partitions and disks: The first hd of the system is hd-letter-"a", or "hda". The second is hdb, and so on. The first partition in the first disk is hda1, the second is hda2, and so on. No confusion.

I'm running 2 under XP: C:\ & F:\, obviously NTFS ... when the time comes for me to run fdisk, how do i tell the installation where i need linux to go?

Linux needs 2 partitions: / (root) and swap, at least. You can create linux partitions in these 6G left. I'm not sure how fdisk does that, but it shouldn't be too difficult.

i mean, should it be dev/hda3, meaning primary 3rd partition? or am i getting this totally wrong?

No, it's not wrong.
Well, it depends on the current layout of your disk. Your c: and f: partitions are primary (its very likely)? If they are, and if they are contiguous, then the next one to be created is, yes, /dev/hda3. You can tell fdisk to create it, and one more swap partition (1G is too much, I guess, you can shrink it a bit).

A hd can have only four primary partitions, so you are in the limit. If you needed to create more, the fourth one would have to be an extended one.

Two things are important: Your system should be able to boot slack from this point of the disk (BIOS issues). And ntfs will be accessed read-only. Is it ok?

One more: Which fs does slack use? There's a small program for win to access an ext2 partition, called Explore2fs. If slack won't use ext2 - which is very likely - I guess there will be no support for win to read it, so while in linux, you can't write to ntfs partition. While in XP, you can't access linux stuff at all. Perhaps you might consider converting your f: to fat32.

Hope it helps!