win XP and red hat 7.2
 

no, i'm not asking for a comparison, i know everyone here loves linux....

anyway, i've XP setup but i left some space for linux (unpartitioned space that is). now i try to install linux. but when i chose autopartition it "Cannot allocate required partition". Do anyone have any idea of what's going on?

i'm fairly sure that the autopartition in redhat won't resize your existing partition, which is fair enough, even extremely good that it doesn't... hwo should it know how big to make it etc...?

You'll need to shrink your xp partition before hand, if rh installer won't let you do it there, but the autopartition *should* only take up any existing space not in a partition.

what IS the default fs for XP? am i right in thinkign it's fat32 or NTFS depending on which cversoin of XP you use? anyone know?

according to what i read (don't ask me where i can't remember), XP is strictly NTFS...

it is part of MS's attempt at moving towards a more secure OS, i think.

that's crap
 

I have both windows xp and linux redhat 7.2 on my computer. they work fine. And you can choose whether between FAT32 or NTFS. I used partition magic 7 to make my windows partition smaller and then I used disk druid in the installation to create all the needed partitions for redhat. Piece of cake... Oh yes, I used a bootdisk because I didnt want to mess with MBR. Im still figuring out how to use LOADLIN. Its hard to learn all these new commands.
By the way, any of you guys play Counter-Strike? that game r0x!

Partition Magic
 

so u have to use partition magic afterall?

btw, acid_kewpie, the default is fat32 (assuming i chose default, coz i dont remember...). the thing is that even if i try disk druid or fdisk, when i try to make the 3rd partition* the annoying msg pops up again - "Cannot allocate required partition"!!!

*i had dev/hda1, dev/hda2 and dev/hda5 for win XP, i.e. a C: and a D:

The only thing i used my partition magic for is to make my D: drive smaller. ( I also have C: for the OS and D: for my files) so you use disk druid to format the unallocated space, and you make your /boot your swap and / (root). Did I make it clearer now?

fips should be on your rh71 cd1 under dosutils i think, that's the easiest way to resize a fat32, not the prettiest tho.. but hey.. can't have everything!

or of course you could go wast.. erm... spend vast amounts of money of partition magic.

actually, there's also a little gizmo i found called erm.. Partition Resizer or presizer, which did a perfectly good job of mine.

this is what you get after you make your D: smaller with pmagic
HD [ C: ][ D: ][unallocated space]
then boot with you linux cd and tell it to manually create the partitions with disk druid. do you partitions and click on next. thats all.
then youll have
[ C: ][ D: ][/boot][SWAP][/ ]

WinXP Answers
 

For those who are getting WinXP all mixed up, there are currently two versions, WinXP Home, and WinXP Pro. The home edition defaults to FAT32, the Pro edition to NTFS.

Ok, moving on, you should be able to run the RedHat 7.2 installer and install in the space you left remaining (assuming you left enough for linux). Don't worry about the MBR, the XP Recovery console can always reinstall that, so go to town with Redhat. Both LILO and GRUB can easily dual boot Windows versions, NTFS or FAT32, don't matter.

Don't worry about partition magic, Disk Druid should handle it. If it still won't partition for you, make it a simple fat or fat32 partition, and then re-partition it with disk druid (so it starts with a real partition, not just unpartitioned space. I've had issues relating to this and repartitioning systems that were running ReiserFS).

1023 cylinders
 

thks to all that replied.

anyway, i've read about installing linux all over the place, and i've found out that i have to install the /boot in the first 1023 cylinders of my hard drive. is that true?

if so, then i think that's the main problem, because i have 30GB of hard drive used for win XP (yes, the first 1023 are taken up by it). so i probably have to use Partition Magic to move it?

??
 

Well correct me if I'm wrong, you have a fairly new system you are using (at least for XP to be using it :) )...

The /boot should be in the beginning of the drive, but it doesn't have to be if you use LBA32 mode (which should let you go pretty far into the drive). But moving your partition might be easier, because I'm not sure how much you can reference with LBA32, especially if you're using a >30GB HD.

Partition magic would do it, and XP would still boot fine, choose your poison...