OK, now I got a new question.

I'm installing 9.1 on my 2HD Win98 system for dual-boot learning purposes.

I've got my win98 installed on the 10G /hda, and my 2G /hdb is unallocated (no partitions or formatting). I need to partition this drive for my Mandrake 9.1 installation. I need to figure out which mounts/partitions I need to install a basic Linux system. I realize that 2G is not enough space to perform a complete installation. I plan on only installing basic internet/media/client packages which I will select myself.

My problem is that there is no specific explanation of which mounts/partitions I need to perform the install. I want all of the Linux OS to be only on /hdb in case of problems so my windows install on /hda will remain intact and functional. I've read about the / (root) directory, /var, /user, /home, /swap, etc.......but nowhere does it explain which of these I need and what sizes they need to be. I understand that the / (root) and /swap mounts/partitions are required, but what else do I need to allocate space for?

Can anyone offer some direction here?

Thanks for all of your help.

cory...

Got to www.linuxmandrake.com and get the install documentation.

Select install expert mode. This will allow you to select the 2nd hard drive and partition it the way you want. With only 2gb I would make swap no more than 256mb and / (root) the rest. Don't worry about creating seperate partitions for /boot, /var etc..

The entire OS will be on one partition which is ok.

Expert mode will also allow you to select only the packages you want.

you must have a swap partition. the old rule of thumb is twice ram but that's probably way too much and a waste of resources given you don't have much space on your hd. I have the same size as ram (384mb) and it still seems way too big for my purposes.

As for the rest, you don't have to divide things up. It makes sense to have a separate /home partition for your personal settings and files so that you can keep them in case you need to do a reinstall. Doesn't have to that big either, it seems. 300MB maybe - this seems pretty generous to me given. The rest can be in one partition.