I'm sorry to bother you all, especially since there are thousands of newbie related articles, but I cannot seem to find one single document to help me out. If you could please help me out, I'd greatly appreciate it.

I have Slackware Linux 9.1.

My current hard drive is a 40 GB drive, with windows XP home:

Primary
5 GB Operating system

Logical
10 GB for programs
13 GB for games
2 GB for personal files
500 MB miscellaneous files

I have roughly 7.5 GB free as unallocated.

All of these are NTFS partitions, and I want to install Linux, PREFERABLY as a logical drive at the very END of all my other drives, after the 500 MB partition.

Also, what size should the partitions be? I would like a Swap, a "/", "/home", and a "/usr" partitions. I have no clue how much the "/" root drive would take up, or how much to allocate to Swap. I have heard that 1 GB for Swap is good. 200 MB, 1 GB, 2GB, how much for the "/"? I don't mind about the "/home" and "/usr" sizes, because I think I'll take whatever space I have left and divide them equally.

I would also like to Dual Boot, so which partitions would I have to flag as Bootable? I know for a fact that my first partition with the winXP operating system is flagged for boot. I also heard that when it comes time to install LILO, you should instead install to MBR. Ideally, I'd like Windows XP to present the boot command, as I will be using Windows XP more than Linux (for now).

Basically, I'm asking for a walkthrough. If you could, just tell me which partitions should/need to be primary/logical, which partitions need the boot flag for dual-booting, how big each Linux related partition should be for a full install, and how to install the LILO boot handler. That's about all, I just rambled too much up there. Thank you, I would greatly appreciate it.

NOTE: I am a newbie, although I have tried several times to install Redhat Linux 6.0 unsuccessfully, and gave up for a while to try again with Slackware.

Partitioning:
Everyone has their own method or pref.

For a start, the easiest set up would be:
For the time being it would be best. I myself made a home partition and a usr/local but next time I would not make a usr/local


/home partition is where you can keep your docs so you can install new OS without touching your docs. If you want you can allocate a separate /home partition. BTW, I installed Slack on a 120 gb second drive [first drive 40 gb winxp] so there was plenty of space.


I had some problems with Slack 9.1 and had to install it twice and finally clean up and install Slack 9.0 [long story about USB k&m].

Installing Lilo to MBR can make booting very easy BUT it messes up the MBR and later you will have a hassle recovering the MBR for XP. I had to do that after one installation [gentoo] as I could no longer boot XP and had to delete and rewrite the MBR .

My preferred method is to install Lilo to floppy. You would be given the option in Lilo, choose expert mode.

Remember that it requires a formatted floppy so have it handy.

This way Lilo is completely on the floppy and does not touch the MBR.

When I start the computer, it would automatically boot XP. If I want to boot Slack, all I have to do is to insert the floppy before boot and it boots the Slack. I find this to be the cleanest and would advise anybody to do it although many would prefer to do it via MBR.
This way if things go wrong, there is no damage done and inserting a floppy in the drive is not much of a big deal.
Info:
http://www.slackware.com/book/index....1710.html#LILO

Don't worry about the dual boot settings if you will be installing Lilo to the floppy as it is not required. All you have to do is to point it to the / partion.

AFA logical drive, Slack should be quite happy to boot from anywhere.

Good Luck

ext3? You didn't mean ext2?

I have 512 MB RAM, so it should be:
/boot 100 MB (logical)
/swap 1024 MB (logical)
/home and /usr (combined, aka only 1 partition) (logical)

What does /usr store? /home is documents (and programs?), so what is /usr?

And, when I'm on the LILO installation part, I should select expert mode, and install to floppy, that way my MBR won't be modified, which I take from your experience, is a difficult thing to restore back to normality for WinXP. You said that Slack is happy to boot from everywhere, so that means that it being installed after 31 GB on my HDD won't matter with the booting? I read that the /boot partition MUST be on the first 8.5 GB, otherwise it won't load correctly.

Thank you for you help, most appreciated as I understood much of what initial installation should be like for a newbie. As I get more used to it, I'll change it around, and see if I can acquire another HDD for Slack to run on it's own.

dont quote me but it might be something to check out, I think LILO sees that there is another os booting on the HD MBR and does the necessary for both OS's to live happily side by side. the problem would be if you installed Windowz on a harddrive with Linux, because Windowz in it's classical pompus style will just over-write the MBR when you install it.

I set mine to ext3.


with 3 linux partition. it would be
/boot 100 MB
/SWAP 1024 MB
/ reiserfs (everything else which included /root, /home/usr etc but you don't worry about it as it is done automatically.

If you want to split /home for docs then
/boot 100 MB
/SWAP 1024 MB
/........... 4 gb reiserfs
/home rest reiserfs


But for your space you may just leave it a / for everything.
At this level you do not need to worry about /usr is for programs and source codes etc.


Restoring MBR is hassle. I prefer the method I mentioned specially in the beginning until you are happy and comfortable with everything.

I tried out installation with few distros and installed Slack 9.x 3-4 times, I did not want to have to touch MBR until I was happy with the set up.

Linux can boot from any location of HD (AFAIK) it is windows which has restrictions.
BTW, if you are installing Lilo on the floppy you have to direct it to your / (root) partition and not (/boot) partition in the Liloconfig.

Good Luck



PS.
That is correct. If you install windows after Linux, windows with overwrite MBR.
It is also correct that Lilo can happily boot two or more OS and that it sees windows MBR, BUT ................................
Lilo does that by 'overwriting' the windows MBR and replacing it with its own. Then you would be using Lilo to boot windows and Linux.
In case things went wrong, then you will not be able to boot anything.

My suggestion was to avoid 'rewriting' the MBR so that if things did not work out as planned, your original MBR is intact and there won't be any problem what-so-ever to boot the original windows.

As mentioned I installed gentoo 3 times [twice unsuccessfully and once successfully but had problems with video card and X] then I installed Slack 9.1 twice [problems with HID USB k&M] and then installed Slack 9.0 which works perfectly.

I originally did that and let Lilo rewrite the MBR but with the unsuccessful installation, I could no longer boot the window [ to get on the net and ask for help ] and had to fdisk the mbr and make a new one form windows back up. Windows XP has a restore facility BUT my computer had an OEM OS and OEM OS do not come with OS disks

That is why I suggest keeping the MBR intact until you are confident and happy.
But that is my personal opinion.

I put everything in ext2 because I want my penguin to fly I got the hard disk devided in 3 with / /usr /var (in case logs go mad while I'm away) Lilo is installed on the MBR. It's not a production machine so if I loose a bit of info cause of a power surge it's not the end of things. Sides if it was a production machine it would be using Ultra320 RAID with a UPS using ext2

I guess it's really personal preference as to what your partitioning scheme is. I believe there was a post on this in the past and someone gave a really good answer but I don't remember where that was and I can't seem to find it.

I like to use different schemes on different systems, so I guess it all depends on what you're going to be doing with the specific machine.

Thanks all, that helped out a lot.

Quick question for anybody, but aimed mainly at Wonderer. I set it up as:

/boot 100 MB
/swap 1024 MB
/ 3.5 GB
/home 3.5 GB

Then, I made sure that the /boot had the flag set for boot, from cfdisk, and I installed everything to the 3.5 GB / drive. I had also set the paths for /boot as /boot and /home as /home in the setup cd. The problem I'm having is that when do I install anything to /boot, or does Linux install the kernel there automatically? I'm wondering because would it work if I just combined the /boot and the / partitions? I would like to use your method, but I'm confused what /boot does and how to install whatever goes there.

One more thing, when making the flopy disk with the LILO loader, you first have to format it, then make it a boot disk, THEN install the LILO loader on it, correct? Oh, and during the install, it gave the option of installing the kernel from a CD, a harddrive, a Floppy, or the default which had the path "/boot" and then a kernel file. I select the default, right?

From what I guess/learned, /boot holds the actual Linux Kernel and it's installed at the screen from where you select a kernel. / holds the Linux, all the programs, everything BUT the kernel, and /swap is just a swap space. /home is for docs, and I'm just running on a 4 partition drive.

I hope I made sense in my questions, and y'all aren't tired of hearing my newbie questions. Thanks...

To start with, I am also a Slack newbie. However I am sharing the experience gained as I recently [and repeatedly] went through installation process.

/boot is where the boot info [] is stored. Lilo will store info there and if you want to have multiple Linux systems, then that is where the boot loader would be installed.

Strictly speaking you can even have a Linux without /boot partition but for the sake of 100 mb is well worth having. It can also be handing if you have multiple kernels [2.4.x, 2.6.x] and want to have the option of choosing the kernel at boot.

Anyway;

You have partitioned with cfdisk.
I am guessing that you are installing from Slack CD, is that right?


During the installation, you go through the basic thing such as keyboard and language etc. You will be asked about where to get the kernel from [SOURCE], if you are using the CD than CD would be the place to choose [Install from CD-ROM].

AFA Packages, you can select them all if you want. You may not need all kde international sets. I use UK-English so I installed the basic kde [US english] and then installed only UK-english later with swaret [excellent].

Choose Full install.

CONFIGURE:
CD comes with bare.i kernel which is suited for most. I recall, it would automatically select it if you click enter. You will see the info on display.

Make a boot disk:
It is always good to make a [emergency] Boot disk.
Make one.
You can also use the format option to format 2 floppies, one for later use with Lilo.

And then the rest of installation.

LILO:
When you get to Lilo, choose expert mode.
It comes up with a config utility. You have to create the config first and then choose to install it and it would give you the option where to install it and insert the floppy and choose floppy.

In the liloconfig you need to direct it to /root [the partition / ] and not /boot.
Choose the name [I simply put Slackware] and time out [I set it to 30 second just in case, but you can change it later] etc and then when you choose install to floppy, it actually takes a fraction of second.
The first time I was unsure that it actually did it as it was so quick.

That is it.

Slack would recognise and set the fstab for you if you have fat partitions. You would need to select boot, swap, root and home in the settings starting from boot. There is good info on the display, do read it.

Complete installation takes under an hour [someone said 30 minutes].
As long as you don't mess with MBR [choose floppy], if everything turned to sh*t, you can start over and all you have lost is an hour but gained a lot of knowledge.
My first Slack install took over 2 hours, and the last under one hour.

Good luck

I inserted a blank formatted floppy on the "LILO to floppy" step, and it gave me an error saying that I needed to insert a formatted floppy. However, when I inserted one of my boot floppies, it installed the LILO onto it fine. That's what you mean by that statement there, correct? Keeping 2 floppies, one with a boot only on it, the other with the boot AND LILO on it. Am I right?

Not exactly but that will do.

You need to have the floppy formatted as Liloconfig does not have formatting option [that is an oversight and it can do with one ]

During the emergency boot dick creating, it lets you format first, so you can format but not install the boot.

This is in case you do not have access to a linux system to format your disk in advance.

You don't need both the boot and lilo. That was a suggestion in case you did not have access to linux formatted floppy.

Good Luck

Ah, it works now, thank you!