Hi!
I have XP and slack installed.
i have more than 10 gigs free on my linux partition,
how is to safely resize it so i can try freeBSD.
should i edit manually my LILO conf in order to get all the three os´es started,
or there is some script that should be run?

What do you mean you have 10G free on your linux partition? Does it mean for example you installed Slackware in partition 2 and you have 10G free on the disk? Or do you have for example a 15G Slackware partition and Slackware now is only taking 5G...

Resizing partitions for Windows and Linux is completely different. We should see the output of fdisk -l to be sure, because Linux can be installed across partitions. And *BSD should really be installed in primary partitions (1-4, or 1-3 if you have an extended 4).

You can easily resize Linux by creating a tar (or tar.bz2 would be even better, more compression) and untarring it into a new partition. I have done this a few times, but for safety you should untar it in another partition and see if you can bring up the system before you delete your original system.

It was hard to understand exactly what your situation is, but if you have two partitions and have XP in the 1 and Slackware in 2, then you probably already resized your Windows partition, right?

0 Do fdisk -l and print it out on paper. If you don't have a printer, write it down and check it a few times to make sure it's correct. This can save your system if you have to reconstruct the partition table by hand.
1 Make a tar.bz2 of / and burn a CD or save on some other disk
2 Delete the Slackware partition with fdisk
3 Define two new partitions with fdisk, one for Slackware and one for FreeBSD. Remember that *BSD will be better in a primary partition. You can use your original swap partition, don't do anything to it. Or, if you delete it by mistake, it's not a problem..create another one in an extended partition, or a primary if you have one available. I recommend extended because primary partitions should be saved for stuff that really needs one.
4 Boot from Slackware installation disk (or some other Live CD) and make a filesystem in the new Slackware partition. You can do mkreiserfs /dev/hdn (where n is partition number) or mkfs for whatever type you want (ext2/3, etc) and after that is done, untar the backup of Slackware from the CD into the new partition
5 Change lilo.conf to point to the new Slackware system and your original XP system
6 Do fdisk -l and print it out again to save the new information
7 Install FreeBSD

You should edit lilo.conf manually, it's very simple. We can help if you have questions.

Remember, the safest thing after making a backup is to restore it and test it. Then you will know for sure that your backup is good and your system can be created. It would be a very bad day if you thought you had a good backup and you deleted your system. And then when you tried to restore it, you got a bad surprise! If you check everything before doing it for real, you will not have any problems.

i don´t catch the idea of what you were saying ...
both variants
let me explain it in details:
i have 40GB hdd
i have 4 partitions, these are
- ntfs primary partition (~ 9 gigs)
- ntfs logical partition (~ 11 gigs)
- linux swap partition (~ about 1 gig)
- linux ext3 partition (~ about 16-17 gigs, free about 12 gigs)
this is the maximum amount of partitions i can currently have (i have already asked question about partitioning on this forum, but unfortunately wasn´t able to figure out what was it all about - i can´t create the fifth partition, even one on my list one is logical http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=421594)
can i detach part of ext3 partition for *BSD? for example, (from sector x to the end - as it seems to me - it can in theory work. or i ´m not right?) without deleting my current partition
is there a defragmentation program for linux as it is in windows, that should be run before these operations?
can you please specify this for me?
also info concerning partitioning would be greatly appreciated

concerning lilo.conf
mine looks like that, without comment signs:
in order to get one more onto the list do i have to add lines like that after the last line:
other = /some device
label = some label
or how it should look for example for *BSD

thanks in advance

Ok, this is sort of what I had, and if you want to install *BSD here you have two choices and none of them are going to be easy. I just did this on my system and I didn't lose any data but I did much planning and took a few days to do it.

It would be better if you show the actual output from fdisk -l so we can know exactly what is your situation.

I think the reason you can't create the fifth is because P4 is primary. It must be extended for 5-n to be able to be created.

In your setup now, you are out of partitions which you can easily use for *BSD. It is possible (I think, but I haven't proved it) to install *BSD in a logical partition, but let's not think of it now because we already have a mess here.

If you want to install *BSD on this disk you can choose either
1 - use linux swap partition to install *BSD. Actually, this isn't a bad choice because you 1G is a pretty big *BSD partition. It may be enough. But even if you do this you will still have to redo your linux partitions because you won't have any swap.
2 - delete your swap and linux partitions and fix your drive. Maybe also delete the NTFS logical partition if you can and rebuild it as a logical somewhere else.

Partitioning is not complicated. You can have 4 primary partitions. If you need more, the 4th one (ideally) should be extended, and then 5-n will be logical. *BSD is best installed in a primary partition.

No, because *BSD needs to be in a primary partition. If you make space at the end of your linux partition, you won't be able to use it.

You don't need to defrag linux because you will be making a tar.bz2 (compressed file) that is not an image of a filesystem, unlike NTFS resizing. You are actually copying the files and then you can restore them anywhere you have enough space. Isn't linux great?

You need to redo your partitions to something like:

1 - NTFS
2 - NTFS (what is your NTFS logical used for???)
3 - *BSD
4 - extended
5 - swap
6 - Linux

Yes, for *BSD I think what you wrote here is ok.