On Wed, 2004-09-01 at 04:42, SnapafunFrank wrote: > Hmmm..... First I had WinMe then using Mandrake9.1 I was able to > repartiton the HDD for dual booting. Having got 9.1 settled I had to > make a choice, dump WinMe and use the space for Linux storage or start > again with another HDD. I still needed windows for autocad at the very > least so went with another HDD. I used Mandrake 9.2 to install then > partition some of the partitions you see on hda today, and I included a > FAT partition for file sharing. NB here that I had simply relegated the > windows HDD to slave without doing any configuring of anything. I had > great problems when I tried to update to Mandrake 10.... it never really > took, so I back-up'ed and went for the clean install.
This is not at all an unusual experience. > Using the > installation tools I further split up hda and though everything works > fine my first confusion started with the number of partitions now > available to me. My understanding was a max of 4 primary with one being > further split to 4 logical, a total of 7 usable partition less one for > swap. There are three types of partitions, primary, extended and logical. There are numerous filesystem subtypes but the three partition types always remain the same. The number of primary partitions slots is always four. An extended partition always takes up a primary partition slot. Since the number of primary partitions is greatly limited, and since Linux works perfectly with logical partitions(while needing more *total* partitions than dumber os's, which typically only need one), it's better to put mdk installs inside extended partitions on logicals and keep the primaries for your winblows stuff. You can have a maximum of 12 logical partitions inside any single extended partition before fdisk barfs. Linux does not need a primary partition, and I have seen linux primary partitions get hosed during winblows installs. On the other hand I have never seen a linux installation get hosed if all it's partitions were logical on a dual boot box. > My table shows that, but it is frustrating when the tools > mentioned earlier suggested I could have more. Now, when I tried to go > the update route with Mandrake10, lilo showed me boot options for > partitions that had no OS on them, ie the FAT partitions. > Yet when I did a clean install I didn't strike this problem????? That's not really a problem. Why would you think that it was? MDK doesn't scan for the OS files, it just types the partition and makes the assumption that it is bootable. I don't really see any use in MDK scanning for other operating system files beyond partition level boot related stuff; that's way outside it's venue AFAIAC. > I am missing something > here because all the info and help I see out there suggests that I > should have seen the same problem even with a clean install. If this is what I think you are talking about then yes you would and no it's not really a problem, unless I don't understand what the problem really is. Just for clarification, what is it that you perceive as the problem? Anyway, here is a good layout example. I posted another contribution on this earlier in this thread, I helpfully suggest that you check it out. In the meantime for convenience, here is a one drive layout: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] elx]# fdisk -l /dev/sda > > Disk /dev/sda: 160.2 GB, 160226334720 bytes > 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19478 cylinders > Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes > > Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System > /dev/sda1 * 1 4462 35840983+ 85 Linux extended > /dev/sda5 1 6 48132 83 Linux > /dev/sda6 7 93 698796 83 Linux > /dev/sda7 94 160 538146 82 Linux swap > /dev/sda8 161 307 1180746 83 Linux > /dev/sda9 308 902 4779306 83 Linux > /dev/sda10 903 4462 28595668+ 83 Linux > /dev/sda2 * 4463 7961 28113718+ 7 HPFS/NTFS > /dev/sda3 7962 19478 92510302+ c Win95 FAT32 (LBA) > > sda5 = boot > sda6 = root > sda7 = swap > sda8 = tmp > sda9 = usr > sda10 = var > > Boot-root are "special" cases, don't take up much room, and therefore > have a minimal impact on the prime real estate at the drive spindle; and > boot speed is my main reason for putting them there, besides there being > an old under-the-1024 cylinder OS boot rule that I still subconsiously > respect for some reason. Swap is first in line to take advantage of > spindle real estate; followed by /tmp. You definitely want swap to have > the best seat in the house, with /tmp following a close second. > Generally you want to put partitions that have the shortest file > lifetimes closer to the spindle and partitions that have files with the > longest file lifetimes out towards the edge of the platter. /usr has > long file lifetimes and thus as you see above is an exception to the > latter speed rule, but I put it where it is for reasons of program load > speed. The above could easily be adapted to a two drive layout. The rest of this is in the other submission. LX
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