Partition confusion

Cyber Source peter at thecybersource.com
Fri Nov 7 08:37:27 EST 2003


I started getting a head ache reading this one, lol, so I will give you
a quick reply. Things you should probably do.
1. Keep it simple, if this is just a workstation, go with the default
setup of the partitions.
2. Keep the windows side down to a small partition, it won't get
fragmented as bad.
3. Try to loose the WinME if you can, if not, install that first, give
it say a 5GB partition at most, with a dual boot, you can use the Linux
side to store everything. 
4. After Windows installs properly and can start and reboot without
problems, put in the Linux cd and boot.
5. Go with the auto partition from Linux and remove all previous Linux
partitions.
6. Install and enjoy.
Problems that might arise....
1. The Linux installs that I do (RedHat) default to setting in LILO of
"linear", if your using LILO for the boot loader that is. If you do not
see the LILO screen after the Linux install, it has a problem with this
line. You need to run the rescue mode from the Linux cd and mount your
Linux install in rescue mode, change the line of "linear" to "lba32" in
the file /etc/lilo.conf and then rerun lilo by typing "lilo" after you
change the file. If it comes back ok, you should see your lilo screen on
the reboot.
2. If you are jumping around from different disks, you will need to
(map) the drives in the /etc/lilo.conf file, with a statement like
this,  
        table=/dev/hdb
        map-drive=0x80
        to=0x82
        map-drive=0x82
        to=0x80
adjust accordingly. Hope some of this helps ya. 


On Fri, 2003-11-07 at 00:02, Michael Brown wrote:

> Greetings All,
> 
> I recently installed a new 200GB hard drive in my PC. Previously, I had
> 2 40GB drives. One partitioned for Windows ME and one partitioned for
> Linux (Mandrake/Redhat, whatever the flavor of the week happened to be).
> This dual boot system worked great.
> 
> The problem now is I can't seem to get the dual boot to work correctly
> with a single hard drive.
> 
> I have tried several different ways to partition the new drive. I have
> been able to install windows and get it setup fine. Then I setup Linux
> and all goes well until I have to reboot into windows. Currently,
> windows reports an registry error and does not boot not even in safe
> mode. Previously, I booted to the startup disk and ran scanreg then it
> reports several missing files and instructs me to reinstall windows.
> 
> I posted the output of fdisk /dev/hde below:
> 
>    Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/hde1   *         1       608   4883728+   c  Win95 FAT32 (LBA) C:
> /dev/hde2           609      2432  14651280    c  Win95 FAT32 (LBA) D:
> /dev/hde3          2433      7722  42491925   85  Linux extended
> /dev/hde4          7723     24321 133331467+  83  Linux /archive
> /dev/hde5          2433      2675   1951866   83  Linux /
> /dev/hde6          2676      2736    489951   82  Linux swap
> /dev/hde7          2737      3952   9767488+  83  Linux /usr
> /dev/hde8          3953      5168   9767488+  83  Linux /var
> /dev/hde9          5169      7600  19535008+  83  Linux /home
> /dev/hde10         7601      7722    979933+  83  Linux /tmp
> 
> I did use cfdisk to setup this partition scheme. I also ran the command
> dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda1 bs=512 count=1 on hde1 and hde2 per man
> fdisk. cfdisk originally setup hde3 as type f (win95 ext'd) which caused
> windows to "see" a third partition. But, I was able to boot back and
> forth to Linux and windows until fsck complained of errors on hde4 and
> they were too numerous to repair so I formated the partition again (it
> was blank). Then windows could not boot.
> 
> Changing hde3 to type 85 (Linux extended) cured the ghost partition
> under windows after reformatting C: again.
> 
> I should also note that during the current Mandrake 9.2 install lilo
> found 2 windows installations. I did delete the windows2 option. But now
> while Mandrake boots fine windows does not.
> 
> Is this a partitioning issue or perhaps do I need to switch the bootable
> flag from hde1 to hde5?
> 
> I am hoping there is a simple solution without the need to repartition,
> format, reinstall, etc. (again!) But, if I must, I will as long as I
> know how to get it right this time.
> 
> Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!
> 
> Michael Brown
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