[mobo]

recently i installled mandrake on my system which already had 98 and xp. the drive had been previously set up as 5g for 98, 10 g for swap, 5 gig for linux and 10 gig for xp. the installation seemed to go fine until a couple weeks later when i tried to access the partition table again with partition majic.What it appears is that linux seems to have taken a bit of the xp partition which was next to it. i read somewhere that linux likes to have its system files separate from the os itself. Is that what happened here and what would be a good way to partition in the future ?

[codejockey]

Not sure I understand everything you posted (which means I don't understand ), so please bear with me as I ask my questions:

(1) what makes you think that Linux is encroaching in the XP partition? Is there an overlap in the partition table?

(2) have you had problems accessing either the XP or Linux filesystem? If so, more info appreciated.

(3) although it's true that many Linuxes have a separate /boot directory (I take it this is what you mean when you mention system files), this directory can either be in its own partition or part of the root partition without a problem. AFAIK, there's no requirement to place / and /boot in separate partitions (although some distributions do this by default).

(4) what specific problems are you having with the installation(s)?

As far as partitioning in the future, I'd suggest reducing the size of your (Linux) swap partition. As a rough guide, your swap partition needs to be no larger than 2 times your physical memory (on my system, for example, my swap partition is only 130 Mbytes, roughly 1/3 of my physical memory).

Hope this helps.

[mobo]

thank you for responding:
yes there was an overlap in the partitions but there was no problem entering any system on any partition. when trying to use partition magic either the cd verssion or the floppy cd version it would tell me there was an overlap and therefore partition magic would not allow me to do anything . It would not even as much as show me the partitions(just the error message).I tried deleting the non dos partition via fdisk but it as well would not allow. What was done to the drive was write zeros to the drive thus wiping it clean...

here is where i am now : 5 gig for 98 and 25 gig for xp but i would like to install red hat this time but want to make sure there arent any problems.

[mobo]

in addition here's a pretty cool desktop image

[codejockey]

Wow! -- wiping the drive would certainly cure the problem, but I suspect you didn't have to go to those lengths. Linux will allow you to manipulate the partition table (regardless of validity), so you might keep that in mind for future reference (use the fdisk or cfdisk commands). Presumably, you didn't use Partition Magic to create the partitions originally (since there was some overlap). In general, Linux distributions are careful to use only free space on the disk and not to overwrite existing partitions (although you can force this behavior if that's really what you intend).

Although I have not configured a Win98-XP-Linux system, I've come close with a Win98-Win2K Pro-Linux system, and recommend that you install Win98 first, then XP and finally Linux. RedHat features a pretty user-friendly installation, so you should have no problem just partitioning for Win98 and XP and leaving the rest free space; RedHat will suggest that it install in the free space, and take care of things from there. Note that unless things have changed recently, RedHat does not support the NTFS filesystem, so you may not be able to access your XP partition from Linux if it uses NTFS. Other distributions allow read-only access to NTFS partitions; write access is still experimental, and is generally not ready for prime time.

You should also spend some time understanding the bootloader you will be using (likely grub or LILO) and how to modify its configuration in order to support multi-booting (a number of threads here might be helpful). Other than that, go for it!

Hope this helps.

[mobo]

I was able to configure lilo the last time so I guess i will go that way again. As for the past partition problem the only thing that could have caused it was the linux partition because the drive was good before installation. Do you have any recommendations for partition type. I previously used ext3 and was wondering about a fat 32 this time.
to answer your presumptions about the partitioning tool used. It was fdisk to install the 98 then partition magig to do the rest.

[codejockey]

I recommend using a journaling filesytem such as ext3, reiserfs or xfs. There's nothing wrong with ext2, but it does tend to be slower to check and it is more susceptible to filesystem inconsisencies (however, unless you have flakey hardware, you shouldn't have many filesystem problems unless you make a habit of turning the machine off while it is active instead of shutting down). Reiserfs is better supported than xfs (more commonly used, more people to ask for advice, etc.).

For partitioning, I typically use DOS fdisk to install the WIN98 partition(s) and then the Linux fdisk to set up the Linux partitions. I used the same technique when I added WIN2K to the machine. I've never needed to use Partition Magic or similar tool.

Hope this helps.

[mobo]

In this case i will not be able to because it involves splitting xp's ntfs 25 gig partition.

Thanks for your input....

[codejockey]

Right you are -- partition splitting requires more than just slice-and-dice software (the fdisk family), so Partition Magic is definitely the way to go. Good luck -- and you might verify the partition table after each O/S install, just to make sure you don't end up with problems again (not to mention the loss of time and effort!).