partitoning

[whisker]

when i run the linux install, the manual tells me to remove all partitions. can i safely do this without losing my windows data?

[budman7]

when i run the linux install, the manual tells me to remove all partitions. can i safely do this without losing my windows data?

No, if you remove all partitions, all partitions will be gone, including the Windows partition.

[whisker]

how should i make the partitions then. the manual says to make a boot, swap and root.

[budman7]

How is your hard drive organized now? fdisk -l
How much ram do you have?

[whisker]

i have a 40gig hardive half used by windows. 256mb ram. i think i understand how to partiton the hardrive but im not sure what to do for gentoo.

[budman7]

So you have a empty partition ready for Gentoo.
If you want a /boot(not necessary), make it 64 MB.
The swap should be 512 MB, and / should be the rest.

Use cfdisk instead of fdisk, it is a little better, you can see everything that you have done.
Don't forget to reboot after partitioning.

[whisker]

so that means the windows partition will be the boot partition?

[budman7]

No, you will create these three partitions out of the one partition that is set aside for Gentoo.
When you type cfdisk at the commnad line, you will see what partitions are there.
That partition that is set aside for Gentoo, highlight it and click "delete", now it has been changed to free space.
Click "New" make this the /boot, click on Type, make it Linux=83. Make it a Primary partition, tell it 64 MB,and make it bootable.
Now the swap, click "New" make it "Extended", tell it 512 MB, click on type, tell it is swap=82.
Now for / click on "New", make it Logical, make it type Linux, use up the rest of the hard drive, or whatever you want.

[drakebasher]

so that means the windows partition will be the boot partition?

No, no, no. You will probably want something like this:

hda1 Windows 20Gb
hda2 /boot 64Mb
hda3 swap 512Mb
hda4 / 18.4Mb

But if you are playing around with Linux, you might want to save room for that:

hda1 Windows 20Gb
hda2 /boot 64Mb
hda3 extended
hda5 swap 512Mb
hda6 / 9Mb
hda7 (future use) 9Mb

You should have a /boot partition: it will save some confusion as you follow the install instructions. Besides, if you put another distro in that hda7, you will be able to share the /boot partition as well as the swap.

(skipping hda4 is intentional: if hda3 is extended and takes the rest of the drive, there will be no hda4 which is a number reserved only for primary or extended partitions. Logical partitions (which are contained within the extended partition) start at 5)

[whisker]

im so stupid.... how do i set aside a partition for linux