[SOLVED] Fresh HD Partitioning

[amenditman]

I just got a used laptop which I am going to use as my "tweak it until it breaks" platform.

The hard drive is kinda funky, so I am going to install a brand new, never used Hitachi 160 GB drive I have, in it.

My plan is to have several distros available to boot.

Any recommendations on partitioning for booting several or even many different distros on a single hard drive.

Thanks,
Amenditman

[devils casper]

You can create 3 Primary, 1 Extended and 11 or more Logical Partitions inside Extended Partition.

/dev/sda1 - 3, Primary Partitions
/dev/sda4 - Extended Partition
/dev/sda5,6,7,8.... Logical Partitions

Do not create /boot partition for any distro and you can share single SWAP partition in all distros.

[amenditman]

Thanks, Devils Casper, that's mostly clear to me.

I'm a muddle headed newbie.

Couple of questions.

Put what in each type of partition? Why or link to where explained?

I have only installed single OS at a time from Live CD, at what point during install would I have the option to not install /boot? I have manually partitioned a drive many times, I usually just use root , /home, and swap. By not creating /boot, do you mean at this stage of manual partitioning?

Is there any configuration necessary to get the swap to share?

Thanks for your help!

Amenditman

[devils casper]

You should create partitions manually only. Select Manual Partitioning in Partition Section during installation of each distro. Assign / mount point to the partition where you want to install new distro. All installers detect SWAP partition and you wont have to do anything for that.

You can use GParted Partition Manager ( Its available in Ubuntu CD ) or PartedMagic LiveCD for partitioning.

Boot up Linux and execute this in Terminal/Konsole :

sudo fdisk -l

Post output here. Lets check partition structure of your Hard Disk.

[amenditman]

1 - OK, maybe it's just me, but when I boot the PartedMagic LiveCD I do not have a password which works in the terminal for root. Therefore, no fdisk access.

2 - When I start to partition the new, unallocated hard drive using gParted, the first screen that pops up is "Create partition table" and it says it will create an msdos partition table. I click on advanced and it lists a whole bunch of types which I don't know. I read the entire online documentation and it never mentions this screen.

Please help!

Thanks,

Amenditman

[amenditman]

I forgot to ask, is this a one shot deal to get this right? Will I be stuck with anything for all time or is everything resettable to a factory fresh drive?

Thanks!

[yancek]

If I understand your posts, you have absolutely nothing on this drive, no operating system?? Are you using GParted only or are you trying to use it from an OS like Ubuntu to do your partitioning?

Anything you do with a drive can be changed. You can create partitions (primary, extended, logical) resize and delete them. As devils casper said, you can only have four (4) primary partitions and if you want an extended partition in which to create logical partitions, one of your primaries will need to be used to create the extended.

[amenditman]

I have absolutely nothing on this drive.

I am accessing the gParted from the PartMagic 2.2 Live CD.

I just don't want to do anything which will be permanently wrong to a brand new hard drive.

Thanks,
Amenditman

[devils casper]

Its really easy to create Partitions through PartedMagic LiveCD.
I would suggest you to create 3 Primary, 1 Extended and 11 Logical Partitions in Extended Partition.
Partition Usage depends on you only.
This is Partition Structure of my test machine's HD.

/dev/sda1 Primary Windows XP
/dev/sda2 Primary Data storage
/dev/sda3 Primary Fun stuff
/dev/sda4 Extended
/dev/sda5 Logical SWAP
/dev/sda6, 7, 8, 9 --- Logical partitions having Linux distros installed.

[amenditman]

Thanks to all for the advice.

I read your responses, went and researched to gain understanding of what you mentioned, and then successfully partitioned the drive with PartedMagic.

Thanks again,

Amenditman