Problems setting up Linux partition

[kilahchris]

Ok I just downloaded Red Hat 8.0

I have a Maxtor 60 Gig hard drive where Windows XP is on large Partition ( I assume the partition takes up the whole drive) However i have 30 GIGS of free space. when trying to install Linux RH8.0 i chose the automatic partitioning and recieve the error that said " partition failed: could not allocate partitions as primary partition. Then I tried to create a new partion in Disk Druid and no success the same error.... Disk druid does see my xp partition and the freespace that is there is only 8mb when i have 30 gigs of free space on xp?
Can someone help how do i set up a Red Hat partition????

[majorwoo]

ok, first of all - bad idea, automatic partitioning will remove winXP - i am assuming you want to dualboot.

If winXP is set to take all 60GB (you can right click on your C drive in XP to see the size of the drive) you need to resize it befre you can install linux - that's where the error came from i guess, i thought auto would remove all partitions, but maybe not which caused the error.

Either way, freespace is not the same as what you need - you need a seperate partiton, you can use partition magic to resize your partition, or there are some other progs that will do it oo (maybe someone can recommend one) I ususally just reinstall windows when i do it.

I would reinstall windows, and during the install delete the partiton and make another one, say 30GB (this is donevery early in the install, when it asks you to pick a partion, you can delete it, press l to confirm, dont worry it will walk you through it, when you make a new one dont make it the full size, make it 30000 or 30GB) Then after windows installs do linux (linux has to come second) Use disk druid and make 3 partions

100MB ext3 /boot
2xyour RAM swap (say you have 256 MB of RAM, make it 512MB)
the rest to ext3 /

RH8 will install grub which will boot either windows or linux for you, you should be set - let us know if you need anything else

[kilahchris]

Can i create a new partition with Disk Druid or Fdisk? and if so can you tell me how please??

[genlee]

You will need to shrink your winxp partition with say partition magic before you can create another one.

[kilahchris]

How come RedHat 8.0 is not able to do this task??? or Fdisk??? why do i have to buy 3rd party software just to create a partition for RED Hat??? I dont think Red Hat is all that good if it is not even able to make a partition out of 30 GB of free space?

[majorwoo]

you do not uderstand


Free space is PART of your windows partiton, unless you mean UNPARTITIONED space.

Redhat could happily make a space for itself, erasing windows in the process - (which is what windows woudl do)

Think of your hard drive as a pie pan, windows has the ENTIRE pan, it is only using 1/2 of it - but it wont let anybody else use the other 1/2. You need to cut your pan in 1/2 - that is not redhat problem, because windows wont do it either.

Either reinstall as I told you earlier, or get something to resize the partion. Again, what linux needs is a PARTITION made from UNPARTITIONED space - which is different then FREE space.

[Dolda2000]

To continue on majorwoo's comparison to a pie pan, it's not really as simple as cutting it in half. If you do that, the pan is unusable. Actually, what you need to do is to melt down the pan and then take half the molten metal (assuming it's a metal pan...) and make a identical, but smaller, version of the pan for windows. That way windows won't notice that it's been shrunk, except that there is a little less free space in it. Then you have the rest of the pan to form as you wish, such as making a linux pan.

I believe there are fat resizing tools for linux, and I know that there are ext{2,3} resizing tools. However, there cannot be NTFS resizing tools, since noone except Microsoft (and those Microsoft has licensed it to) know the NTFS file system format. That's also why you can't get safe write access to NTFS partitions in linux. Everything that has with NTFS to do has to be reverse engineered (except if you've licensed the specs from MS, which is probably what the guys at partitionmagic have done).

[kilahchris]

trust me i understood from before... I know windows xp takes up all the cylinders and partition space. However my brother installed Mandrake 8.0 and it automatically created a partition on the leftover space he had in harddrive ??? He did not use partition magic or anything to resize his windows partition???How was Mandrake able to do this but not Red Hat????

[Dolda2000]

Probably he had unpartitioned space (or some molten metal =) ) left.

[kilahchris]

HE HAD A 30 GIG HD ENTIRELY DEVOTED TO WINDOWS XP.. IT MIGHT OF BEEN FAT 32 BECAUSE HE UPGRADED FROM WINDOWS ME.....