Dual Boot Linux and BSD

[murph1083]

I want to install a copy of Gentoo and either FreeBSD or OpenBSD on my system. With gentoo, I know to create the /boot, / and swap but then what do I do for the BSD. I know that I can only have 4 partitions on a drive. I have heard something about using extended partitions and/or logical. Can anyone offer insight?

[Javasnob]

I forget how FreeBSD and OpenBSD deal with booting and swap, but what it will probably come down to is creating an extended partition, as you mentioned. A harddrive can only contain 4 actual partitions. But there are two types of these: primary and extended. Primary partitions are nothing special, but an extended partition can contain logical partitions. There's a limit to the number of logical partitions an extended partition can have, but I can't remember as of now. I think it's something like 16 or 64. Also, I think there's a limit of one extended partition per drive.