problem trying to triple boot Fedora, Opensuse and XP

[sugantha]

Hello all...I have a system with Fedora 8 and Win XP dual booting and working fine.Now I am trying to install OpenSuse and trying to triple boot.I am right now posting this from the OpenSuse LiveCD and I am stuck at the Yast partitioning step.This is my disk layout

DEVICE SIZE F TYPE MOUNT

/dev/sda 149 GB ST3160215AS
/dev/sda1 20 GB HPFS/NTFS /windows/C
/dev/sda2 129 GB Extended
/dev/sda5 43 GB HPFS/NTFS /windows/D
/dev/sda6 43 GB HPFS/NTFS /windows/E
/dev/sda7 2 GB F Linux swap swap
/dev/sda8 6.5 GB F Linux native(ext3) /
/dev/sda9 24.4 GB F Linux native(ext3) /home

The suggested partitioning says...

Delete partition /dev/sda7 (43.0 GB)
Create swap partition /dev/sda7 (2.0 GB)
Create root partition /dev/sda8 (16.5 GB) with ext3
Create partition /dev/sda9 (24.4 GB) for /home with ext3
Set mount point of /dev/sda1 to /windows/C
Set mount point of /dev/sda5 to /windows/D
Set mount point of /dev/sda6 to /windows/E

My best guess is OpenSuse is trying to overwrite in the existing Fedora partition(could be wrong), While I am trying to place OpenSuse in /dev/sda6. Please suggest what I should do to get all the OS's XP,Fedora and OpenSuse to show up in the boot option. I ve gone through similar threads in this forum and googled a lot but could nt understand much to proceed. Any suggestions and pointers are appreciated.Thanks in advance...

[Jonathan183]

If the partition already exists then you need to use the manual partitioning option in the installer. To install to sda6 you just select that partition, select format the partition and select the format (ext3 probably). You can use gparted to format partitions first if you want before running the installer. I usually use the PartedMagic CD

You should be able to just let openSUSE setup grub in the MBR it should detect Linux and Windows OS and add entries to suit.

Make sure you have backed up user data before the install as any data on sda6 will be lost during the install process.

I also suggest you install to a root partition only and create home folders (on your home partition) after the install if you want them ... that way you have control over the process and can avoid your existing home areas being overwritten accidentally.

[sugantha]

Thanks for your reply....As far as I know the YAST installer has two options, a suggested partitioner and an expert partitioner. In the expert partitioner I tried to format sda6 to ext3 and specified the mount point as '/' ( trying to install all the packages to the root) but it complains, the mount point already exists.
I am downloading PartedMagic now...Is there a need to specify the mount point when formatting using partedmagic...will get back to you in case of problems...Thanks again...

[Jonathan183]

No you just specify the type of partition you want. The mount point is where you mount the partition in the current system. You could have a partition formatted ext3 and could choose to mount the partition to root (/) or you could mount the partition to home (/home). You choose during the install process where in the system the partition is to be mounted and the installer writes the correct data to suit.