5 OS's ?! WOW good luck! you might have a problem loading some of them, though, if they start after the 1024th cylinder (roughly 8.5 GB). The BIOS won't be able to see your kernel image after that. If they're all linuces (that's plural for linux) try partitioning only the root partition (no more than 50 MB) for each version, but mounting the same /usr and /home partitions for all of them. That way you can squeeze as many root partitions as you like before the 1024 cylinder mark and leaving the hefty /usr and /home partitions for last, to be mounted after the kernel has been loaded (at which point the 1024 cylinder barrier disappears). This idea is just off the top of my head. I don't know if it'll work if you use different distros ( i'm relatively new to linux too). As for primary vs. extended partitions - I'd recommend putting all your linux partitions (except maybe your swap partition) in one extended partition. IDE drives can have 63 logical partitions in one extended one, but only 4 primary ones (with SCSI the number shrinks to 12, but that's still plenty).
Try reading the partition mini-HOWTO at http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/Partition/index.html or the large disk HOWTO at http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Large-Disk-HOWTO.html good luck GIL Jaye Inabnit ke6sls wrote: > > Hello, > > Am doing project here loading up many versions of linux. I wish to > use my 20gb hd. All was going well until I reached the 4 primary partition > mark - and fdisk said no in no uncertain terms and complained that I > should wack a partition and build an extended partion. > > I won't bore the list with details, but I have no good "howtos" on my deb > box - does anyone know where I can find a good resource on partitioning > drives for say 5 or more OS's? Would like to keep working away on this > as it has been a great learning experience. > > tia - regards > > Please - reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > tatah > > -- > > Jaye Inabnit, ARS ke6sls e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > 707-442-6579 h/m 707-441-7096 p > http://www.qsl.net/ke6sls ICQ# 12741145 > This mail composed with kmail on kde on X on linux warped by debian > If it's stupid, but works, it ain't stupid. > > -- > Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null
