[LBo] partition+boot, was Oops, I've lost

[Howard Rosen]

If it is of any help to Grasshopper, I have just finished re-installing 
SuSE 10.1 and here is a copy of my partitioning:

hrosen70 at linux:~> df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdb3             3.1G  232M  2.8G   8% /
udev                  189M  228K  189M   1% /dev
/dev/hdb1              31M   24M  5.8M  80% /boot
/dev/hdb7             3.1G   45M  3.0G   2% /home
/dev/hdb5             4.1G  2.0G  2.1G  49% /opt
/dev/hdb6             5.1G  3.7G  1.4G  74% /usr
/dev/hdb2             2.0G  355M  1.7G  18% /var
/dev/hdb8             2.1G   12K  2.1G   1% /windows
/dev/sda4              96M   18M   79M  19% /media/zip100.0
hrosen70 at linux:~>

Notice that /dev/hdb1, hdb2, hdb3 are primary partitions.  Missing
is /dev/hdb4 which is an extended partition to the full length of the
drive.  I have WinMe on /hda and SuSE on /hdb.  All of the remainding
partitions are logical.

Good luck,

Howard

On Mon, 2006-09-18 at 07:06 -0400, Anita Lewis wrote:
> On 09/18/2006 06:45 AM Grasshopper wrote:
> 
> > 
> > I haven't actually installed Fedora, but thought it would be a good idea
> > to put it in Suse boot, so that I would not have the same problem again.
> > I don't know if that was silly?
> > 
> > No, that extended partition is just for Suse, I have more than 20G left
> > for when I install Fedora.  I'm actually going to delete the IBM
> > section, as it is useless, meaning that if I wanted to boot up MS, the
> > only way I can do it is with an old CD of MS.  
> 
> Using the same /boot is not a bad idea.  I've always been afraid that a 
> new distro would use the same kernel name as one I already had in there 
> and that my old one would get overwritten.  That is why I stopped using 
> one /boot.
> 
> The problem with making a small extended partition like that is that you 
> cannot make another extended partition.  That means that you will have 
> only 3 other primary partitions to use.
> 
> I recommend that if you are going to reinstall SUSE, you make a 2G or 
> bigger primary partition and move /home there.  Then delete those 
> partitions you have in the extended and make that extended the remaining 
> size of your drive.  Now you can put many partitions on that extended. 
> The way you are doing it, you will be able to have only those that you 
> now have on there and 3 more which would be primary.  You will have no 
> way to use your extra 20G except for 3 primary partitions.
> 
> That would not be so bad if you intend to make only 1 partition for 
> Fedora.  That could be a primary partition and you could then use the 
> same /home and you always use the same swap.  So it will work.  Just be 
> aware that you can only have 4 primary total and one of those can be 
> extended.
> 
> Anita