John Aldrich wrote:
>
> On Thu, 20 Apr 2000, you wrote:
> > > I'm guessing you used DOS Fdisk to create the extended
> > > partition for your Linux. This is a "bad idea" (tm). This
> > > makes Windows aware of that partition. Next time, just
> > > leave empty space at the end of your Windows drive and let
> > > Linux do the partitioning.
> > > John
> >
> > Is is ok if you let Partition Magic 4/5 do it ?
> >
---
I started with a windows machine (22.5G laptop) from Dell (before they
offered their stripped down linux versions). I used partition magic to shrink
the dos size down to about 45% and used it to create:
Primary 2 - 256Mb /boot
Primary 3 - 256Mb swap
Primary 4 - extended
ext 1 - 512M /tmp
ext 2 - 1024M /var
ext 3 - 4.7G /
ext 4 - the rest - /home
---
I've never had a problem with defrag'ing (W98R2) walking out of primary 1.
I just recently used PM5 to further shrink down the windows to about 5.6G
since I got VMware I can use disk space in the linux partitions for DOS if needed.
/home is about 10G now. PM5 resized Dos down, moved all the partitions down and
then expanded home -- no problem.
I also recently got Norton Util's 2000 and it's disk defragmenter causes
no problems either.
So now my *usual* setup is Windows in a VMware box (either suspended or just
closed) set for 128M for Windows (Internal to Windows it has its own 256M swap) and
Linux up full time. Have a few hiccups now and then, but nothing serious. I have
my windows partition setup to boot into VMWare or on the real hardware (in case
I want something like DVD play or I'm dealing with some VMWare incompatibility).
I just have to reload the diaplay driver each time in windows -- got that down to
an art though (for some reason hardware profiles does do it's job for the display
driver -- munges my icons each time, since going to either first time boots
to 640x480 (down from normal 1280x1024). However, usually, I just use VMware --
occasionally I have my screen split -- windows on one side, Linux on the other to
copy /paste some text or do a linux task in the middle of a windows task -- but
often the VMware box is minimized -- then I just CTR-ALT-F8 to flip to Windows,
or CTL-ALT-F7 for Linux. I store most of my files on the Linux part now -- I
just export my home as a Samba share and Windows treats it like a fairly fast
network drive. I run my Windows disk partitioning in background while I work
in my Linux part -- that way I don't have to worry about the defrag restarting all
the time due to disk writes -- since from the Windows machine perspective, nobody
is accessing 'its' disk.
It's all tres sweet. Also, as added protection, VMware can be configured to
prohibit access to any other partitions to the guest-OS. I find that read access
of the header partition (0) is needed by Norton for it to do it's checks. But
it doesn't try to do any writes.
Fairly happy camper. ...
-linda
--
Linda A Walsh | Trust Technology, Core Linux, SGI
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | Voice: (650) 933-5338
