On Thu, 12 Aug 1999, MURRAY, Paul wrote:
> I've been looking at a couple of different sources of information, but
hey -
> if I post here I may get a specific answer rather than a general one.
>
> I'm purchasing an 8Gb hard drive. I intend to put windows '98 on it
(for
> games) and linux on my existing 2Gb drive, which will become HD 2
(because
> windows insists on beeing booted from HD1).
>
> Apparently twice your memory is good for swap space, and the largest
swap
> you can use is 128M. Since I will have 128M of memory, I'd be looking
at two
> swap partitions of 128M - one on each drive.
>
> So: I'm looking at
> Hda - 8GB. hda1 Windows98 remainder, hda2 linux swap 128M.
> Hdb 2 Gb. hdb1 Linux root, hdb2 linux swap 128M.
>
> Since linux understands windows FAT32, I'll be able to mount my windows
> C:\LinuxHome directory on linux /home - I hope.
>
> However, I understand that it's a good idea to have two copies of the
linux
> system so that you can upgrade the kernel. If your new kernel dies, you
boot
> from the other one. The installation stuff I have does not seem to
address
> this. Does this mean 2 boot partitions on hdb? Is that possible?
Two /boot partitions doesn't make a great deal of sense to me, and I
don't see any convenient way to manage them. It might make a certain
amount of sense to have two smallish / partitions -40 or 50 mb (only one
of which would be active at any given time) which could use the same
/usr and /home, but you should read and understand the lilo README
before you take this on, and I don't think it is realy necessary. What
we harp on is, if you make a new kernel, don't write it over the old one
that you know works, but give it a new name and add it to
/etc/lilo.conf, so if it doesn't work, you can fall back to the old one
without a great deal of strain. New versions of programs required to
work with a new kernel version _should_ be backward compatible at least
one version, at least that is how I would do it, but you should read the
doco before you hasten to the bleeding edge. :-). At least
/usr/src/linux/Documentation/Changes for the kernel you mean to use.
I'll stick with 2.0.37 (with my patches) for a while yet.
Lawson
>< Microsoft free environment
This mail client runs on Wine. Your mileage may vary.
>
> Given that I want to get used to using linux for email and office, and
want
> to be able to upgrade to kernel 2.4 (which is coming out soonish I
think),
> how do you think I should set up my partitions?
>
> TIA
>
