Hey, Use extended partitions. I'd put the boot onto primary partition 3, and swap + /home on extended ones. Not that it matters.
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Partition/fdisk_partitioning.html should clear up any uncertainty... Steve On Fri, 13 Mar 2009 09:06:46 +0900 (KST) Andrew Errington <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi all, > > I still haven't had time to set up my Aspire One with Mepis 8.0, but > incremental progress is being made. I booted Mepis from CD and used > GPartEd to resize the XP partition from 146Gb to 12Gb, and I want to > install Mepis on the space I a freed up. The resize worked, so now I have > about 132Gb for Linux. > > On the hard drive there are two partitions. The first is hidden, and it's > a 4Gb 'recovery' image to restore the laptop to factory condition. The > second is the 'real' XP partition (now 12Gb). > > The Mepis installation instructions recommend creating three partitions > for Mepis (unless you are using the automatic install and wiping the whole > drive). The recommendation is a 5-10Gb partition for root (I will choose > 10Gb), a swap partition equal to twice the installed RAM, but no more than > 1Gb (so in my case it will be 1Gb), and the rest as /home (about 120Gb for > me). > > Since I already have two primary partitions, and I can only have four in > total, how should I configure the three partitions for Mepis? I need some > combination of primary and extended partitions. > > Once I have created the partitions Mepis will set itself up properly when > I tell it what partitions to use. After that it will install GRUB. Shall > I install GRUB to the MBR, or to the root partition? > > Clearly I have never set up a dual-boot system before. Mostly because I > don't want one. However, in this case I want to use Linux, but I don't > want to lose XP, nor do I want to lose the factory restore function in > case the laptop needs to be serviced under warranty. > > Advice gratefully received, > > Andrew > > (Yes, I have Googled it, but I don't understand the consequences of making > a wrong partition choice, or GRUB installation choice. I could learn from > experience... but I'd rather learn from someone else's mistakes :) Oh, > and I'm in Korea with very little gear and no internet connection at > home.) > -- Steve Holdoway <[email protected]> http://www.greengecko.co.nz
