Hmmmm............
OK! Your choice of using Mandrake to do the actually partitioning and formating is your only choice if you wish to have your Windows partition survive the exercise un-disturbed. Your only other such option is to use something like "Partition Magic". AS ALWAYS! You must backup things first!
I've forgotten the content of the orginal post so forgive me for assuming you have only one harddrive.
I have two harddrives, so thankfully, I won't have to touch the partition table on the Windows drive, where my Linux backup will be.
My warning here is that you must study and read carefully, all things within the partitioning exercise when you get to that part of the Mandrake Installation. I actually tried different ideas to see how things would look 'on paper' when within the partition part, because you can simply back up one and do it again and again before commiting to what you believe is correct.
Aim for a good partition mix that would suit your needs but basically do not exceed 3 x primary partitions and 1 x extended partition broken up further into 4 actually partitions, for each harddisk, for now. Do a search for linux partitioning and you'll get a clearer idea of what is available for you, and a clearer idea of sizing partitions.
For example:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] frank]$ df Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part5
966M 121M 796M 14% /
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1
966M 11M 906M 2% /boot
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part8
9.4G 4.2G 5.3G 45% /home
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part3
12G 6.1G 4.7G 57% /mnt/empty
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part2
16M 2.3M 13M 16% /mnt/hdb2_boot
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part5
92M 55M 33M 63% /mnt/hdb5_root
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part6
92M 62M 25M 72% /mnt/hdb6_var
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part7
3.1G 1.9G 1.1G 64% /mnt/hdb7_usr
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part9
1.5G 1.4G 109M 93% /mnt/hdb9_home
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part1
14G 12G 2.5G 83% /mnt/win_c2
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part4
3.4G 2.4G 1016M 71% /mnt/win_h
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part6
9.4G 3.6G 5.4G 40% /usr
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part9
1020M 141M 827M 15% /var
To bring this back to something you may have gotten used to read the above table as:
Target0 = hda [harddrive A - Master] Target1 = hdb [harddrive B - Slave & where Windows belongs?!?]
part/n/ = the relavant partion number eg: /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part9 is my _*hdb9*_ partition on my slave harddrive and contains a previous installation home directory ( mandrake9.1 in this case.)
The one main partition missing here and is extra to the others, is the swap partition - needed for linux.
So don't rush here, PLAN PLAN PLAN. It is important. Get this right and the rest will follow.
As an exercise, read my table above and tell me where it could be said that, " You screwed up there, Frank!"
Well, to really test myself -- since I did read up on partitioning in the past, I would say your boot partition is really overkill :-)
I am in a much more space-constrained setup, and have installed most of the software I need already. I have already moved my swap partition onto the Windows harddrive (it is the only Linux partition on that drive), to free up about 300 more MB for Linux.
Here's my df output:
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/hdb1 1944056 1688400 156900 92% / /dev/hdb6 80979 32225 48754 40% /home /dev/hda1 6015432 4566836 1448596 76% /mnt/win_c /dev/hdb5 180066 107891 62878 64% /var
My swap is on hda (300 MB)
and I have about 260 MB (270,000 blocks) unallocated on hdb, free for me to redistribute when I repartition.
I think I have the "luxury" of some more personal space, the / needs more flex room, and a bit more for var... I want room for a possible database, web site, and/or fonts.
So I'm thinking: hdb1: / 1,980 MB (up from 1,900) (1,650 MB used, 330 free) hdb5: /var 300 MB (up from 175) ( 105 MB used, 195 free) hdb6: /home 140 MB (up from 80) ( 48 MB used, 92 free)
I've thought of combining /var and /home, on a partition, but from what I can tell, that gets more comlicated with the mounts... and despite the extra flexibility with dynamic allocation of my tight HD space that would give, I think I won't worry about it.
It wouldn't be a /bad/ idea to make a small /boot partition, but it's probably not worth the time and trouble on this machine to study up on that and reconfigure the system that way.
I don't expect to do much serious work (in Mandrake) until I get a faster machine with more storage. (200mhz Pentium, 60MB ram, you know about my HD :->)
By the way, your list post had a reply-to set, redirecting replies to you instead of the list.
Thanks for you guidance :) Asa
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