Re: a small update on my situation...

[Bob McClure Jr <robertmcclure earthlink net>]

On Sun, Dec 29, 2002 at 03:46:04PM -0600, Luke wrote:
> and a couple more questions...
> 
> <"Thanks">

You're welcome.

> If you care to read the latest (and make sure I'm not wrong on anything),
> please see near the bottom  Next though, I have a question on the best basic
> setup of my system.
> 
> Currently, I have 3 partitions.  hda1 is my Red Hat OS (~4 Gigs), hda5 is
> the NTFS  partition (no OS, used only as a data partition in the past)
> (~9Gigs), and hda6 is the Swap (~886MB)
> 
> Now, I know that I don't need a swap file that large (I have 128MB of ram,
> is it twice that much that you normally want?

Yes.

> What would be the best?
> ...ah..I'll just see what the Docs have to say...), and I would like to have
> a partition that I could read and write files to that is accessible by both
> Windows and Red Hat, mainly to store things like music/movie/picture files
> on.  Would you recommend a certain way of doing this?

Yes. :-)

> There are a couple ways I figure I could do this, but I don't know if anyone
> of them would be right.
> 
> #1:   3 Partitions - one for Linux, a smaller one for Win2kPro, and the
> largest one for data.  Win2k and the data one would be in FAT32, as to be
> accessible for read/write by Red Hat
> 
> #2:   2 Partitions - one for Linux, another for Windows2k (FAT32), and store
> all my info on that partition.

I vote for #2.

> Now, I have heard that there are things you can do to get access to the
> linux file system on a windows machine, if that is the case, would it be
> best to just through all the multimedia files onto a data partition
> formatted for linux?
> 
> Of course, I could be doing this the worst way possible, (and probably am),
> so your thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated.

Assuming /dev/hda6 is the highest numbered partition, I would

- Boot to single user mode

- swapoff /dev/hda6 # to turn off swap

- <editor-of-choice> /etc/fstab
  -- Comment out (with a leading "#") the line specifying the swap.

- fdisk /dev/hda
  -- delete partition 6
  -- then make a new one of 256M
  -- change its type to 82 (swap)
  -- leave the remainder of the space unused
  -- (w)rite the new partition.  You will get an error.

- Reboot to single user.  That takes care of the error.

- mkswap /dev/hda6

- <editor-of-choice> /etc/fstab
  -- Uncomment the swap line (remove the previously entered "#").

- Boot to Windoze.

- Use fdisk to make the remainder of the space a FAT32 partition, and
  format it.

- Now, go back to Linux, and make an entry in /etc/fstab to allow
  mounting of the FAT32 partition under Linux.  ("man mount" and "man
  fstab" to see how to do this.)

> ------
> The update on my earlier problems.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Again, thanks to everyone who replied!
> 
> -Luke

Cheers,
-- 
Bob McClure, Jr.             Bobcat Open Systems, Inc.
robertmcclure earthlink net  http://www.cumbytel.com/~bobcatos/
Linux: because I want to get there today.  Without rebooting.