RE: Weird looking partition table

["Mark Knecht" <mknecht controlnet com>]

>
> I have both RH 9 kernel 2.40.8 and 2.40-13.9 (the latter does not accept
> my nVidia driver, so I don't use it. I'd better get rid of it.)
>
> I suppose kernels (have to) reside in distinct partitions?

No. All of my RH kernels are in a single /boot partition. My Mandrake and
Gentoo kernels are in their own partitions. These '/boot' partitions are all
about 50MB if I remember correctly.

Each distribution's root (/) exists in its own partition. These partitions
are about 5-6GB each. This holds the majority of what gets installed.

I let each distribution create my /home/mark user directories. I have
another partition that holds my user data. In each distribution I create a
directory /home/mark/data, and then I mount my data partition there
automatically in fstab. This way, no matter which distribution I'm in I have
access to all my files. (No different than mounting a Windows FAT drive
under /mnt/windows for all three distributions.

>
> >    Grub can easily handle multiple distributions. hda3 will have a
> > /boot/grub/grub.conf file. You can edit that file to add
> another option to
> > point at the Mandrake installation on /hda6. Just note the way that grub
> > works would describe hda6 as (0,5).
>
> Aha! So that will be the 'come-back' of Mandrake 9.0.
> (I thought about replacing that by Mandrake 9.1.one of these days)

Should be. It works for me.

>
> >    Also, there is no reason that you must have two swap
> partitions. You can
> > point RH and Mandrake both at /hda4, which will be a faster
> partition anyway
> > based on it's position on the drive.
> "Then I have Mandrake 9 sitting somewhere, I guess that's hda6?
> Right! I admit I had a paranoid feeling about those two "swappers".
> Mandrake's SWAP was installed first. RedHat's installer didn't notice it
> and joined it's own SWAP, whithout asking any questions.
>
> My guess was this happened because Mandrake's EXT 2 would not be
> compatible with RED HAT's EXT 3. That's why I did not dare to remove
> one.  Suppose I did remove one, I then have to point either distro to
> the reamining SWAP to be used, right?  I hate to think about the
> consequences if it would not find the SWAP.

Linux will run fine without ANY swap as long as you have at least 256MB of
DRAM. Run 'top' and look at your memory usage immediately after a cold boot.
If no swap is used, then you would be fine booting with swap turned off. (I
do not recommend this. I'm just making a point.)

Look at the swapoff and swapon commands for more info. You can even mount
BOTH swap partitions under BOTH distributions if you wanted to, but I think
you should reclaim the drive space and put it to better us.

- Mark