Partitioning for dual-boot WinXP-Linux

[Rick Stevens]

John Morfit (VA/NQL) wrote:
> Can RHEL 4.0 WS be installed upon an extended partition (non-Primary)?  
> I need to be able to create sub-partitions, e.g. for \osshare.
> 
> Current partitions:
>   Linux root partition: Primary, Linux Ext3, 35.19 GB
>   Linux swap partition: Primary, Linux swap, 1024 MB
>   Windows XP partition: Primary, NTFS, 19.53 GB
>   Linux boot partition: Primary, Linux Ext3, 62 MB (contains GRUB)
> 
> Can I do this, if I reinstall?
>   Linux root partition: Extended
>         \:              Linux Ext3
>         \usr            Linux Ext3
>         \osshare        FAT
>   Linux swap partition: Primary, Linux swap, 1024 MB
>   Windows XP partition: Primary, NTFS, 19.53 GB
>   Linux boot partition: Primary, Linux Ext3, 62 MB (contains GRUB)

Certainly.  Any Linux partition can reside in an extended partition.
If you check the disk using Linux' fdisk, any partitions with a number 5
or greater (e.g. /dev/hda5) are partitions inside the extended
partition.  In fact, my laptop (which dual-boots XP and Linux but runs
Linux 95% of the time) has this partition table:

    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *          13        3964    31744408+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2            3965        7296    26764290    5  Extended
/dev/hda3               1          12       96358+  83  Linux
/dev/hda5            3965        4486     4192933+   b  W95 FAT32
/dev/hda6            4487        6904    19422553+  83  Linux
/dev/hda7            6905        6969      522081   83  Linux
/dev/hda8            6970        7034      522081   82  Linux swap
/dev/hda9            7035        7295     2096451   83  Linux

/dev/hda1 is XP, /dev/hda2 is the extended partition, /dev/hda3 is
Linux' /boot.  The rest of the partitions are inside /dev/hda2 and
are as follows:

	/dev/hda5	FAT32 partition shared between Linux and XP
	/dev/hda6	Linux' /usr
	/dev/hda7	Linux' / (root partition)
	/dev/hda8	Linux' swap partition
	/dev/hda9	Linux' /var

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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
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