disk partitioning problem (ignore the first e-mail I did not mean to send that one)

[Jeff Vian]

On Mon, 2005-07-25 at 17:09 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
> Alex Aguilar wrote:
> > Hello!
> >  
> >
> > According to my defrag report, witch I have as an attachment to this
> e-mail, I still have 22.65GB's worth of free space on my harddisk, yet
> when I used disk druid and chose the option to have my disk
> automatically formated with out erasing any existing partitions, and
> using the rest of the free space on my hard disk, it displayed an error
> message telling me "Error partitioning, could not allocate requested
> partitions partitioning failed: could not allocate partitions as primary
> partitions." What is the problem, and how could I fix this? I realy want
> to have linux installed on my pc, it will be my first distribution.
> 
> Please use shorter lines.
> 
> You really have a little bit of a misconception, and also a significant
> question.
> 
> First, what you need to understand about discs is that they are
> divided, at some time in their lives, into something called
> by various names, but usally called "partitions". Each partition
> is then formatted, and a volume created. The volume is then
> formatted, and a file system installed. (This neglects the so-called
> low-level format, which on modern drives should only be done
> once by the manufacturer.) To further complicate things, partitions
> are either "primary" or "extended". An extended partition may
> have multiple volumes created inside them, sort of sub-partitions.
> Primary partitions may only have one volume each. Only primary
> partitions may be marked as being the boot partition at
> any time. This is referred to by various terms you may encounter
> such as "active", "boot", "bootable", etc.
> 
> In the usual scheme, up to four (4) partitions may be defined,
> and as many as one (1) of these may be an extended partition.
> Essentially, on any given partition, only one OS may live.
> 
> So, while you have free space on your drive, it is in a partition
> of which Windows expects to have complete ownership. Since (as
> you mentioned below) you already have Windows XP HE installed, you
> almost surely have an NTFS (New Technology File System) on that
> disc. You could try ntfs-resize (IIRC, that's the name) to shrink
> your partition. If you do that, then you would have a new partition
> which was earlier free space on the Windows XP partition. In effect,
> you would move the boundary.
> 
> Be sure to do a full backup of your system, and verify the backup
> before trying to do anything like this to your disc.
> 
> Also, since you want to multi-boot Windows XP and something
> else, you have further complications. I have a multi-boot
> Windows XP / Fedora Core 2 (various versions). This is tricky
> to set up, and for some time after doing my install, I was
It sets up automatically,  see below.

> unable to boot XP. Then for a while, I was able to boot
> XP, but not Fedora, except by means of a GRUB boot disc.
> 
> My suggestion is to leave boot the responsibility of XP.
> DO NOT INSTALL ANY OTHER BOOT MEANS INTO YOUR MASTER BOOT
> RECORD (MBR). Let the XP boot manager do its work, and load
> GRUB or other secondary boot for you. When you install

Mike, 
While most of your comments make sense, *please* do not spread FUD.

The great majority of us using dual boot machines are using grub to dual
boot.  Using the NTFS boot loader is an option, but unlike several years
ago when NT4.0 refused to boot unless it's own boot loader was used,
modern microsoft operating systems are (mostly) happy to boot with the
chainloader from grub. I personally have used Win2K and WinXP this way
with no heartaches.

In general, the best way to dual boot is 1) install the M$ operating
system (he already has that) and 2) install Linux.  Allow it to install
the boot loader on the MBR and make sure it adds the option (it does
automatically) to boot the other OS.

> Linux, do not install a boot manager, but rather use, for
> example, GRUB off of a floppy. Get to the point where you
> can boot Linux using your boot floppy, then install onto
> the boot volume for Linux, not to the MBR. Grab a copy of
> that boot record, and let XP boot manager load it for you.
> 
> Anyway, then you run into the question "Now that I've got my
> free space on my disc out from under control of Windows, How
> do I partition the space for use by Linux?" Unfortunately,
> that question has about as many answers as there are users.
> 
> Each method has its adherents. Each method has its detractors.
> 
> If I had my install to do over again I would do some things
> differently.
> 
> First, I'd allow at least 20GIG for Linux. 10GIG is insufficient,
> I deem.
> 
> Second, I'd put /home into a separate partition from
> either /boot or root (/).
> 
> 
> Mike
> -- 
> p="p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}";main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}
> This message made from 100% recycled bits.
> I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you.
> I speak only for myself, and I am unanimous in that!
> 
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