Re: Question about partitioning
Ed Burke wrote:
> Hi Gang,
> I have reconsidered installing linux - now that I have all
> my ducks in a row.
> I had NT installed on an ex-corporate machine. So there were a lot
> of nifty programs
> but no meat behind them. I opted to discard this and install W 95
> instead. I now have
> it installed on 1.25 Gb of a 2Gb disk. I figured I would install the
> linux on the remaining
> disk space. It says I have .98Gb of available space on drive D, drive
> C has W95.
> A slight aside here but W95 left me with only 100Mb out of
> 1.25Gb. Is that right?
If I understand you correctly, you have one hard drive divided into two partitions -
a 1.25Gig W95 partition (c:) and a .98Gig partition that has nothing of value on it
(d:).
If that's correct, I'd simply install debian on the partition you're calling D. Oh!
By the way start thinking of those disks as devices. If the hard drive is the primary
drive on the primary IDE strap it's actually "/dev/hda". That makes the W95
partition "/dev/hda1" and the new linux partition "/dev/hda2"
>
>
> I'm wondering if I need to partition or can I just install right to the
> available drive D?
>
Install right to D, but in the process you'll create a swap partition along with your
primary partition. That means that when you're all done you'll actually have three
partitions on the disk - win95, linux, and linux swap.
>
> there is one folder on D, and it is labled games, I could care
> less about these. So I
> presume I can over-write what ever is there. Or maybe I should format D
> so there is
> nothing on it.
>
> Ah ha, I just remembered the second ?, your
> documentation says that the OS
> needs to be loaded in the first 1024 cylinders. What does this mean
> if I have a split
> drive how do I know which is the first 1024 cylinders? It sounds as if
> I should format
> the entire hard drive, assign the linux partitions, then reinstall W95
> when I'm done.
Since (if I'm right) you already have the w95 section on it's own partition you
shouldn't have to do anything but install debian. Hopefully, you've got a debian CD
set to install from since it's by far the easiest, but downloaded floppies will work.
It just takes forever.;-)
>
> Is any of this making sense? Thanks in advance ofr your help. Ed
> Burke
>
A few cautions:
Make sure that you select the correct device during the installation or else you'll
overwrite win95..... Ummm? wait a minute. Maybe that's not such a bad idea :-)
Also make sure you have a W95 boot disk handy in case you screw up when installing
lilo in the master boot record. That way you can always boot of the disk and do a
'fdisk /mbr' to regain windows until you get lilo correct.
Good Luck
John
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