[issues] Re: [techtalk] Desktop OS?

[Lothan]

My initial response is that you have too many partitions, which just
over-complicates matters. No, I am not saying it is wrong. It's just that
things get really complicated with extended partitions. Of course, I should
also fully disclose the fact that I dislike extended partitions and all of
the inherit problems they cause. Invisible partitions is one of the side
effects of extended partitions.

When I was running dual boot between Windows 95 and Redhat 6.1, I used a
total of four primary partitions: Windows, /boot, /, and swap. Granted, I
had to use Partition Magic to create those partitions. Windows fdisk won't
create linux partitions (surprised?) and the Redhat partition manager
refused to create anything other than extended partitions for Linux. Grrr...
Another full disclosure statement: I attempted to create the partitions *I*
wanted with Redhat, got disgusted on the second attempt and yanked out the
Partition Magic CD which just happened to be within arm's reach. I then
installed Windows 95, rebooted and installed Redhat. When asked if I wanted
to partition my drive, I yelled "You do it and DIE!" and it magically used
the partions I had created with Partition Magic. :-)

Anyway, I was able to access my Windows FAT32 partition from within Linux
and could access the Linux partitions from within Windows. Bzzzzt... I think
I just fried my brain. I can't for the life of me remember the name of the
utility I used to access the Linux partitions from within Windows. All I
remember now is that it provided stuff like ls and cp to ext2 partitions
(albeit read-only access) from a DOS prompt.

One point of worthy note here is that I found it trivially easy to partition
the drive using Partition Magic. I first jotted down the default sizes
recommended by Redhat's partition manager for /boot and swap then just typed
those numbers into Partition Magic and chose the type of partition (FAT32,
Linux or Linux Swap). I don't remember the exact size of each partition, but
it was something like this:

Device     Boot  Start  End   Blocks  System
/dev/hda1  *     1      x     x       /boot + lilo
/dev/hda2        x      x     x       FAT32
/dev/hda3        x      x     x       Linux
/dev/hda4        x      x     x       Linux Swap

> -----Original Message-----
> From: techtalk-admin at linuxchix.org
> [mailto:techtalk-admin at linuxchix.org]On Behalf Of Mary Gardiner
> Sent: Monday, June 04, 2001 10:17 PM
> To: techtalk at www.linux.org.uk; techtalk at linuxchix.simegen.com
> Subject: Re: [issues] Re: [techtalk] Desktop OS?
>
>
> The trouble I've had sharing hard drives with Windows... :)
>
> Quick poll: can anyone who has ever managed to solve this situation please
> mail their fdisk partition output, with discussion if you can.
>
> I have:
> 3 primary partitions
> hda1 is win C:
> hda2 is /boot (back from lilo needing /boot to be within 1024 cylinders)
> hda3 is D:
> hda5- hda9 are on the extended
>
> fdisk has:
> Device		Boot	Start	End	Blocks		Id
> System
> /dev/hda1	*	1	262	2104483+	b	Win95 FAT32
> /dev/hda2		263	275	104422+		83	Linux
> /dev/hda3		276	913	5124735		b	Win95 FAT32
> /dev/hda4		914	1867	7663005		85
> Linux extended
> /dev/hda5		914	977	514048+		83	Linux
> /dev/hda6		978	1239	2104483+	83	Linux
> /dev/hda7		1240	1370	1052226		83	Linux
> /dev/hda8		1371	1396	208813+		82	Linux swap
> /dev/hda9		1397	1867	3783276		83	Linux
>
> This all works fine now, except that Debian's lilo now follows
> the FAT partition
> convention that only one of them can be primary and 'hides' the
> other. I have a
> config option that turns this off, but would like to know if
> anyone has ever
> gotten Windows to share an extended partition with Linux.
>
> I had a terrible time with it. No matter what I did, Windows
> would grab the
> first two GB of the extended partition and say 'mine', without paying any
> attention to the logical drives. Window's fdisk labelled hda3
> (which was the
> extended at the time) as 'DOS extended partition'. I had to mark
> it 85, Linux
> extended, and now Windows ignores it as 'non-DOS'.
>
> Anyone got any better solutions - I got in a terrible IRC flamefest over
> 'but it's incorrect', 'but it works!', 'but it's incorrect!'
>
> Mary.
>
> PS Back to techtalk. People should be posting to *both* while we
> all resubscribe
> and the DNS moves over. Not seeing DNS changes here btw.
>
> --
> Mary Gardiner
> <mary at puzzling.org>
> GPG Key ID: 77625870
>
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