[ltp] 600E partitioning for DOS/Windows 2000/Linux triple-boot

[Michelle Klein-Hass]

On Thursday 12 August 2004 11:41 am, Andr=E9 Wyrwa wrote:

> DOS might have a problem recognising partitions that are using non-dos
> geometry. To be on the safe side this should be the first partition you
> create and it should be done with dos fdisk or - better - the
> partitioning tool of the Win2K installation routine.
>
> Even though Win2K might be installed into a logical partition, it can
> only put it's boot loader into a primary one. So your Win2K partition
> should be a primary.

Can't DOS and W2K share the same bootloader partition?

>
> For Linux one old strategy to get around the 1024 cylinders problem was
> to create a very small partition at the beginning of the harddisk which
> was then mounted under /boot into the linux filesystem tree and hence
> used for kernel and boot files only. This is not necessary anymore,
> since lilo and grub don't have this issue anymore as was stated already.
> However, I'm still using this approach. It becomes handy in some
> situations. For instance in an emergency i can boot knoppix, mount my
> boot partition into the /boot dir of the knoppix system and treat it as
> if it belong there. The backdrawing is that this will waste a primary
> partition (at least if you make it a primary one).

It still seems to be necessary for bootable partitions.

>
> If you want to exchange data between Linux and Windows you'd probably
> like to create a large vfat partition for your data. At least this is
> the most convenient way for the time being.

I was intending to put the whole shebang of Win2K on VFAT/FAT32. This is wh=
at=20
I did when I first put 2K on this machine.

>
> If your DOS partition was created before installing Win2K, the Win2K
> installer will most likely treat it as C:, which can become a problem
> with some win software (for instance the IBM configuration utility -
> grr) which have hardwired install paths to C:. The best way to deal with
> this is to hide the DOS partition (using grub) when installing Win2K.
> This needs some brains and might come out as a nasty process (i almost
> manage to convince WinXP to install itself twice on the same harddisk,
> both times as C, but then gave up short before i had the solution,
> because i felt that i had spent enough time with that). However, it is
> possible (my problem was mostly, that one of the two XP distributions
> was not on CD, but was lying in some folder on the same harddisk).
> If you don't do that, there are still ways to trick at least some of the
> C-demanding applications into installing to D: or whaterver anyway.
>
> You should use the bootloaders functionality to make a partition active,
> when directly booting DOS and Win2K from it. So, if you boot to DOS,
> make the DOS partition the active one, if you boot to Win2K make the
> Win2K partition active. This is a good idea, because for instance the
> Win2K bootloader always gets installed to the active partition. (And i
> don't know if it boots at all when it's partition is not active.)

This is sounding like it's going to be more trouble than it's worth. I can=
=20
live without hibernate-to-disk. Can the Windows version of the ThinkPad=20
Utility do everything the DOS version can? Would I be safe if I just had a=
=20
DOS floppy with PS2.EXE for anything unique PS2.EXE can do that the Windows=
=20
ThinkPad utility can't? What about tpctl?

I think I'm just going to do this:
Partition 1: Linux /boot (teensy)
Partition 2: 7GB Windows 2K
Partition 3: 7GB Windows 2K data
Partition 4: Linux / 8GB
Partition 5: Linux  /home 16GB
Partition 6: Linux Swap 456MB (twice the installed RAM of 228MB)

Will this work????

Let me know,
Michelle
=2D-=20
Michelle Klein-Hass
Box 2273, Van Nuys, CA 91404-2273
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