linux install

[mrstirs]

Hey,

I'm currently downloading the iso's for Red Hat 8.0, and I've just thought of something. I have about 3Gb of mp3s on my XP partition - I won't be able to access these through Red Hat, will I?

Thanks!

[TMAN]

Well that's a little presumtuios :-). what's the partition type: FAT32 or NTFS? If it's FAT that's easy. If it's NTFS I wouldn't bother... unless you're willing to create a new FAT32 partition and backup all your mp3's into it from XP (both OS's will be able to use the partition no probs) HTH

[mrstirs]

My XP partition is NTFS, so I'd need to create a new one.

It depends how I get on with Linux - if I like it then I'd be quite happy to create a new partition! We'll have to wait and see

Thanks for your help

[mrstirs]

Hello!!! Running Red Hat now!

I'm quite impressed! Installed first time without a hitch, was no problem connecting to my LAN! Whole process took about 40 mins - it was so much quicker and easier than I expected!

This is quite a silly question I imagine, but how do I switch between the GNOME desktop and the KDE one?

[TMAN]

What runlevel are you in? If you start up in console (runlevel 3 or below) you can type (as root) xwmconfig. If you start in some desktop you can just logout and use the desktop chooser and login.

[mrstirs]

I start up in the graphical login screen (runlevel 5)....KDE isn't listed in the session menu - I can only choose Last, Failsafe, GNOME or Default.

My mouse doesn't work correctly untill I go to system settings and confirm the mouse type every time I boot.

One last question - what's the easiest way to edit my partitions now that I have both Red Hat and XP working?

[mrstirs]

Ok forget that last question - I used partition magic.

Another question I want to ask though is this: is there anyway round the 4 primary partition limit? As TMAN said above, I'll have to create a new FAT partition for me to be able to access my music in both OS's - problem is, XP is on one primary partion, and Red Hat uses 3 others.......is there any solution?

[MaXimum SMOKE]

Are you sure you are using 3 primary partitions for RH? Assuming your primary drive is IDE, then the partitions in use would be hda1, hda2, hda3, and hda4 if all were primary. This generally is not the norm. If you have partitions numbered hda5, or larger, these are not primary. Generally, for like one of my installs the /boot partition is primary, and the rest are non-primary. Please note however, that when you start creating non-primary partitions, (and you can have a lot of them), you use up 1 primary to hold the nonprimary partitions) Please note, if you have free disk space, you can probably create a fat 32 with linux fdisk (as non primary), I doubt windows would know the difference and would allow you to format it as fat 32. (Sorry, no experience with partition magic on this end....)

[TMAN]

yes, simply make a nonprimary partition with any (contiguous) free space. If you're feeling gutsy you can just resize your RH partitions and then make the FAT32 partition.