Linux partitions

[Dswissmiss]

I'm trying to figure out which part (root, swap, home) to install to which partition. I'm installing a distro over Red Hat, which has already created all necessary space.

I have:
hdb 6 ext3 101.95mb
hdb 7 ext3 14.80GB
hdb 8 Linux swap 1019mb

so I'm suessing swap is where the bootloader is installed, and hdb 7 is my root, and hdb 6 should be my /home partition? Or do I even need a /home partition?

thanx
dswissmiss

[kilgoretrout]

Swap space is just virtual memory; nothing is installed there. The boot loader should be installed to the mbr; during the install toward the end it will be installed and instllation to the mbr is the default. You don't really need separate partitions for /home. /root, etc. although that is commonly done. If it's a clean hard drive dedicated solely to redhat, the easiest thing to do is leave it upartitioned and let the redhat installer automatically do it for you. If not, post back and I'll go into more detail.

[Dswissmiss]

Well, I installed Red Hat because it's easy, and I read that you can install Apt-get to get around the whole dependency hell. But after some Lan problems, and hearing that apt-get works very slowly on Red Hat I came upon a distro called Mepis ( mepis.org) which is debian based. It's a live cd that you can install to your hdd. After booting into the live cd, it configured everything perfectly, and now I want to install it over the existing Red Hat partitions. I just want to make sure that I can dual boot into XP, and that I dont install over a partition that would prevent me from doing so. So now, installing Mepis is a bit harder than Red Hat, as it gives you complete control over which partition to install /root, /swap and /home.

I'll try to get a screenshot of it.

thanx for your help
Dswissmiss

[bailey]

sounds like your making it a lot more diffiuclt than it really is,

all you need to do is have xp use half the total disk space if you want and just leave the rest unformated and unpartitioned,
red hat will automaticall install in the unused space on the hard drive and set-up the dial boot, its that simple

with red hat ver, 9.0

[Dswissmiss]

Trying to install Mepis linux though... some screenshots

snapshot1

snapshot2

The reason I have 2 windows partitions is that I have XP installed on the smaller one and all my files on the larger one.


edit: ok, they're not working, ill have them up later

[Dswissmiss]

heres one

[Dswissmiss]

and a pic of qparted

[Dswissmiss]

anyone?

[jglen490]

Originally posted by Dswissmiss I'm trying to figure out which part (root, swap, home) to install to which partition. I'm installing a distro over Red Hat, which has already created all necessary space. I have: hdb 6 ext3 101.95mb hdb 7 ext3 14.80GB hdb 8 Linux swap 1019mb so I'm suessing swap is where the bootloader is installed, and hdb 7 is my root, and hdb 6 should be my /home partition? Or do I even need a /home partition? thanx dswissmiss

1019MB is an awfully large swap partition, but no harm. With any kind of decent amount of physical RAM, you will probably never hit swap.

The 101.95MB partition will do fine as a /boot partition, or you you could stick /var in there, instead. Everything else can go in your large partition.

I'm not all that familiar with Mepis, but every Linux distro that I do know takes care of partitioning tasks during installation. You can, of course, use a previous distro's partitioning scheme with no problem, but it should never be necessary to pre-set a partitioning scheme.

Anyway, good luck with your Mepis install. Let us know how it goes.

[kilgoretrout]

Mepis is based on knoppix IIRC. I know the knoppix installer insists on using only two partitions, one for swap and one for everything else. You may be running into the same thing with mepis. If you want to partition in advance, try making just one swap and one linux partition.