🚀 go-pugleaf

"Hoe Kit Loh" <hloh@localnet.NOSPAM.com.au> wrote:

>Hi again,
>
>Thanks for all your help everyone, but the Linux Pocketbook
>is sold out at the newagent's and the APC site is down. So
>back I come :)
>
>Basically my situation now is I have my 14GB disk, and I
>want to load win98 on asap - I'll allocate about
>10-12GB (partitioned) of space to Win98, and the rest
>to Linux which I will load in later.
>
>Now how do I partition my drive to accommodate for this?
>Do I partition and FAT32 format 10-12GB of space and leave
>the remainder as "free space" for Linux to partition and
>format? Or do I partition the remainder under DOS first
>and then let Linux deal with it later?
>
>Do I have to load any part (the boot part?) of linux in the first
>~500MB of the hard disk (if I boot Linux thru Win98)?
>
>How do I split up the Linux section of the hard disk (with
>linux's version of fdisk I assume)?
>From what I understand, I need a root partition, misc.
>data partition (optional but nice) and a swap partition.
>
>Sorry about that barrage of questions :).
>
>Many Thanks,
>Stuart Loh.
>
>

First problem.
Only recent BIOSes support Hard Disks over ~8GB. If your 14GB is working OK
already, then ignore this.

Second Problem.
Even if your BIOS supports >8GB HDD's, it won't support booting from a
partition that starts beyond ~8GB (I beleive IBM has proposed a way around
this). So if you already have this 10-12GB partition, you'll need to resort
to non-mainstream measures to boot Linux (or rather those techniques should
be non-mainstream). 

If you are still flexible in terms of partitioning, then I would recommend
that you create space for the Linux /boot partition first (the Redhat 5.2
manual suggests 16MB in size), followed by the Win98 partition, then any
remaining Linux Partitions.

As it is prefrerable to install Win98 before you install Linux, your going
to need a program to help you create and hide the Linux /boot partition
before you install Win98. I downloaded a program from www.download.com a
while ago called MRBOOT23.ZIP. It contains a boot manager, and a
partitioning program called EFDISK. If you boot up to a DOS command line,
you can run EFDISK and create the Linux /boot partition as a 16MB dos
partition, then use EFDISK's hide function. Make sure you save the changes.


Once that's done, try installing Windows 98.

Caution. I've always installed Win98 as an upgrade, so I can't be certain
wether Win98 will honour any existing partitions, if it's a non-upgrade
version - it should, but I don't know.

If all goes well, you should end up with a hidden 16MB partition, and a
Win98 partition. When you go to install Linux, you should be able then
redeploy the hidden (to DOS) 16MB partition.

So give that a go, and let us know... :)
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