Very Computer

OK. (Pardon the long explanation, but I want to be clear. There IS a question
at the end.)

I got a Windows Me box from Dell with a 40 GB drive, and RedHat 7.1.
I had read various howtos, which pointed out the problem of Linux /boot
needing to be in the first 1024 cylinders (7ish GB), and they mentioned
that the newer lilos only sometimes fix that problem.

Following (sort of) the old linux+windows howto, I decided to create:

/dev/hda1  6 GB    FAT32 (Windows C:)
/dev/hda2  32M     Linux (/boot)
/dev/hda3  20GB    Extended
/dev/hda4  14 GB   FAT32 (Windows D:)
/dev/hda5  128M    Linux swap
/dev/hda6  19.9GB  Linux (/)

First, I used Windows fips to create a second partition from 6-40 GB.
Then I booted up the RedHat CD. Disk Druid wasn't going to let me create
FAT32 partitions, so I went into fdisk. Using it, I created a partition
table that looked very much like the above. Went on with the install, which
worked like a charm. Booted up Linux beautifully. I was very impressed with
myself. Then the trouble started.

Rebooted Windows, which now said it had a 6G C: and D: had 0 bytes free, 0 bytes
used. That sounded about right. So I double clicked on D: and windows said
it needed to be formatted. So I clicked OK. (This followed pretty closely
the instructions in the linux+windows howto, I thought.)
Well, the formatter said something like
"checking filesystem" and didn't move beyond it. Eventually, I did a
Ctrl-Alt-Delete and the task manager told me the formatting task wasn't
responding so I killed it.

The next time I tried booting up, Me booted OK, and logged me in (my
wife and I are separate Me users), but then froze soon after displaying
the desktop. This happened several times. Eventually I tried C-A-D, and it
said Windows Explorer wasn't responding. That strikes me as Bad. Linux still
booted just fine, though, not a care in the world.

Eventually, I used the Windows bootup floppy and ran (windows) fdisk and
deleted the /hda4 partition. Hooray! Windows now boots up again! But I now
have only 6 GB, and 14G of wasted space.

I tried creating another Primary partition in windows fdisk, but it says
something like, "A primary partition already exists". Which makes no sense
to me: I thought you could have up to four! It also won't let me create
a new Extended partition, since it says that exists, too.

Creating the new partition with Linux cfdisk didn't work any better, even
when I tried the "dd" to zero the first 512 bytes of the /dev/hda4 partition
that I saw in the fdisk man page.

So the question (finally!) is: What do I do?
Options I can think of are:

(1) delete RH, repartition to 20G+20G and use Loadlin. I don't know anything
about Loadlin, though.

(2) delete RH, repartition to 20G+20G and trust the new lilo to work.

(3) "extend" the extended partition from its current end at 26 GB to fill
the disk, and (possibly with Windows fdisk) make a FAT32 logical partition
inside it, which will be D:. I don't know if this will work any better than
making D: primary, besides which it seems scary to put FAT32 and Linux into
the same extended, besides which I don't know if you can extend a partition
(in which case I'd have to do (2a) delete RH and redo the partitions), which
still suffers from some of these problems.

(4) delete RH, use fips to create *four* partitions (because fips doesn't
see to mind creating multiple primary partitions), of length 6G, 32M, and
20G, 14G. Then use Linux fdisk: change the 32M partition to be /boot and type
83, delete the 20G partition, and create an extended partition there to hold
swap & / partitions.

(5) Use some other windows partitioning tool?

(6-n) ???

I would be happier if I didn't have to reinstall RH, but it only took about
an hour, so I'm not too unhappy redoing it if necessary. What's most important
is getting access to those 16G, and having the thing work correctly.

My solution #4 seems maybe the most likely towork, since it uses each
operating system to create things for itself. But I would hate to go through
all that work and have the thing break Me again.

So (you got to the end of the post!) I would really appreciate any advice,
pointers to howtos that will work correctly, etc.

Thanks in advance.

-Amir Karger

If you want a Windoze D: drive on the same physical hard drive it has to be
in a logical partition.

Also you only need 8MB for a Linux /boot partition = 1 LBA cylinder.

I bought a book with RH 7.0 included and there is not even a mention of the
1024 cylinder limit.  It was only a problem with older versions.
As I understand it, Fips will only split a hard drive into two
pieces...Windows, and, the rest.  The whole purpose of fips is to isolate
windows from linux in a dual boot situation.  It will do this without losing
any of your data and settings in windows.  When you install linux, use Disk
Druid to delete the non-windows partition (created by fips), and, at the
same time, add your root, boot, and swap partitions.
If I was you, I wouldn't worry about the 1024 cylinder limit.  Besides,
there is a "work-around" for that, if it turns out that I'm wrong.
db

Thanks for the quick reply.

So let's imagine I wanted to do exactly what you say. How do I go
about doing it? Are you suggesting:

(1) Put Linux and D: into the same extended partition? If so, how do I
increase
the size of the extended partition? Do I need to delete the existing
partitions (all but C: and /boot) and create an extended partition to
go all the way to
the end of the disk? If so, and if I make the partitions the same
size, will
it rewrite the partition table without deleting everything on /hda6?
(Not that
that would be a huge problem.) Also, which fdisk (Linux or DOS) do I
use for
which part of the process? Will Linux and DOS both be able to deal
with the fact that they're sharing an extended partition?

(2) Create a second extended partition? If I recall correctly, DOS
fdisk wasn't allowing me to create a new extended partition, because
one already exists. Will Linux fdisk let me create a second extended
partition?

(3) Something else?

Thanks,
-Amir

[snipping and rampant moving around of sentences]

Quote:> As I understand it, Fips will only split a hard drive into two
> pieces...Windows, and, the rest.  The whole purpose of fips is to isolate
> windows from linux in a dual boot situation.  It will do this without losing
> any of your data and settings in windows.

I got the impression that if necessary, fips could create multiple
partitions that Windows could use.

Hm. Here's something interesting I just saw in fips.doc:

----------------------
According to the official references, DOS can only have one primary
partition. All DOS versions (at least from v5.0 on) will happily work
with
multiple primary partitions, but this is an 'undocumented feature'. If
you want to follow the official rules, you can delete the new
partition with
fdisk and create an extended partition in its place.
-----------------------

If this is true, then it seems like a variation on my solution 4 might
work. I.e., delete all currently existing partitions except for C:.
Then use fips to split the disk into 4 pieces -- C:, /boot, D:, and an
extended partition
that will hold / & Linux swap. The only problem with this is, it would
have worked if I had done it in the first place, but now I don't know
how to create the partition for fips to split into pieces! DOS fdisk
won't let me create a new primaray partition, and creating FAT32
partitions in Linux seems to be what got me in trouble in the first
place.

ALso, if it's true that Windows doesn't mind having multiple primary
partitions, then why did my D: break in the first place? Or was the
problem my attempt to format D:? Was using Format from within Explorer
the wrong way to do it?

Quote:> I bought a book with RH 7.0 included and there is not even a mention of the
> 1024 cylinder limit.  It was only a problem with older versions.
> If I was you, I wouldn't worry about the 1024 cylinder limit.

Hm. Well, http://www.redhat.com/support/docs/gotchas/7.1/gotchas-71.html
says:

----------
    There is now support for the LBA32 option in LILO. This makes it
possible to     boot from partitions partially or completely above
cylinder 1024 (which had been a historical limitation). Note, however,
that we have found that not all motherboards support this option, even
when the BIOS claims support is available. Therefore, this option is
disabled by default.
----------

That made me scared to try it.

Quote:> Besides, there is a "work-around" for that, if it turns out that I'm wrong.

Well that's pretty enigmatic of you!

Thanks,

-Amir

Set it up like this for the same partition sizes:

/dev/hda1       6.0GB   FAT32
/dev/hda2       16MB    Linux /boot
/dev/hda3       33GB    Dos Extended
/dev/hda5       14GB    FAT32
/dev/hda6       128MB   Linux Swap
/dev/hda7       19.9GB  Linux /

You will have to re-install Linux and whatever was in the D: drive but your
basic Windoze install will be unaffected.

Use Linux fdisk or cfdisk to do the job; personally I prefer fdisk and you
can do it during the Red Hat install by choosing fdisk instead of Disk
Druid.

If your LBA values are 255/16/63, then you have about 7.844MB/cylinder.

Yeah, that might be a problem.  Do not use fdisk, or fips,  from Windows or
from the Dos box in Windows.  You must be in real dos.  From RH 7.0
Installation CD:

*****************Begin Cut 'n Paste***************

Should use decide to use FIPS, be aware that after FIPS runs you will be
left with two partitions: the one you resized, and the
one FIPS created out of the newly freed space. If your goal is to use that
space to install Red Hat Linux, you should delete the
newly created partition, either by using fdisk under your current operating
system, or while setting up partitions during a
custom-class installation.

The following instructions are a simplified version of the FIPS
documentation file, fips.doc, located in the FIPS directory
(/dosutils/fips20/*). These instructions should apply in most instances. If
you encounter any problems, see the
documentation file.

   1.From Windows:

          Do a full backup.

          Run scandisk to verify that the hard drive contains no bad
clusters.

          Decide how to distribute the available space on the hard drive
between the operating systems. Use Windows
          Explorer to see the free space on the drive. Make a note of the
space (in megabytes) that each operating system
          will have.

          If you don't have one, create a DOS boot disk.

          To create a DOS boot disk, first boot your machine to DOS.

          Next, insert a blank, formatted diskette into the floppy drive.

          Type the following at the command prompt and press Enter:

           FORMAT A: /S

          If you're using Windows 95, first insert a blank formatted
diskette into the floppy drive. Next, go to Start/Run,
          and type:

           FORMAT A: /S

          The diskette will be formatted, and COMMAND.COM, along with the
associated hidden files (IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS,
          and BDLSAPCE.BIN), will be copied to the diskette.

          Copy the following files on the Red Hat Linux CD-ROM to the DOS
boot disk.

              /mnt/cdrom/dosutils/fips20/fips.exe
              /mnt/cdrom/dosutils/fips20/restorrb.exe
              /mnt/cdrom/dosutils/fips20/errors.txt
              /mnt/cdrom/dosutils/fips20/fips.doc
              /mnt/cdrom/dosutils/fips20/fips.faq

          Defragment the hard drive.

   2.Insert the DOS boot disk into the floppy drive and reboot the system.

   3.Start FIPS (type fips at the prompt).

     When FIPS begins, you'll find a welcome screen similar to the
following:

      FIPS version 2.0, Copyright (C) 1993/4 Arno Schaefer
      FAT32 Support, Copyright (C) 1997 Gordon Chaffee

      DO NOT use FIPS in a multitasking environment like Windows, OS/2,
Desqview,
      Novell Task manager or the Linux DOS emulator; boot from a DOS boot
disk first.
**************End cut 'n paste*****************************

Quote:

>> I bought a book with RH 7.0 included and there is not even a mention of the
>> 1024 cylinder limit.  It was only a problem with older versions.
>> If I was you, I wouldn't worry about the 1024 cylinder limit.

And, on the subject of partitioning beyond the 1024 limit, from the poster
named "Eric":
**************Begin cut/paste**********
Whether it will work also depends on your BIOS, which must support
extended interrupt 13 calls.
**************End******************
That's the problem with the older BIOSes.

Quote:>Hm. Well, http://www.redhat.com/support/docs/gotchas/7.1/gotchas-71.html
>says:

>----------
>    There is now support for the LBA32 option in LILO. This makes it
>possible to     boot from partitions partially or completely above
>cylinder 1024 (which had been a historical limitation). Note, however,
>that we have found that not all motherboards support this option, even
>when the BIOS claims support is available. Therefore, this option is
>disabled by default.
>----------

>That made me scared to try it.

>> Besides, there is a "work-around" for that, if it turns out that I'm wrong.

>Well that's pretty enigmatic of you!

Well you found it, anyway.  It involves editing the lilo.conf file and
changing one of the lines to lba32, and then running /sbin/lilo -v (or
something like that).  It was part of a thread that appeared here a few
weeks ago.
db

Quote:

>Thanks,

>-Amir