Confused, RH9 and manual partitioning

[MikeFoate]

Hi,
Any advice will be appreciated. :p
I have a new 30gb hd. I formatted the drive using Maxtor Maxblast3. This created two fat32 partions.

One is 15365mb
Two is 15382mb

I installed win98 on One.

My plan was to install RH9 on Two and use all of the 15382mb for it.

I am installing RH9 from cd.

I chose "Manually partition with Disk Druid".

Disk Druid reports:
/dev/hda
dev/hda1 vfat 14653 (I think this is where wi98 is, the same as "One")

/dev/hda2 Extended 14669
dev/hda5 vfat 14669 (I think this is where I want RH9, the same as "Two")

What I am confused about is in the RH9 install docs it says:
" Figure E-9. Disk Drive With an Unused Partition

If you find yourself in this situation, you can use the space allocated to the unused partition. You will first need to delete the partition, and then create the appropriate Linux partition(s) in its place. You can either delete the partition using the parted command or you can select to create partitions manually during the installation process and delete the partition before creating a new one."

Do I have to delete the partitions /dev/hda2 extended and the dev/hda5?

I am doing a Server installation type. Could some please suggest the other partition types and sizes I should make?

I am totally confused about the LBA mode, I did get the warning:

"The partition table on dev/hda is inconsistent. There are many reason why this might be the case. Often, the reason is that Linux detected the BIOS geometry incorrectly. However, this does not appear to be the case here. It is safe to ignore, but ignoring may cause (fixable) problems with some boot loaders, and may cause problems with FAT file systems. Using LBA is recommended"

I chose the "ignore' button.

How do I use LBA? Is this a setting in the BIOS?

[Icarus]

Just let Red Hat do the partitioning during the install...you will want to remove the extended and second vfat partitions

Why in the world it made an extended partition then a 15GB DOS partition is very strange indeed...
you don't need an extended unless you've used 4 partitions, then the use of extened is required...in the end your partitions might look like this

hda1 vfat 15gb
hda2 ext3 100mb
hda3 14.2gb
hda4 extended
hda5 swap 500mb

I'm just guessing you have 256mb of memory for a 500mb swap partition...final sizes may vary

[MikeFoate]

Originally posted by mahdi
Just let Red Hat do the partitioning during the install...you will want to remove the extended and second vfat partitions

Why in the world it made an extended partition then a 15GB DOS partition is very strange indeed...
you don't need an extended unless you've used 4 partitions, then the use of extened is required...in the end your partitions might look like this

hda1 vfat 15gb
hda2 ext3 100mb
hda3 14.2gb
hda4 extended
hda5 swap 500mb

I'm just guessing you have 256mb of memory for a 500mb swap partition...final sizes may vary

Hi and thank you VERY much for the help. What do you mean when you say Just let Red Hat do the partitioning during the install Do you mean I should chose Automatic Partitioning? If so my choices are:
Remove all Linux Partitions (I don't have any)

Remove all Partitions (I want to be able to boot to win98 as well as RH9)

Keep all Partitions and use existing free space (this doesnt make sense to me because i have an unused partition i want to use for RH9.

[sploo22]

The problem is, your second partition is formatted as VFAT, which is used by Windows. While it is theoretically possible for an advanced user to install Linux on one of these partitions, it is definitely not recommended.

Basically, what you need to do is delete /dev/hda5, and then just create whatever new partitions you want. While it is sort of weird that an extended partition was created, it won't hurt anything as far as I know.

[psi42]

Originally posted by MikeFoate
Keep all Partitions and use existing free space (this doesnt make sense to me because i have an unused partition i want to use for RH9.

Redhat will probably want more than one partition, especially if you don't have a gigabyte of RAM.

Probably the easiest way to fix this is to delete the unused partition you had created for redhat, leaving only the win98 partition, and then choose "use existing free space."

:)

~psi42

[MikeFoate]

Originally posted by sploo22
The problem is, your second partition is formatted as VFAT, which is used by Windows. While it is theoretically possible for an advanced user to install Linux on one of these partitions, it is definitely not recommended.


I could may be use Maxtor Maxblast3 and have it "unformat" or write zeros to that partition. Would that help?
:confused:

[psi42]

Originally posted by MikeFoate
I could may be use Maxtor Maxblast3 and have it "unformat" or write zeros to that partition. Would that help?
:confused:

No you don't need to do that, just delete the partition, and use redhat's setup to create your linux partitions.

[mdwatts]

I've heard that the 'Server' installation option will delete ALL partitions on the HD including the ones for Windows.

Delete the second fat32 partition (logical) using the Windows fdisk and then start the Linux install and create the required partitions in the free space.

Redhat has online installation documentation that will help with the partition creating.

[DMR]

Originally posted by mdwatts
I've heard that the 'Server' installation option will delete ALL partitions on the HD including the ones for Windows. Yes, that was a very important difference between a workstation install and a server install in Redhat, and it may still hold true. Be very sure you understand the different formatting options, or you could easily overwrite your Windows partition.

As mentioned, you should delete the FAT partition before running the Redhat installer. The easiest way to do that is probably with Windows' fdisk program. Open a DOS box, type "fdisk" (omit the quotes, obviously), and follow the onscreen options/directions.

[MikeFoate]

Thanks for all your help you guys. I got it installed. I accidently removed my rehat critical alert icon from the task bar and I cant figure how to get it back...but that i will ask in another thread!
:p