Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2001 13:33:54 -0700 (PDT) From: Annelise Anderson <andrsn@andrsn.stanford.edu> To: Bob Read <bobread@ids.net> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Win98+Linux+FreeBSD? Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.10.10104121303300.64465-100000@andrsn.stanford.edu> In-Reply-To: <3AD5FF42.ABB4D8E1@ids.net>
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On Thu, 12 Apr 2001, Bob Read wrote:
> Looking for some advice.
>
> I have been (and am) running Win98 alone on a 13 GB drive. I swap it
> with a 10 GB drive on which I run Corel Linux alone. I want to install
> FreeBSD now, but would like to have all three on one drive. I have
> a 30 GB drive, PowerQuest"s PartitionMagic and DriveCopy. I also have
> much confusion in my tired old mind after reading all the manuals and
> trying to put all of the information together. What I think is most
> puzzling is the sequence in which steps should be performed to get
> all three systems running on one drive -- and which of the available
> tools to use when.
>
> Can anyone offer advice?
>
> Much Thanks,
>
> Bob
>
I did something comparable once--Windows, RedHat Linux 5.2, and
FreeBSD on one (ide) drive.
All three boot partitions have to be close enough to the front of
the drive so they'll boot; and you still want enough space for
everything. They need to be under the 1024 cylinder mark (although
I think some recent advances may take care of this in some cases),
which would probably, on an ide drive, be at about 2 gigabytes, and
perhaps 8 gigabytes on a scsi drive. On the drive I was working
with, it was 540 megabytes (worst case).
I did the following:
-- created a primary partition for Windows on the first 300 megs
or so (you can make this bigger if the 2 gig limit applies)
and installed Windows. I made this a partition (FAT or whatever)
that I could use for System Commander, the boot manager I
prefer. I installed the boot manager.
-- installed FreeBSD, using two primary partitions; the first,
following the Windows partition, for only /, of 80 megs or so.
I put the rest of FreeBSD in another partition at the end of
the drive.
-- This left a chunk in the middle for Linux, and made it possible
to get the Linux boot partition entirely under the 540 meg
limit. Linux went into an extended partition. During the
installation of Linux, you would also want to create a logical
drive within the extended partition for whatever you've got of
Windows that doesn't fit in the first (dos) partition.
I'd install the operating systems and copy the data from the other
drives later. Partition Magic's tools should help with moving stuff
to the D: Windows drive, i.e., the logical drive in the extended
partition, and updating references to it, which is generally a
major headache. I would also install all three first because it's
easy to make mistakes that cause one OS to overwrite the other. My
experience with RedHat was that the Druid was a disaster and I had
to use linux fdisk.
I used dos fdisk from a floppy to make the initial partition for
Windows the size I wanted it, which prevents the Windows install
from taking over the whole drive. Although you can put lots of
Windows stuff in an extended partition, Windows seems always to need
to install a few things in C:\, so you don't want to make it too
small.
You want LBA enabled in the bios, so you have the maximum space
available under the 1024 cylinder mark.
Roderick W. Smith's _The Multi-Boot Configuration Handbook_ has a
lot of useful information (Que Books) but may tell you more than
you really want to know :)
You may find Partition Magic's boot manager good (I haven't used
it). Alternatively you can just install FreeBSD's boot manager
when you install FreeBSD, and it should handle everything.
Annelise
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