Triple booting Windows XP, Slackware and FreeBSD

Hi all,

I have a 40 GB hard drive with Windows XP and Slackware 8.1 dualbooted. I want to make it a triple boot. I want to give FreeBSD a shot, but I don't won't to wipe out Windows or Slack (especially Slack). I have already resized my Linux partition to give me a 5GB free space for BSD.

1) 5GB should be enough for the BSD partition, isn't it?
2)The resizing tool I used made the new free space I'm planning on using for FreeBSD a logical partition. It needs to be a primary partition, right? When I do the FreeBSd install program, and use fdisk, will this make the new partition a primary partition?
3) Will FreeBSD detect Windows and Linux and enable me to install a boot loader than will boot all three OSs? Or could i just reconfigure the Lilo I'm using with Slackware to boot all three? If not, what do I do?
4) Please point out any pitfalls, or offer any advice you think appropriate (By the way, I already know I need counseling; please don't suggest that.) Thanks people.

NOt sure if its possible to have 2 linux distros on 1 hard drive as they both would mount the partitions the same exact way (/, /root, /swap, etc) I tried it with my 80GiG and it didnt work

You may need to use grub instead of lilo, I have a triple-boot with debian
win2k, and slackware. The grub documentation says it supports freebsd
and once you get used to the configurations naming convention its quite
easy

Krang.

preach> 1) yeas, but its not much.
2) depends on the way that version of fdisk works and where the logical partion is. It probably will not make it a primary partion, but if I remember correctly with BSD, it doesn't have to be aprimary partion. I could be wrong though as I haven't installed BSD in years.
3) Yes and yes. BSD installl should detect the other OS's, but if it doesn't, reconfigure lilo in Slack.
4) Counseling is the only thing that can help you now. That, and maybe a bigger drive so you have more room to play with each OS. Then a copy of i386 Solaris and you will be all set.

ac1d> umm, its 1 linux and 1 BSD distro, not 2 linux distros, but thats beside the point. The /, /root, etc etc is not how it mouts the partions. IT mounts them with /dev/hda1, /dev/hdb1, etc. There isn't a problem with it. You did something wrong on your 80 gig.

krang> lilo should work with FreeBSD also, so you should be able to use either one.

You could use eXtendedOperatingSystemLoader (www.xosl.org) to boot as many os's you want. It has abbilities to hide partitions so the 2 linux distro's don't get stuck with eachother. Password protection also is a feature.

1. FreeBSD likes to be installed on a primary partition. 5 GB is ample space.
2. The version of Fdisk should allow the creation of required primary partitions from the alocated space you have set aside. I've never seen it not allow this to happen so a work around would be lost on me if it didn't.
3. It comes with it's own boot loader, booteasy, that when FreeBSD is installed last it will recognize Windows as a bootable OS, but it will not always see a Linux boot (only seen it happen once). In these cases, using Grub is the best way to go as recommended by krang.
4. pitfalls include incomplete support for the most modern of hardware. You may have issues getting X to work from the install, but that can be easily fixed with the current versions of XFree86.

Regards and good luck.


edit : souleman is right, lilo should work from your prior *nix install, but I've not much experience with it, I've always used the FreeBSD boot manager, booteasy, which seems to be a lilo based manager.