partitition question

When you have a dual boot system (linux/win) is there any difference on which partition is your first one??? My first partition is red hat 8.0, then I have a logical partition with win 2k adv. server, will there be any problems with functionality and stability or any problems with the MBR if my system was arranged the other way: first win 2k then linux ???
I ask this because I was asked by a friend to help in a rh 8 installation, his first and only partition is windows, will there be any problems on making a logical partition in the windows and installing red hat there????

Thanks

I haven't had any problems with my RH 7.2 (1st) and my win98 (2nd). If you are still nervous about it tho you could go get a inexpensive 10G or 20G drive and dual boot from 2 seperate drives.
Hope this helps.

Sounds like it will work fine. Linux is not sensitive about which partition
you install it on. It is windows that (at least older versions) that sometimes
causes trouble if it is not on the first partition of the primary
master hard drive.

Your friend will need to resize (shrink) his windows partition
and create new partitions for linux in the newly available
space.

Actually, I prefer the old fashioned method of deleting and recreating
your partitions, and doing a fresh install of both OSs, or,as mentioned,
get a second drive.
:cool:

I installed RH 8 on a computer with Win98 as the only operating system. Used Partition Magic to resize Win partition, no problems.

i agree with what rcgreen said about a fresh install of the os's. but be careful about resizing the partions if u must, b/c i had a problem with resizing a windows partition and it became unusable and i had to repartition everything and reinstall everything cleanly.

Hi

I suggest the following for your installation. Since you have not mentioned the size of hard disk of your friend's machine, I will give the data in %.

Assuming that the windows is installed in a min of 2 partitions (40%, 60%) for the current setup, move all the data from the larger partition to a temp location (backup to a tape :-<, to a CD :-|, to another HDD :->). Remove the partition and create one new partition (30%) (DOS -extended - logical). You can put back the data onto this later.

Using the Linux partition utility (whichever is your favorite - I prefer cfdisk), add the partitions (25 - 28%) for Linux and the remaining for linux swap.

The problems your friend will face are (some of us have already mentioned above),
a. re-intallation of M$ OS will cause lilo to loose the boot info. (you may have to boot through floppy or cd and mount the linux, make unix bootable, load lilo - to get the multi boot option re-enabled).
b. data space for the M$ will be less.

thanks and good luck
Nadiminti

not to say the same thing that everyone else just said..... but windows does like to be first in line. i've had some problems before with windows being installed second, as it has been know to install it's bootloader over lilo (bootman in one my cases, lilo in my linux outings) in the mbr and pissing everything else off.

by the way, booting from floppy into BeOS to re-install bootman is a freaking magic trick.

<edit>
also, if you do two versions of windows, like 98se and 2000, as well as linux, do 98 first, then 2000, then linux. 2000 has that little half baked bootloader which will allow you to keep things pretty easy,

Step 1: Windows or not?
Step 2: (if windows was chosen) 98se or 2000

hiiiiii
u can either way setup ur os at any [artion dnt worry it will create no headache