[vox-tech] Re: Partition question

[Jeff Newmiller]

On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Margo Schulter wrote:

> Jeff Newmiller <jdnewmil at dcn.davis.ca.us> wrote:
> 
> > Kernel bloat is one thing, but far more valuable is the ability to
> > have multiple kernels to boot from in case something is broken.
> 
> An excellent point! I can appreciate it, since I'm planning to try a
> kernel configuration supporting 32-bit vesafb graphics. Thanks for a
> most helpful reply, which also gives me an opportunity to clarify the
> schemes I was discussing (not as sophisticated as some of your
> suggestions!).
> 
> [On my first possible solution]:
> 
> > Last time I tried something like this, fdisk was unable to insert
> > partitions.  I would be surprised if this limitation had changed.
> 
> To clarify, my current DOS primary partition (hda1) and extended
> partition (hda2) with its three logical drives (hda5, hda6, hda7)
> take up in all 2G of a 37G disk, with the rest unused. This scenario
> would involve simply adding two more primary partitions after the
> extended partition to fill the rest of the space with a single native
> Linux distro (swap plus root):
> 
> hda1       primary       0M  -   256M     256M    fat16 (DOS C:)
> hda2       extended    256M  -  2048M    1792M
>      hda5  logical     256M  -   512M     256M    fat16 (DOS D:)
>      hda6  logical     512M  -  1024M     512M    fat16 (DOS E:)
>      hda7  logical    1024M  -  2048M    1024M    fat16 (DOS F:)
> ................................................................
> hda3       primary    2048M  -  2816M     768M    linux-swap
> hda4       primary    2816M  - 38166M   35350M    ext3 (Linux \)

I was not aware that an extended partition could precede a physical
partition.  If it can, then it looks like it would work.

[...]

> > Consider:
> 
> > hda1 = C:
> > hda2 = swap
> > hda3 = logical
> > hda5 = Slackware root
> > hda6 = Gentoo root
> > hda7 = /home or /home/shared
> 
> > There is even room in here for a partition before the swap
> > partition that could serve as a drive D: for DOS.
> 
> This is an interesting scenario, and the shared /home idea is
> something that I hadn't considered -- and the symlink that you
> discuss. There would be two primary DOS partitions C: and D:,
> with one of them (the latter?) enlarged enough to hold all the
> stuff now in E: and F: with some room for new files -- say
> about 1536M (the current size of E: plus F:), plus any overhead.
> for larger clusters.

Well, there _could_ be two DOS partitions... operating under the
impression that you were willing to give them up, I left out the second
DOS partition you could have had by shifting hda3 to hda4, hda2 to hda3,
and using hda2 for a second DOS partition.

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