On Wed, Dec 19, 2001 at 10:17:31AM -0600, Robert Leduc wrote: > > number of questions. I have a dual boot RedHat Linux 7.2 / Win98 > system. It is a long story, but I am currently left with an area > of unpartitioned space in the "middle" of my hard drive. I'd like > to fill at least part of it with a FAT32 partition readable by > both systems. > > The installation guide, being a bit useless, simply says to use > fdisk. Possibly useful machine-specific info is at the bottom of > this message. My questions are: > > 1) The new partition need not be bootable; can I ignore this > 1024 cylinder limit thing then? Yes. > 2) Does my version of Win98 or my bios place restrictions on the > size of the partition I can create? Where would I look to find > an answer? No. Down. > 3) I tentatively tried to use RH's fdisk to create a new > partition but didn't save the partition table. I couldn't see > how to make it of type "Win95 VFAT" rather than of type "Linux". > Should this be a worry or does this change after somehow > formatting the new partition? Maybe what I need is a rough > outline of which commands I need to consider executing? Note, RH > 7.2 doesn't seem to ship with cfdisk, more's the pity. In fdisk type t for "type" and then select b for "Win95 FAT32". > 4) For example, what is the linux command for "formatting" the > drive as FAT32? mkdosfs > 5) When I create this new partition, the linux drive assignments > hda1 -- hda9 or so won't be in order based on the cylinders they > occupy. I can reorder this using fdisk. Nope. Partition Magic can do it. > Should I? Nope. > If so, I > realize I will have to change my /etc/fstab to reflect the new > numbering. Are there any other places I'd need to change things? Nope. > I use grub as a boot loader; since /boot and / won't move I > assume it will still work regardless. Yes. > 6) My hope is that if I ever need to increase the size of /, I > could use partition magic to reduce the size of the new windows > partition and then do a linux reinstall and create a new, larger > / (likely to occur only in a future upgrade of the operating > system from cdrom). I only have partition magic ver 4, but would > upgrade to 5 if that is necessary. Would this work or is this a > bad idea? People tend to avoid making promises about fips, but > would fips be a better alternative? Do you keep all the eggs in the same partition? That's bad... If you need more space just mount the new partititon in /home, /var, whatever (of course after copying the old stuff onto it). > Thanks very much for any help on any of the above. You're welcome! florin -- "If it's not broken, let's fix it till it is." 41A9 2BDE 8E11 F1C5 87A6 03EE 34B3 E075 3B90 DFE4 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 230 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20011219/db3d6059/attachment.pgp