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Partitioning Drive

In order to prepare the drive for a dual boot system install Windows first and then Redhat Fedora. Below is what my drive looks like when partitioned:

Output of the "fdisk -l" command showing the partitions.

#fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40007761920 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4864 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
 
   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *         1      1567  12586896    7  HPFS/NTFS

/dev/hda2          1568      1580    104422+  83  Linux
/dev/hda3          1581      2885  10482412+  83  Linux
/dev/hda4          2886      4864  15896317+   f  Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5          2886      3407   4192933+   c  Win95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda6          3408      3538   1052226   82  Linux swap
/dev/hda7          3539      4864  10651063+  83  Linux

Output of the "df" command showing the mount points.

#df

Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda3             10317860   1772824   8020916  19% /
/dev/hda2               101105      6352     89532   7% /boot
/dev/hda7             10483700     32828   9918320   1% /home
none                    257148         0    257148   0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda5              4184740        20   4184720   1% /win

• hda1 holds the Windows operating system and is in NTFS format.
• hda2 is partitioned as /boot for Linux. The first sector of the boot partition is where GRUB is installed. DO NOT INSTALL IT ON THE MBR!
  

  If you are performing the Red Hat installation, for the "Boot Loader Installation" screen:

  • Select "Use GRUB as the boot loader"
  • Select Install Boot Loader record on "...First sector of boot partition".
  • After finishing the Red Hat installation, reboot into Linux. If you don't have a boot disk, try booting in linux rescue mode.

• hda3 is mounted on "/" and is where the linux OS is installed.
• hda4 is the extended partition which holds the linux swap space and home directory, and the shared "D" drive for windows.
• hda5 is FAT32 partition which will be a shared/common drive between windows and linux.
• hda6 is the Linux swap partition
• hda7 houses the home directory for Linux and takes up the remaining of the drive space.

I have used Knoppix which comes with QTParted to partition the drive. You can graphically create, delete and resize partitions with QTParted. It functions like Partition Magic, except it's FREE!

Installing Dual Boot Windows 2000 or XP and Linux
Partitioning Drive
Installing Fedora
Dual Booting
Troubleshooting XFree86 GUI display!