[Novalug] Re: multi booting / partitioning

[DonJr]

On Sat, 2008-02-16 at 21:52 -0500, Roger W. Broseus wrote:
> Jay: I believe that you can not have more than 4 primary partitions. 
> That limits you from the start. I've used extended partition for 
> multi-boot of 2-3 distros w/o problems. Aside from having Win on one 
> primary partition, I too use a shared swap. I prefer to keep /home for 
> each distro separate, not trusting that the "." files are compatible 
> between distros. So, per distro, I have
>   /boot        1 GB - probably too big - it is 4% utilized

WAY WAY to big.
 In less then 250 meg (yes meg) I can store a copy of Grub, two versions
of system rescue boots plus the nessasary files to start a full network
install of Ubuntu latest.
  IE copy of GRUB, the files from the RIP CD and the System Rescue CD
plus the tftp network install files from a nearby Ubuntu mirror site.

GRUB can boot partitions/slices way above the 1024 cyc limit on most
systems, plus even if it can't boot the partition MBR directly it can
load the files directly from most partition/file system types.

>   /               19 GB 62%

I always have the /boot area of a distribution as part of /
my Root(s) are normally about 6G and a complete Ubuntu desktop with many
many additional features installed only uses about 3.5G of that space
total.

My portable also has a 15 Gig swap area and with a little adjustment and
an additional script I mounted /tmp /var/tmo /var/spool/cups/tmp along
with the now default Ubuntu mounting of /var/run and /var/lock onto
TMPFS which means anytime I shutdown or Reboot the system those areas
are automacticly cleared.
  {And yes Hibernation works and files in temp{areas} are restored when
the system wakes back up.}

>   /home      90 GB - I'm planning on a lot of photos but it is now at 16%

And a seperate /home if I'm NOT planning on a Multi-Boot-install

> I keep a separate vfat for xfer between Win and Linux.

Why?
If you need to transfer files from XP to Linux or the other way around
just do:
  mount -t ntfs-3g -o rw,uid=(USERID),gid=(GROUPID) /dev/sda1 /media/XP

 {replacing (USERID) and (GROUPID) with the numbers that have meaning on
your system see the man page.}

And access the /media/XP area like any other file system.

> I used to have a small / (root) and another partition for executables, 
> etc., but found that newer distros are putting things in / so I had to 
> re-partition. >> I tried to "grow" a partition after deleting a logical 
> partition but in the mix of extended and logical partitions, something 
> went crazy and I had to start "clean."
> 

RIP CD see: http://www.tux.org/pub/people/kent-robotti/looplinux/rip/
 Just copy (CD)/boot to your rescue partition and create a "menu.lst"
file for Grub only about 73Meg if you copy the complete ISO.

SysRescueCD: http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page
 {There is a simple how-to on the site somewhere.}

  { you can use either of the above to install/reinstall Grub }

Ubuntu Network install: see
 https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/Netboot

All total if you also include ready WRITABLE copies of the ISO(s) less
then 500 meg.

--  
 DonJr