On 06/06/15 01:19 (GMT-0400) Michael DeBusk apparently typed:

> I'm having a fit here.

> I have a 250GB hard drive. I want to install/boot Windows XP, eCs 1.2R, and
> Linux (Ubuntu for now).

I recommend SuSE. I don't remember whether Ubuntu has HPFS support in
stock kernels, but SuSE definitely does (as does Mandriva). Ubuntu is a
Debian. Debian runs all services in runlevel 2. Non-debian distros split
some services into different runlevels, which provides some simple
maintenance and tweaking advantages.

> First time through, I used PartitionMagic 5 to partition the drive, installed
> XP, tried to install eCs, got a "corrupt partition table"
error, used DFSee to
> fix that, installed eCs, and finally installed Ubuntu.

Forget Partition Magic for partition creation duty. It's use should be
reserved for "no other alternative" duty, which should be little or
nothing, mostly formatting doze ahead of installation if you find that
necessary, or converting a doze partition from/to logical/primary. It
presents far too many headaches to tolerate in non-free software.

DFSee isn't free, but it's very powerful, and has excellent support of a
hand-holding nature as much as required, not only from the author, but
other users. Most importantly, it's fully compatible with, and for
several important purposes a good substitute for, LVM, which is
important any time you want to be able to use LVM instead.

There are several free partitioner options on
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ as well as those that come with Linux,
but since DFSee can be run with full compatibility from a floppy or CD
boot, I don't see any point risking anything else.

> I could boot all three, but I found that installing eCs screwed up the drive
> letters in XP. I didn't realize that XP can see HPFS drives and that it
> misinterprets them as corrupt or improperly-formatted NTFS drives. With that

As you've seen in others' replies, that's easy to fix once booted to XP.

> and a few other things I want to change, I decided I'd wipe everything and
> start over.

> Wiping was easy. Starting over has been a bit more difficult.

> I intend a 2.5GB partition each for XP and eCs, a 200MB boot partition for
> Linux,

200M is usually gross overkill. 75M is enough to hold more than 10
different kernels and initrds, plus a linux installation kernel and
initrd or three. Once I've installed Linux in a system, I usually do
further installs from HD boot without ever burning any CD. Less than 75M
and any attempt to install RedHat or Fedora will give you an annoying error.

> a 2GB Linux swap, and 40GB partitions each for XP programs, XP data, eCs
> programs, eCs data, and the rest of Linux. I'd also like a small FAT32
> partition for all the OSes to share. That should use up almost everything.

On a disk with many partitions, it can be quite helpful while using a
partitioning or backup tool to NOT have duplicated partition sizes,
except for any dedicated to clone backups of important partitions. It
seems performance of HPFS can be handicapped by large sizes. I keep mine
under about 30G for this reason.

> What tool should I use to partition the drive? I have PartitionMagic 5.01 (no
> support for Linux ext3 and newer NTFS, and creates the "corrupt partition
> table" error) and the GPartEd live CD (*nice* and free tool, but
doesn't have
> HPFS support and creates the "corrupt partition table"
error). I also have the
> tools that come with the OS installations, obviously. I'm willing to purchase
> an updated PartitionMagic if it'd make my life an easy one. DFSee is apparently
> beyond my skills and/or intelligence, but I have it on a floppy if needed.

You should always use the latest DFSee version, and you'll have to pay
to register to get support. If you've only used DFSee long ago, you've
likely not seen its menu system initialized roughly two years ago.

> In what order should I install the OSes? Does it matter?

Here, mostly unedited except between [ and ], is what I recommended not
terribly long ago on the DFSee list, not exactly matching your OS
choices, but easily enough adapted:

/dev/hda1 7.8M-500M for an OS/2 or eCS maintenance primary (WPS optional)
/dev/hda2 7.8M IBM Boot Manager
/dev/hda3 4 cylinder (32M) type 04/14 FAT16 (not 06/16 FAT16B) windoze C:
/dev/hda4 extended partition
/dev/hda5 10 cylinder (78M) Linux /boot
/dev/hda6 linux swap (256M-?G as appropriate for your RAM size)
/dev/hda7 linux root (size to taste. my current is 4.8G)
/dev/hda8 500M-2G FAT16 (D: Win95 installation, boots from C:)
/dev/hda9 3G-7G FAT32 or NTFS (E: WinXP installation, boots from C:)
/dev/hda10 500M-1G HPFS F: normal
/dev/hda11 G: eCS software
/dev/hda12-?? various data partitions

[for Linux I use separate partitions for /home, /usr/local and /srv.
/home is user data, which makes a very high degree of sense to have a
separate partition for, as it need not be wiped out when installing a
new distro. /usr/local is for software that doesn't come from the distro
maker, and also can be preserved like user data on a new install. /srv
is the default location for apache, also no reason to touch on a new
install. I never let a Linux installer write the MBR. Sometimes to do
this sometimes requires an "advanced" installation mode, depending on
distro.]

There is a multitude of reasons for the above. I'll highlight just a
few:

1-Not having windoze operating systems on C: provides some protection
against stupid windoze installation programs and junkware that just
don't function if windoze is not where windoze "belongs", reinforced by
the very small size of FAT16 type 04 C: with no native longname support.

2-Setting the first three logical positions as linux partitions provides
protection against future repartitioning making linux unbootable, in
addition to running faster with the OS near the front of the HD.

3-Having a small OS/2 or eCS maintenance primary is immensely useful if
PM or something else screws things up and you need repairs. This
maintenance partition need not have WPS installed. Mine don't, at
101.9M.

4-If you make E: only 3G, you'll want to move the XP swapper to some
other partition. If you don't, E: will rarely have any freespace. XP
will grow the swapper to fill it up and give space back normally only
when you add stuff to \Program Files. You'll also want to move
"\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents" to a data partition.
Keeping data separate from OS is prudent regardless of OS, but
particularly with XP, which is one reason why to limit the size of E:.
Also, reinstalling the OS won't cause data loss.

5-The other reason to limit the size of /dev/hda7 and E: is to keep the
OS/2 or eCS normal partition as close to the front of the HD as possible
for performance reasons.

Installation order would be:

1-DFSee to create all partitions
2-OS/2 maintenance install
3-Boot Manager install
4-Set /dev/hda3 active
5-Win95 install
6-WinXP install
7-Reset /dev/hda2 active
8-OS/2 or eCS or Linux install
9-OS/2 or eCS or Linux install

See also URL in .sig.

> Is there a way to make each boot partition invisible to the other two? That's
> the way it worked in the old days, and I liked it that way.

> Is there a way to hide HPFS drives from XP? I'd hate for XP to scew with my eCs
> drives.

Not directly, but in eCS you must explicitly assign letters to gain
visibility, and in XP it's easy enough to remove assigned letters. Linux
only sees what you tell it to see, with the caveat that it won't let you
get away with adding a partition later in front of its root partition.
Linux goes by device names, assigning them in a specific manner
according to partition layout. If you do this, then you must boot in
some maintenance manner like from a Linux CD, then edit some of its
config files according to whatever new name would be assigned from any
rearrangement
-- 
"All have sinned & fall short of the glory of God." Romans 3:23 NIV

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409

Felix Miata  ***  http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/partitioningindex.html


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