Hello,
I have installed redhat linux on one of 2 drives on my pc. while booted in Windows 2000 on drive c, th OS is searching for the drive d (linux) and the response time has become slow. The drive is recognized but not accessible. I have dual boot dos(win 98/win2000) and another drive I have linux . How do I make linux partition invisible to the windows 2k. When booted in win 98 it works fine (no drive d visible)

This I vote the greatest question asked here!
(I am becoming more stupid and rude every moment).
Linux partitions are not visible from windows, coz they are of type ext2/3 etc.
Click on Start->Run
now
type
diskmgmt.msc
now the disk management mmc would pop up
check your partitions (and of course C: and D: from there)

my laptop's partition layout:

/dev/hda1 - NTFS - 4GB
/dev/hda2 - FAT - 2 GB
/dev/hda3 - /dev/hda6 - linux partitions (ext3)

win2k was installed first.
/dev/hda2 was created/formatted using a win98 startup disk to fix the slow win2k startup (formatting itunder win2k or linux won't fix the slowness).
then linux is installed.

how did u partition ur drive?

born4linux ,Was I being rude or stupid here? :-)

naaah... my post refers to b_vasu's slow response issue.

your right in giving the disk management tool - but i have no idea how u can hide the linux partitions using it.

Well you can't hide a linux partition using it .
It will just show the partition as unknown partition type
If somebody has some good partitioning tools like bootit ,even without sufficient knowledge,you can
hide the partition so that it is not visible to windows.
I just added this coz b_vasu said that the slowness is becoz of D: drive

Hi, I have the same problem as b_vasu but unfortunately the replies so far have not resolved it.
With Lilo in MBR, W2K on hda (10gb IBM) and Debian (30gb WD) on hdb:
Debian boots and runs fine.
W2K boots and runs, but is extremely slow since it seems to recognize hdb, auto-installs it but of course can't do anything with it. It eventually appears in my list of devices as well as the explorer. As soon as I uninstall it, the problem is solved and W2K runs regularly. However on the next boot the drive again is "recognized" and "auto-installed" (this takes about 15 minutes) after which I again have to manually remove it for windows to run regularly.

Now it seems to me that this is rather a Windows than a Linux issue. Help would still be much appreciated.

Btw, my linux partitions on hdb are ext2. Do you think to change them into ext3 could solve the problem? Of course I'd rather avoid this so that I don't have to install Debian again.

Thanks!

If you have your linux partitions in an extended partition then changing its partition ID from from 5 (Extended) to 85 (Linux extended) using something like fdisk might do the trick.

Thanks for your reply.
I used partition ID 83 (and 82 for swap). Is type 85 preferable and could it solve the problem?

If you have only used partition ID 83 (Linux) and partition ID 82 (Linux swap) then you probably don't have them inside an extended partition. Changing the linux partitions from partition ID 83 to partition ID 85 isn't the solution. If you could post the output of "fdisk -l /dev/hdb" then I could comment further.

Problem is solved. I mistakenly defined one of the Linux partitions (root) as a primary partition. It seems that W2K has a problem with this and tries to mount whatever primary partition it findes as D or E or whatever (depending on how many DOS primary partitions one has).
Hence the problem was solved by changing this Linux partition from primary to logical. Now Linux and W2K boot fine.
Thanks again for your help.

Hello,
I discontinued using win2k becuase of the problem I had. here is my fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 4865 39078081 c Win95 FAT32 (LBA)

Disk /dev/hdb: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hdb2 14 4784 38323057+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb3 4785 4865 650632+ 82 Linux swap

Huberdan,
How can I change the linux partition from primary to logical ? newbie ...............

Help Apprciated !!

THX.

Here is another link who had similar experiences here with win2k and redhat


http://www.experts-exchange.com/Oper..._20412213.html

b_vasu,

You could try to change your primary partitions by using fdisk. I would recommend backing up your data first though just in case. First write down the current partition layout. What you really need to remember is what looks like your /boot partition starts at cylinder 1 and ends at cylinder 13, your / partition starts at 14 and ends at 4784 and that your swap partition starts at 4785 and ends at 4865.

The next step is to run fdisk under linux on that partition:

# /sbin/fdisk /dev/hdb

Now you would delete all of the primary partitions and then create an extended partition that spans the entire disk space. You would then create the /boot (logical) partition first, followed by the / (logical) partition and then swap (logical). Your fdisk session should look something like this:

Command (m for help): n
Command action
e extended
p primary partition (1-4)
e
Partition number (1-4): 1
First cylinder (1-4865, default 1):
Using default value 1
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1-4865, default 4865):
Using default value 4865

Command (m for help): n
Command action
l logical (5 or over)
p primary partition (1-4)
l
First cylinder (1-4865, default 1):
Using default value 1
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1-4865, default 4865): 13

Command (m for help): n
Command action
l logical (5 or over)
p primary partition (1-4)
l
First cylinder (14-4865, default 14):
Using default value 14
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (14-4865, default 4865): 4784

Command (m for help): n
Command action
l logical (5 or over)
p primary partition (1-4)
l
First cylinder (4785-4865, default 4785):
Using default value 4865
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (4785-4865, default 4865):
Using default value 4865

Command (m for help): t
Partition number (1-7): 7
Hex code (type L to list codes): 82
Changed system type of partition 7 to 82 (Linux swap)

Command (m for help): t
Partition number (1-7): 1
Hex code (type L to list codes): 85
Changed system type of partition 1 to 85 (Linux extended)

Command (m for help):

Finally double check that the partition layout of the logical partitions exactly matches the position of their former respective primary partitions. If you sure that they match then using fdisks write command, w, to save the new partition layout.

At this point I should probably stress even more that you should backup your /boot partition and / partition before hand. If you did a more or less default redhat install then both /boot and / will be ext3 partitions. You can back up ext3 (and ext2) partitions using the "dump" command and restore them using the "restore" command. The rescue mode of RH9 has the "restore" command there if you need it.

Before you reboot check if you /etc/fstab files has references to the linux partitons as primary partitions. You will at least have a line in there for the swap that contains /dev/hdb3 and should be changed to /dev/hdb7. RH8 and RH9 use labels to refer to the partitions it creates so the line for the /boot partition will probably start with "LABEL=/boot" and the line for the / partition will probably start with "LABEL=/". You might also want to check that your boot loader passes the argument "root=LABEL=/" instead of something like "root=/dev/hdb2".

Now you would reboot to update the partition table in the kernel (it can't reload it when it's in use). It wouldn't be bad idea to boot into the rescue mode of the redhat install CD, tell it not to mount your partitions and then do

# fsck.ext3 -f /dev/hdb1
# fsck.ext3 -f /dev/hdb2
# fsck.ext3 -f /dev/hdb3

If you don't get any errors about the partition size being smaller than the filesystem size then you're pretty much on the way to being done. Lastly you'd boot your redhat install to check if it works.

Try this all if you think you're up to it. As long as you haven't made a off by 1 error you shouldn't have too much trouble. I've used a similar procedure to this to shrink and enlarge ext3 partitons using resize2fs.