The Gentoo Handbook recommends a /boot partition size of 32 MB. I'm wondering what the recommended /boot partition size is for Slackware 10.1.

Also, regarding primary and extended partitions... well, the easiest way to ask this will be to just show what my planned partition scheme is:

Windows XP (FAT32) - purely for Ableton Live
Storage (FAT32) - mp3, anime, manga, etc. to be readable by either OS
/boot
/
/home
/swap

The part I'm unclear on is what order they should go in. Linux will be the primary OS. I will only boot into XP when I have time set aside for music production. Also unclear on which ones to make primary and which ones extended/logical. You can only have 3 primary partitions if you have more that 4 partitions total, is that correct? If so, I would assume that XP, /boot, and / should be primary... with Storage, /home, and /swap being logical. But yeah, still really foggy on their optimal order.

"you can only have 3 primary partitions if you have more that 4 partitions total, is that correct? "

Yes, the partition table only has room for 4 partition entries. To go beyond 4 one of the primary partition entries is subdivided to make logical partition entries, so you lose a primary partition for each 4 logical partitions that you create.

"The Gentoo Handbook recommends a /boot partition size of 32 MB. I'm wondering what the recommended /boot partition size is for Slackware 10.1."

The Slackware /boot partition size should be about the same as Gentoo's. You don't need a separate /boot partition unless your BIOS will not support the full address range of your hard drive. When your BIOS addressing range is too small then you should create a /boot partition at the beginning of the drive to get around the limitation.

"The part I'm unclear on is what order they should go in."

Other than /boot being at the beginning then you can enhance performance by putting the busiest partition in the middle of the hard drive and the least busy at the front and back. Luckily /boot is not used at all except at boot. So I think that your optimal partition placement for both Slackware and XP usage is probably:

/boot
Windows XP (FAT32) - purely for Ableton Live
Storage (FAT32) - mp3, anime, manga, etc. to be readable by either OS
/
/home
/swap

"I would assume that XP, /boot, and / should be primary... with Storage, /home, and /swap being logical."

Linux has no problems with partition types. For what it is worth BSD does have restrictions on primary vs logical partitions. I have no idea about XP's preferences on logical vs primary.

--------------------------------
Steve Stites

This was helpful for me.
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/file/...titions-c.html

awesome, thanks guys.

so there is no benefit having a seperate /boot partition on a modern (or even slightly less than modern) PC? for reference, I use a P4 1.6GHz, 512MB RAM, 80GB HDD, Soltek SLDRS2 motherboard.

install order would be windows first, then linux. the mbr (master boot record) will be on the first master hdd, which will probably be /dev/hda1 in linux, and the C drive in windows.

consult documentation regarding /boot partition size. i think 100mb +/- is about average. basic partition scheme is just /(root), and swap, with everything residing in the /(root) partition. generally, /boot partition within 1024 cylinders, or about 8 gig from the begining, perhaps this was with older kernels when forced lba would be needed to boot a partition past the 8 gig point? perhaps irrelevant now!

4 primary partitions max. 3 primary, and an extended partition, with logical partitions inside of the extended partition will allow you to slice up that hard drive, and create a multiboot monster. if all you need is 4 partition, then they could all be primary. windows fdisk will only allow 1 primary partition to be formatted, so forget about using it.

a more complex arrangement would be to have /boot /(root) swap /home /usr /var /tmp. sizing these partitions is still a mystery to myself. if just /boot /(root) /home, be sure to make the /home partition quite large, as this is where all your personal files will be stored. i'd guess that 100mb /boot, 3gig /(root), 10+gig /home 512mb swap. order might be /boot /(root) swap /home, though i've seen auto config's stick swap at the end of the hdd.

For what it's worth, here is the way that I always partitioned my HD for Windows and Linux.

hda1 Primary NTFS Active Windows XP
Extended Partition
hda5 Logical FAT32 Data files to be shared between Windows and Linux
hda6 / either ext3 or reiserfs (my preference now is reiserfs)
hda7 /swap
hda8 /boot ext3 (no more than 50 MB)
hda9 /var ext3 or reiserfs
hda10 /home ext3 or reiserfs

Installed lilo to MBR.

Ain't saying this is what you should do, just giving you an example of what I use that works.

Later,
MMYoung

i've read that the different linux mount points can be on different hard drives, and even reside on different machines across a network!

I've never mounted drives across a network, so I can't comment about that. I have, however, mounted partitions from other drives on my system without any problem whatsoever, even /swap.

Later,
MMYoung

They can be mounted on network by using nfs or samba and works nice (i've shared folders automounted at boot)