partitioning

[senorian]

On May 10 I asked about the "boot" flag.
mattT suggested that a "boot" flag was not necessary for Linux.
Since then I have read "The Very Verbose 3.0 Installation Walkthrough" in OSNews. Mr. De Young says to make the first "boot".
partition "bootable". Now I am confused.
My partition layout is given on my May 10 post.
Can anyone handhold me through the partitioning section of the install so that I , at least, do not remove my other Os, ME.
Thanks

[kriko]

I don't know what you posted earlyer, but I managed to solve all my partitioning problems under Windows (XP) using Partition Magic.

[Viro]

I believe that the latest versions of Knoppix come with a tool called qtparted, which allows you to change your partition tables.

I'm not really bothered, as I just use knx-hdinstall and make one large / partition.

[rickenbacherus]

One partition needs to be marked as 'bootable'. Linux can boot from any partition. wimpdoze insists on being installed into the first partition and only installs to one partition. You can circumvent this "first partition only' behavior by hiding partitions. This 'one partition' layout is actually part of what makes wimpdoze so vulnerable. If user 'a' downloads a freeware app for wimpdoze and it contains a trojan then your entire partition (often the entire drive) is infected. What if it's one of those nasty ones that can only be gotten rid of via reformatting? There goes everything. Not so in Linux. Not if you have multiple partitions that is. When you dl something you can only dl it into your /home directory. Since normal users do not have permissions to access other parts of the system they cannot inadvertently infect those partitions. If you need to reformat then just reformat the infected partition. Your OS will still run normally, you will only lose what you had on your /home partition.

The boot partition's purpose is to hold all the critical data related to booting i.e. GRUB, LILO or NTLDR boot loader information as well as your Linux kernel(s). The boot partition gives us a safe place to store everything related to booting. I assure you it is necessary.

I'll have a look at your post senorian and see if I have any insight to offer. Of course, as always, if you don't back up your data and you bork your drive don't get upset.

[senorian]

Thanks richenbacherus


"One partition needs to be marked as 'bootable'. "

One LINUX partition, or any partition ( i.e the one that Windows has already flagged as "bootable".