Question

[Alexandra Zaharia]

On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 4:48 AM, SYNass IT Ubuntu / Linux
<i-ubux at synass.net> wrote:
>  If RAM is big enough ONE don't even need this /SWAP !!

You do need it :-) I have 3 GB of RAM on my computer and still keep
the 2 GB swap partition I had back when having 1 GB of RAM. You can
never know when you'll be using a lot of memory-requiring apps that
will need swap space.

>  My idea was more just like following:
>
>  prim 1: ntfs / WIn installation, untouched / just shrink to 18-20GB
>  prim 2/u: /BOOT or
>  prim 2/w: ntfs / Win Data partition, data sharing with Ubuntu too or log
>  1w:
>  extended
>  log 1/w: ntfs / same as prim 2w !?
>  log 2: /SWAP
>  log 3: /HOME (not mentioned in this discussion) Ubuntu data !!!
>  log 4: /ROOT
>
>  I am not sure what would be better:
>  1) Generally: Win data partition prim 2w or log 1w as primary or logical
>  and
>  if primary, after or before prim 2u: /BOOT !?

As I see it, it doesn't really matter except if you desperately need
another primary partition.

>
>  I always do include watching the device names too and try to group them
>  together properly !
>
>  For the above it means:
>  sda1 = OS / Win
>  sda2/u = /BOOT Ubuntu, shareable with more Linux'es !?
>  sda2/w = Data Win
>  sda3 = extended
>  sda5/w = alternatively Data Win
>  sda5/u = /SWAP Ubuntu/ shareable with more Linux'es !?
>  sda6 = /HOME Ubuntu/shareable with more Linux'es !?
>  sda7 = /ROOT OS Ubuntu

If you want your device names to take up on a particular scheme such
as the one you described above, you need to take extra care at the
planning partitioning stage. But why bother doing so, when you can
just specify a 'human' mount point for each partition that will be
easy to remember? For instance, consider that in your above scheme
somehow you mess up and fail to make sda5 your Windows data partition
and that somehow this Windows data partition comes up as 'sda6': what
would stop you to mount it at each boot under /media/windata instead
of /media/sda6 ?


>  sda/b+ = /ROOT for more Linux'es !? possibly on another HDD or USB
>  media !?

You don't want to mix up things. "/root" is a directory under "/" that
is the root user's home. Furthermore, a partition with a Linux flavor
installed onto it (such as sda7 = mount point for / in your example
above) can only be used by its Linux flavor - if you want to install a
2nd Linux distro, you would of course need another partition to mount
as the 2nd flavor's "/" :-) Of course that inside "/ for Linux flavor
1" you can mount the other partition as /media/linux2 and viceversa.

> possibly on another HDD or USB media

Yes indeed. I currently have 2 HDDs and Ubuntu - the OS I use most
often of the 4 installed - is installed onto the 2nd HDD, on hdb6. A
Debian install is found on hda6, FreeBSD on sda1 and Windows XP on
sda2. So yes, you can boot Ubuntu from a slave HDD and in my case,
sdb6 - the partition onto which it's installed - is a logical one.



Just a hint for the OP - if your Vista OS is *NOT* the 64b version
one, you might want to try out Ext2FS - a tool which allows you to
mount your ext2/3 partitions under Windows with read/write access.

You can find the app here: http://www.fs-driver.org ; a guide, maybe:
http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/2007/03/mount-ext2-or-ext3-partition-in-windows.html

I mention this because I successfully used it on 2 different machines
(XP though...) without any troubles. It *should* work with Vista too -
provided, again, you don't have the 64b version.

HTH,

Alex.