partitioning

[Derek Broughton]

Robert Holtzman wrote:

> When I installed ubuntu 7.10 I set up 3 primary partitions plus
> unallocated space for future distros. Running gparted on the completed
> installation showed sda1 / and sda2, an extended partition occupying the
> rest of the disk, containing the remaining partitions and the unallocated
> space. That's not how I thought I set it up but that's what I got.
> Everything I've read claims the 1st 3 primaries lie outside the extended
> partition.

No.  Any of those four partitions could be extended.  Whether various OS's
would be able to use them is another matter, but there's nothing to prevent
you making exactly two partitions, one primary, one extended and having
them be recognized by linux as sda1 and sda2

> Someone care to educate me as to what went on and just how 
> shallow *is* my partitioning knowledge?
> 
> This is leading up to a question about loading 1 or 2 more distros. Can I
> simply create more primary partitions in the unallocated space inside the
> extended partition? If so, how many?

No.  Extended partitions can only contain "Logical" partitions (15?) - but
these days nothing cares that they're not primary (though older Windows
versions had to be on the first _Primary_ partition).

-- 
derek