>I want to know what the correct steps are for partitioning a drive 
>during a new RH9 install.
>My setup is two hd.  The boot drive is fully allocated to Win98 and the 
>second drive is for Linux.  What I want to do is allocate 10 gig from 
>the primary drive (the "win98 drive") for Linux. 
>How do I do that?

First, be sure that the win98 partition is defragged, so you have at
least 10 GB of contiguous space at the end of the partition that is not
allocated by the fat32 filesystem.  This step may not be necessary
depending on how the primary drive is repartitioned.

The SuSE distribution has a "limited function" Partition Magic program
that can split a Windows partition prior to starting the installation.

A safe option is to use Partition Magic to split the win98 partition as
desired prior to installation.  At least the commercial version of
Partition Magic will move fat32 structures as needed, thus the above
defragging step could be avoided.  Using GNU parted to do the same thing
prior to actual installation is another option, but you may not want to
skip the defrag step, since parted may not move fat32 filesystem
structures if needed.

>My previous version of Linux was Mandrake 9.1 and that has a very nice 
>partitioning tool (diskdrake) that would have allowed me to do that 
>during the install process but I couldn't figure it out with the GUI RH9 
>install.  What should I have done?

I'm not sure Red Hat GNU/Linux 9 provides Windows partition splitting
as a part of the installation process.  Red Hat may still require one to
use the fips program (located in the dosutils directory of the first Red
Hat GNU/Linux 9 CD) to split a Windows partition prior to installation.
fips requires that the Windows partition be already defragged.  I
suggest that all documents in the directory dosutils/fipsdocs be read
(at least readme.1st) before using fips. 

Summary:  Defrag the Windows partion.  Use Partition Magic, parted or
fips to split the Windows partition prior to installation.

Sincerely,

Ken Fuchs <kfuchs at winternet.com>


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