Boot setup for new box.

charybdis

Hi,

I'm getting a new household computer next week from Dell, and as I will probably be the one setting it up I thought I'd try out a few things I've been meaning to do.

I would like to triple boot xp pro, ubuntu, and a cerain darwin-based OS (assuming compatability). I've used windows for years, linux use has been limited to live CD's and I've had limited success on other machines with the darwin "variant".



I think the primary drive should be partitioned as follows:

-10Gb for The Dell restore partition, the MBR table, linux swap and space lost to formatting. - 2/3 partitions.
-10Gb for XP Pro (NTFS) - 1 partition
-10Gb for OSx86 (HFS+) - 1 partition
-10Gb for Ubuntu (ext3 ? ) - 1 partition
-40Gb for general storage (FAT32) - 1 partition

that means around 6/7 partitions.



As this will be my first multiple-boot setup, I have a few questions.

Will I be able to easily configure Ubuntu's GRUB or is there a more-appropriate bootloader?

Are there any glaring problems I'm likely to encounter with this setup (e.g.: FAT32 having a 4Gb filesize limit, some other obvious mistake)?


This machine needs to be very stable (in XP anyway) as it will probably be the primary machine in the house. Although any important files in XP will hopefully be backed-up to an external HDD, near-zero downtime is a priority.

Am I asking for trouble for attempting this?

jaqian

Don't know much about this but you should check out Smart Boot Manager should be able to help you out with what boots and in what order.

http://btmgr.webframe.org/

electrofelix

make sure that windows is on a primary partition, not sure about OSX but Windows will refuse to boot from a logical partition.

Recomment something like the following to handle the 4 primary partition limitation of disks.

1 - 100MB ext3 Linux (/boot)
2 - 10GB NTFS Windows XP
3 - 10GB HFS+ OSX
4 - ~60GB extended
5 - ~2GB swap Linux
6 - 10GB ext3 Ubuntu (/)
7 - 40GB FAT32 Shared
8 - ~8GB Dell Restore

You can if you want setup a swap file in the main linux partition instead of using a dedicated partition.

Also install in the following order
Windows
OSX
Ubuntu

grub should have no problems booting all the various OS.

I'm not 100% on whether you can get grub too boot properly if you leave all the files to be under the main Ubuntu partition. Could be BIOS dependant on how far into the disk it can read.

If it works you could use the following instead as it may be necessary to keep the Dell Restore partition as a primary partition.


1 - 10GB NTFS Windows XP
2 - 10GB HFS+ OSX
3 - ~52GB extended
5 - ~2GB swap Linux
6 - 10GB ext3 Ubuntu (/)
7 - 40GB FAT32 Shared
4 - ~8GB Dell Restore

themole

afaik, the dell restore partition will be a waste of space if you intend messing with the partitions and installing other OS'.

better of to just delete it and regain the space for data