Triple booting XP-Kubuntu-FreeBSD?

Steveire

I currently use grub to manage my default boot to kubuntu, and optional XP boot. Seeing as FreeBSD stable release will probably be out next week, I'm going to give it a shot and see what it has to offer.

I'm hoping I can just free up some space, and use the unpartitioned space to put BSD on. There are sometimes complications, I understand, depending on the order you install operating systems in. Can I expect any issues to arise during this installation?

Here is my current partition table:

steveire@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/hda

Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40060403712 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4870 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *           1        1555    12490506    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2            1556        2321     6152895    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda3            2322        4789    19824210   83  Linux
/dev/hda4            4790        4870      650632+   5  Extended
/dev/hda5            4790        4870      650601   82  Linux swap / Solaris

This looks important:

FreeBSD handbook wrote:

FreeBSD must be installed into a primary partition.
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install-pre.html

You will need a dedicated disk for FreeBSD on the Alpha. It is not possible to share a disk with another operating system at this time.

I think the above are directly related.

I also picked up that I can only have 4 primary partitions, one of which may be an extended partition with logical partitions in it. I'm pretty sure all of those slots are taken at the moment. Will I have to repartition everything to make this work?

The only reason I want to do this is the same as the reason I installed linux: just curiosity. I'll not be using it for many particularlty specialist applications or anything. Is this worth the potential hassle?

niallb

Freeing up hda2 is your best bet.
Are you using it to share files between windows and linux?
If you are, look into installing ext2 support in windows.

Any BSD will need a primary partition, and create slices
within that.

Good luck,
NiallB

Steveire

Yes, that's what I use hda2 for.

How about if I make the extended partiton larger, and put a fat partition inside that? That would free up the slot too and everything would work, wouldn't it?

Can linux run as a logical partition? I have partition magic, which I've been using for partition tasks to date, so I can probably do what I want with that.

Can you forsee any other issues that might arise in doing this?

eggshapedfred

linux will run quite happily in a logical partition. However, instead of messing around with your current (stable) setup why not install something like VMWare server beta and install Freebsd in VMWare. VMWare server is free and will let you create a vmware image (something the VMware player (also free) won't let you do). VMWare server (and player) install on both Windows and Linux so pick your favourite as the host and install Freebsd as the guest.

niallb

Putting a FAT partition in the extended partition should work fine,
and as you say will free up a primary slot.

Vmware isn't a bad suggestion, but for a simple triple boot,
moving the partitions around will be straightforward.


Do you have anywhere you can back up the contents while you
make the changes? Good luck with it.

NiallB