Disc Partitioning for Multi-Boot (long)

[Mike McCarty]

Some of this may be off-topic, some on-topic.
I'll spare you the gory details of how we got here.

Here's the hardware setup:

Main board with 512MB RAM.
3 1/2" floppy drive
24x DVD/CD reader
48x CD writer
80GB WD drive, partitioned as 40GB FAT32 + 40GB unallocated
80GB WD drive, partitioned as 80GB NTFS

Win 98 is happily running in the FAT32 partition.
We need to get the data off of the NTFS partition.

I started up Knoppix, and mounted the FAT32 r/w, and the NTFS r/o, 
created a directory named "oldd" on the FAT32, and did a massive

cp -pr /mnt/hdb1/* .

which ran for about 3 hours. Then I did a

diff /mnt/hdb1 .

and between 6000 and 7000 files miscompare, due to having different 
names. They differ in the case of the file names. It took 1 1/2 hours to 
run, so I guess about 1/2 of the data did not get checked. I tried

diff --ignore-file-names-case /mnt/hdb1 .

and got exactly the same results. Hmm. The man page for diff under
FC2 and Knoppix apparently differ. FC2 doesn't list that option...

So, ok. I'll try making a script which will do renames, and then go back 
and do more diffs. And BTW, the names probably need to be fixed, anyway.

First question: How better to get that data from the second drive?

I've considered using tar and WinZip. Would that be better?

But the next question is how to partition the drive so Windows and Linux 
can co-exist on the first drive?

The fdisk supplied with Windows 98 cannot manage that disc. Win98 
apparently can live happily in something already formatted for it, but 
cannot manage the large partitions itself. A utility from Western 
Digital can manage the partitions, and even format a FAT32 disc and make 
it bootable. But if it is run on a drive, it insists on wiping the MBR.
(That's how we got Win98 on that large partition.) Hmm, maybe use
dd to lift the MBR, use the WD utility to repartition, then merge
in the bootstrap from the original? I looked at parted but do not
feel confident in my ability to use it. I'm not very familiar with
dd, either.

She'd like to make additional partitions in the 40GB of unallocated
space on the first drive, and make a multi-boot system which can
boot several versions of Linux for try-out. She's thinking about
Red Hat (try Fedora and if she likes it, she'd buy RHEL), Debian,
Knoppix, Mandrake, Suse, Puppy, and CentOS. She'd try two or so
at a time, and when she found one she likes, she'd go with it.

I have the FC2 discs here, and the FC4 ISOs, and don't mind getting the 
FC3 ISOs if they might be better, so the second question I want to pose is

How shall I make a multi-boot system out of that machine, with the 
possibility of booting at least Windows 98 and two versions of Linux 
concurrently? I must either not use the second disc, or I must reliably 
recover the information from it before using it. Also, when a version
of Linux has been decided upon, how to re-partition and get maximum
use out of the disc with Win98 and Linux on it? I'm strongly considering 
putting /home on a separate partition. Can we do that in such a manner 
that different versions of Linux can remount it later without having to 
save/restore the data there? How about swap?

I'm pretty sure Anaconda can handle what she wants, but I'm not
so familiar with Anaconda, either. I'm an old hand at *NIX machines
from the development standpoint, but not with the admin side
of things, and those things differ from system to system anyway.

Third question: Her main use for the Linux boot will be web page
management. She has tried Open Office, and several other packages
which run on Linux, and has not found one with all the features
she wants. Apparently there is a package for WinXP which is
very nice, and which she likes. Don't ask me, I know nothing
about Web Pages. Are there some really nice web management / HTML 
editors available for Linux? I found Amaya, but it really couldn't
install properly when running from CDROM (Puppy).

She doesn't want to become a "fiddler" again, though she has, in
past done that. She'd like to "install and go" now. Her interest
in computers is now more on the "tool" side than the "hobby/fun" side.

Mike
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