do any of the suse partitions have to be “primary”

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

Hi,

Let’s say I have 60 Gb for Suse 11.0 and I want to make root, swap and home partitions before I run the installer (and do the formatting: swap would be “swap” format, root and home would be ext3).

I have windows on the same drive in a (of course) primary partition. The 60 Gb for suse is currently unallocated.

I have read that I could make a 60 Gb extended partition and then, within this, make 3 logical partitions of root, swap, and home.

Is this correct or at least one option that will work? Or, do one or more of these 3 linux partitions “have to be” “primary”?

FYI, the only reason for doing it this way is that this is only the 2nd full linux install that I have done and prefer to “see” the partitioning graphically (using Disk Director Suite) rather than go into the “expert” mode during the installation.

Thanks,

jimusa

#2

None of the SUSE partitions need to be primary partitions but the one with GRUB on needs to be within a certain (fairly large) limit of the start of the hard disk.

If the total number of partitions is more than four, you need an extended partition. This is often the case on dual boot setups because Windows may be set up with a failsafe partition as well.

The SUSE installer normally makes sensible suggestions which you can edit though, if you do edit the suggestion, make sure that the partitions you want are mounted. The installer will mount everything if you let it have its way but, if you don’t like its suggestions, it then leaves it up to you to decide which ones you want mounted (on the assumption that one of the reasons why you edited may have been to change the standard mounts)…