WinXP Pro / Win2k3Server / Mandrake 10 / FreeBSD . . All on 1 drive?

S

Scheizekopf

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jan 31, 2003
Messages
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Does anybody know if I can install Windows XP Pro, Windows 2k3 Server, Mandrake 10, and FreeBSD 5.2.1 all on one hard drive (120gig)?

I was thinking to format my current test system to have 5 partitions.
1. Windows XP Pro - 8gigs
2. Windows 2k3 Server - 8gigs
3. Mandrake 10.0 - 8gigs
4. FreeBSD 5.2.1 - 8gigs
5. Data/Other - Rest of the Drive

I know I can do a couple Microsoft OS's then install a linux on the 3rd partition. But can I install FreeBSD on the 4th partition?

I've never installed a Unix OS and want to try FreeBSD.

What does everybody think. Please give opinions on the hard drive partitioning also.

Thanks for all the help. Hopefully I get some.
 
I've ran 4 before. You will just be limited to 4 primary partitions. I ran 2K, 2K Server, Mandrake, and RedHat on one drive.
 
Can I do 4 Primary Partitions and 1 Extended Partition?

Also. . .does anybody know how the 4 OS's will work together?

I know to just install Windows first then Linux so Linux takes over the boot screen.

I do remember using a Boot Program designed to just pick what partition to load. I cant remember the name but I know for sure I have the floppy of it at home.
 
You'll have to do 4 primary and 2 extended on the last primary if I remember correctly. I haven't had to chop up a HD that much in a while.
 
I was thinking an extend partition had to be created on top of a primary. Like I said, it's been a while.

Code: 
- Primary
- Primary
- Primary
- Primary-Extended
         -Extended

Nothing stopping you from trying it though. Point being, yeah it's possible.
 
FreeBSD wants a primary partition, btw.
It will however let you partition that partition internally, like an extended partition.

One of the peculiarities of the BSDs is the slices/partitions concept.
As far as I remember, a "Slice" in FreeBSD is what you would normally call a partition, while a "partition" is somwehat akin to a logical partition.
As a practical example, the first ata disk is ad0, the first "slice" (partition) on it is ad0s1, and if it contains a BSD disklabel, the first "partition" will be ad0s1a, the second ad0s1b, etc.
Don't worry, the installer makes this easy to set up.

Setting up the bootloader could get interesting. There are many ways to make it work, such as:
* Somw third-party bootloader chainloading the different OSes
* FreeBSD bootloader, chainloading grub/lilo and windows
* Grub/lilo, chainloading windows, with FreeBSD in boot.ini (suprisingly easy)
* Grub booting linux and freeBSD, chainloading windows.

I think you'll see the last one recommended most often, but I personally don't like messing with grub more than neccesary. Also, has grub gotten UFS2 support yet?

I've used the second one. Grub on the linux partition, FreeBSD bootloader loading windows, grub or FreeBSD.
(It will give you a simple list of the bootable partitions and other hard drives, defaults to your last choice after 5 seconds, and AFAIK can't be configured. Doesn't break if you remove/mess up the BSD partition either.)
 
Well I'll figure out the partitioning first.

I think I'm going to use the boot loader program I have. (Still cant remember the name - @ work still)

I've used it before with just 2 Linux OSs and 2 Windows OSs. And I remember some options with FreeBSD and OpenBSD.

Thanks for all the help everybody.
 
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