Red hat cannot find windows partition during installation

[cloudconstructor]

I had windows XP installed and tried to make a dualboot with Red Hat 9
But red hat can't find 2 of my windows disk partitions when trying to install.

The disk uses Fat32 and is 40 GB with 4 equal partitions.

Is there a problem of linux reading large disks?

[dinangkur]

First of all, I need to know what file-system you're using in windows. If you're using FAT then you've to add few lines in "fstab".

If you're using NTFS then you've to get NTFS driver from the net, install it, then you can access the windows partition from RH9. But the latest linux kernel has built-in driver for NTFS. So, you can download latest kernel from http://www.kernel.org/, install it. And you can access windows partition.

For fat:
open your /etc/fstab with vi or emac (you've to be root user).
Add following line:
In order to know which partion have windows, type following command in console:
fdisk -l

suppose, /dev/hda14 has fat file system, so you add following line:

/dev/hda14 /mnt/win vfat rw, owner, 0 0

Before adding the line you need to create /win directory under /mnt directory.
If you restart your PC or type:
mount /dev/hda14 -t vfat /mnt/win

Then change to /mnt/win
Use ls command, you will see all files from your windows directory.

-DK.
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[quantum]

DK,

You are loosing concentration. I already mentioned it has Fat 32 partitions. No NTFS.

And the problem is during installation. If I cannot install it in the first place how do I do all those fancy stuffs?
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[Guest]

Sorry for that. I thought you already did that. Anyway, no there is no problem with reading harddisk.

Boot from CD then at console mode(alt+ctrl+F2) or check F2 to F8.

Then type fdisk. You can see fdisk option from it's help at run time. Check your partition there.

I hope this help.

-DK.

p.s. You have delete one partition to install linux, and it needs atleast 4 partition. I've 9 partitions for Linux. My harddisk has total 16 partitions.

[quantum]

Quote:

Boot from CD then at console mode(alt+ctrl+F2) or check F2 to F8

That is how we figured that it is finding only two partitions.

Quote:

You have delete one partition to install linux, and it needs atleast 4 partition.

You mean there has to be at least 4 partitions to install linux?

I was wondering could it be because of the large partition size. Somewhere, sometime I read Linux has trouble with large partitions. I may be wrong. Anyway, we installed it in another computer that has a 12 gig harddisk. Still would be good to know what was wrong.
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