Hard Disk Partitioning, cfdisk & multi-boot

[Necropolis]

Hullo all,

1.)
I have on hand a 60 GB HDD. The first 18 GB is occupied by win2k pro. I've been thinking of installing Debian GNU/Linux on the next 20 GB of HDD space. Some folks have told me that I should create a few partitions for Linux i.e. just in case anything untowards happen e.g. OS crash. I'm toying with the idea of setting aside 100 MB for boot (wonder if this is sufficient) and a Linux swap partition of 1000 MB. However, I'm not sure what to do with regards to the other directories e.g. home/ (only one other user on this box), /usr, /var and others? What would a good partition layout scheme be like given the above? Any suggestions?

2.) I will be using cfdisk to partition the HDD i.e. the free space available for Linux But I'm curious as to what Primary and Logical partitions are. What are they? How would choosing to install Linux or for that matter FreeBSD in either affect my Linux/FreeBSD installation and win2k?

3.)
I'm also planning to install FreeBSD 5.1 on this same HDD for which I have allocated 15 GB of space for it. I plan to only install FreeBSD only after I have installed Debian. Does anyone forsee problems relating to partitioning, booting into any of the 3 OSes i.e. Win2K, Debian & FreeBSD? Would and could FreeBSD erase both my windoze and Debian partitions? Can the 3 OSes co-exist with one another peacefully on the same HDD?

TIA

[Ricky]

You can have have multiple os on same hardisk , It is no problem. Now for partitioning hardisk for a linux distro is not a hard job. But it depends on few factors that such as how many users accounts are going to be set on the machine, wht will the main use of the machine etc.

So if you are on network environment and will create various users to use your machine as server then make sure that your HOME partition  is big enough. If you are going to use it as ftp server then create separate partition for ftp accounts to have flexibility in future.  For boot partition.. 100 mb is enough , infact i have only 49 mb as boot partition..
For swap it was earlier proposed to have atleast twice as the RAM in your system but now it not a big concern as hd space is now not a big problem.. just allot wht you think.. 1000 mb is more than enough.
Now simplest way to assign a root partition and it automatically create subdirectories of var , sbin , usr and more..  just make sparate partition for those which you think will need more space in future..

[aaa]

For partitioning, see the Partition-Howto
Remember that it is a bit out of date, the 'swap should be 2 times your ram' recommendation was for back when machines had 64mb.

The different types of partitions (primary,extended,logical) are to get around the old 4 partition limitation. See the Partition-Howto for details.

BSD, Linux, & Win should do well together. During the installations, you will be asked to do things like alter partitions and install bootloaders. These are the only things that can affect the other os's (unless you install to the wrong partition), and you have the option to do or not do these things. Since you appear to have already partitioned your hd, you may be able to skip the partitioning steps. You will probably only need to install the Debian bootloader, so you can skip the bootloader part in the BSD install.

[Necropolis]

A zillion thanks Ricky & aaa.  

[wombat53]

What will be (was?)  the result of necropolois' install of his second LINUX (BSD 5.1) into a separate LINUX partition, given that he will already have a  Linux Bootloader already  in place, from the Debian install (am not familar with that bootloader) ? Will the second  install accomodate itself to the existing Debian bootloader in some way?
I have posted a similar question (but mrde long-winded) elsewhere here recently.
Thanks