Ubuntu Assistance - Now with GRUB issues!

Descendant X

So I'm attempting a triple-boot system and I've get XP and Vista installed so far. I went to install Ubuntu 7.10 this morn to discover that I couldn't create all three partitions for the /, swap, and main drives. I've got 35 GB of unused space on my OS drive (~60GB SATA drive) and the bloody thing won't let me create a fifth partition! When I create the other two partitions the remaining space is displayed in the formatting screen as being "unusable."

I do have a 250GB IDE drive with some unused space on it, but I'm worried that is I start mucking around with it I'll lose all of the data that I have on it, and that would not be acceptable. If I can't create a fifth partition, than I do have the option of dusting off an old 2GB drive that I have to use for either swap or /, but I'd rather not.

Any ideas?

MKR

Let me guess: 4 regular partitions, not a single extended?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_(computing)#Primary_.28or_Logical.29

Descendant X

Okay, so what should I do to remedy that?

MKR

The only way I know is to delete a primary partition and turn it in to an extended, and go from there. I haven't done much with partitions in years, so I don't know of any alternate methods.

vonPoonBurGer

Descendant X wrote: »

Okay, so what should I do to remedy that?

You're allowed at most 4 primary partitions. If you need more than 4, make the 4th an Extended partition. Inside the extended partition, you can create additional logical partitions. An extended partition is basically a container that allows you to go past the 4-partition limit by giving you the ability to nest logical partitions inside it. Windows can't boot from an Extended partition, but Linux will. So keep your current partitions one, two and three (which would all be Primary), blow away partition four, create a new partition four that's an extended partition, then inside that extended partition, create however many logical partitions you need. I think you'd be able to do all that from the Manual disk partitioning option of the Ubuntu installer, but if it doesn't give you the choice of creating an extended partition, you can use GPartEd from a live CD. This screenshot gives you some idea of what it should look like, except you'd have one extra primary partition, and and an extra logical partitions under the extended partition.

Descendant X

Thanks for the help, guys. I really appreciate it.

EDIT: I got the install to work using the Extended partitions, but now GRUB doesn't boot up. Instead the Vista startup menu remains and I can't boot into Ubuntu. Any ideas?