Linux and FreeBSD Dual-Booting Partitioning

C

Cinolt

Hello, I have Arch Linux installed on my i386 desktop and I want to setup dual-booting with FreeBSD. There are a few questions I want to ask just to be certain I won't screw this up.

I have one 80GB hard disk that I want to partition for both operating systems. My current partioning is as follows:

Code: 
/dev/sda1 /boot 107MB
/dev/sda2 swap 271MB
/dev/sda3 / 7872MB
/dev/sda4 /home 71807MB

Would I be correct in saying that I would have to remove one of the current partitions, probably /boot, create an extended partition and have FreeBSD installed there with logical partitions? The result being:

Code: 
/dev/sda1 ext
/dev/sda2 swap 271MB
/dev/sda3 / 7872MB
/dev/sda4 /home 50000MB
/dev/sda5 / 1000MB
/dev/sda6 swap 271MB
/dev/sda7 /usr (the rest)

Also, would I be correct in assuming that when running FreeBSD manually mounting /dev/sda4 to a directory other than /home would enable access to its files?
 
You cannot install FreeBSD on an extended partition. It has to be a primary partition.
 
I'm new to the process; could you please elaborate? Should I switch it so the Linux partitions would be /dev/sda5 through /dev/sda7 and the FreeBSD partitions would be /dev/sda2 through /dev/sda4?
 
Cinolt said:
I'm new to the process; could you please elaborate? Should I switch it so the Linux partitions would be /dev/sda5 through /dev/sda7 and the FreeBSD partitions would be /dev/sda2 through /dev/sda4 ?
Click to expand...
Yes. Except with FreeBSD, you only need one partition (/dev/sda2). FreeBSD has a "sub" partition system called BSD labels, so the one partition you give FreeBSD will get further subdivided by using a BSD label. If you enable BSD label support in your linux kernel, these will probably appear after your extended partitions (sda8, sda9, etc.).
 
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