Logical Partition Install

[adri_ht_]

I have done a lot of search regarding this topic, but still I can find a solid answer. Anyways I hope you guys can clarify this for me.

This is how my partition table looks like:

*To bad I can't post uploaded images yet...

sda1: manufacturer's drivers (Primary Part)
sda2: Windows Vista (Primary Part)
sda3: Windows XP (Primary Part)
sda4: Extended Partition
sda5: Boot (Logical Part)
sda6: Swap (Logical Part)
sda7: Root (Logical Part)

My questions is, should I stick to a single partition installation or this way is correct? Thx

[imported_=Tron=]

sda5: Boot (Logical Part)
sda6: Swap (Logical Part)
sda7: Root (Logical Part)

If all of these partitions are reserved for BT3 I really can't see the reason to divide them over three different logical partitions as one would suffice quite nicely.

If I on the other hand completely misunderstood your question and you are asking if you should get rid of all other partitions you have and install BT3 on a sole primary one there should be no need for that as long as you use a bootloader, lilo for example.

[adri_ht_]

Thanks for the reply Tron. I have done a lot more research in the topic. It seems like my setup won't work with Lilo since a Logical Partition cannot be marked as Active. How will the MBR call sda5 which supposedly has my boot manager LILO? Am I wrong?

My other option which seems more safer is use EasyBCD (which is currently booting XP and Vista or any other boot manager) and write LILO to the Extended Partition Boot Sector instead. Some posts out there address this procedure but they are not that clear I would say. I guess I'll keep up with my homework in google, but additional help will be appreciated. Thx

[imported_=Tron=]

Thanks for the reply Tron. I have done a lot more research in the topic. It seems like my setup won't work with Lilo since a Logical Partition cannot be marked as Active. How will the MBR call sda5 which supposedly has my boot manager LILO? Am I wrong?

I currently run my system using the following partition table and successfully use Lilo to choose which operating system to boot into and have lilo written to the MBR:

hda1:manufacturer recover partition | PRIMARY | FAT32
hda2:Windows XP | PRIMARY | NTFS
hda3:OSX | PRIMARY | HFS+
hda4:extended partition
hda5:Data partition | LOGICAL | NTFS
hda6:BackTrack 3 Final | LOGICAL | EXT3

[adri_ht_]

I guess LILO does work from a Logical Partition then! Anyways, I just ran into a nice post on justlinux which uses Vista's bcdedit.exe to boot Linux which avoids the process of writing to the MBR.

Thanks again for your time.

[adri_ht_]

Yes, I have my triple boot system up and running; vista is loading all 3 OS without problem. Now, when I was booting from the live cd, I had to turn off acpi to prevent the system from hanging. The same issue is hunting me with my HDD installation. To get it to work I hit escape when LILO is loaded and then I enter Linux acpi=off. Of course do not want to be doing this all the time, so I started looking into configuring LILO to automatically turn it off. This is what I tried and it didn't work:

# Linux bootable partition config begins
image = /boot/vmlinuz
root = /dev/sda7
label = Linux
read-only
append = "acpi=off"
initrd = /boot/splash.initrd
# Linux bootable partition config ends

Thx