Baslinux mailing list

[qwms-avib AT dea.spamcon.org]

H. Kirya wrote:
>
> I have a 3099 Mb FAT32 primary DOS partiton
> I d like to create 500Mb or I gb ext2/3 for linux

If you do a complete defrag of your FAT32 partition
(to move all the data to front), you should be able 
to carve off 500mb (from the back) using FIPS 2.0, 
Partition Magic or something similar.  Afterwards, 
the DOS partition should still boot as normal 
(but it will be smaller).

> 2) only reason i needed gcc for now was to compile a 
> driver for the CNF401 10/100 fast ethernet cardbus 
> adaptor - its a PCI device I located and tried to use
> 
> insmod rtl8139.o
> 
> but was getting resource busy error messages

That's a PCMCIA card, right?  I don't think the normal
rtl8139 module is PCMCIA-capable.  You probably need a 
version designed for PCMCIA (? realtek_cb ?).  Unfortunately, 
it appears that Slackware 7.1 does not provide such a module.  

> however, ive seen a posting in this list that talks about 
> installing a pcmcia package 

Yes, the pcmcia.tgz package needs to be installed if you
want to use PCMCIA devices.  The package includes a
collection of PCMCIA-capable modules (rtl8139 is not
in the Slackware 7.1 collection).

> using cfdisk would be a final resort because it would be
> destructive partitioning right?

After resizing the FAT32 partition (with FIPS 2.0 or similar), 
you will need cfdisk to make the 500mb piece into a Linux 
native partition.

> needed to resize the partition without losing data for now

That is correct.  You should do that with a resizer that runs
from DOS.   

Cheers,
Steven