Let's say I have two large EIDE hard drives, and I want to install FreeBSD, Linux, and Windows® 95 on them.
Here is how I might do it using these hard disks:
/dev/wd0 (first physical hard disk)
/dev/wd1 (second hard disk)
Both disks have 1416 cylinders.
I boot from a MS-DOS® or Windows 95 boot disk that contains the FDISK.EXE utility and make a small 50 MB primary partition (35-40 for Windows 95, plus a little breathing room) on the first disk. Also create a larger partition on the second hard disk for my Windows applications and data.
I reboot and install Windows 95 (easier said than done) on the C: partition.
The next thing I do is install Linux. I am not sure about all the distributions of Linux, but Slackware includes LILO (see Section 2). When I am partitioning out my hard disk with Linux fdisk, I would put all of Linux on the first drive (maybe 300 MB for a nice root partition and some swap space).
After I install Linux, and are prompted about installing LILO, make sure that I install it on the boot sector of my root Linux partition, not in the MBR (master boot record).
The remaining hard disk space can go to FreeBSD. I also make sure that my FreeBSD root slice does not go beyond the 1024th cylinder. (The 1024th cylinder is 528 MB into the disk with our hypothetical 720 MB disks). I will use the rest of the hard drive (about 270 MB) for the /usr and / slices if I wish. The rest of the second hard disk (size depends on the amount of my Windows application/data partition that I created in step 1) can go to the /usr/src slice and swap space.
When viewed with the Windows 95 fdisk utility, my hard drives should now look something like this:
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Display Partition Information
Current fixed disk drive: 1
Partition Status Type Volume_Label Mbytes System Usage
C: 1 A PRI DOS 50 FAT** 7%
2 A Non-DOS (Linux) 300 43%
Total disk space is 696 Mbytes (1 Mbyte = 1048576 bytes)
Press Esc to continue
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Display Partition Information
Current fixed disk drive: 2
Partition Status Type Volume_Label Mbytes System Usage
D: 1 A PRI DOS 420 FAT** 60%
Total disk space is 696 Mbytes (1 Mbyte = 1048576 bytes)
Press Esc to continue
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** May say FAT16 or FAT32 if you are using the OEM SR2 update. See Section 2.Install FreeBSD. I make sure to boot with my first hard disk set at “NORMAL” in the BIOS. If it is not, I will have the enter my true disk geometry at boot time (to get this, boot Windows 95 and consult Microsoft Diagnostics (MSD.EXE), or check your BIOS) with the parameter hd0=1416,16,63 where 1416 is the number of cylinders on my hard disk, 16 is the number of heads per track, and 63 is the number of sectors per track on the drive.
When partitioning out the hard disk, I make sure to install Boot Easy on the first disk. I do not worry about the second disk, nothing is booting off of it.
When I reboot, Boot Easy should recognize my three bootable partitions as DOS (Windows 95), Linux, and BSD (FreeBSD).