LILO

[Paul_Melson@keykertusa.com]

>So my first question is...  When I created the /boot, swap and /root
>partitions during the install, I was not certain what order I created 
them
>in...  does this matter?  Should the /boot be the first partition, and if
>it's not does the LILO have troubles finding it?

Nope.  As long as /boot is on /dev/hda, it doesn't matter.  I can be 
/dev/hda1 or /dev/hda9, it's really not important.  However, when you 
created the partition, you should double-check (w/ fdisk) that whichever 
hda# partition /boot resides on is flagged as being bootable.


>If partition position does matter, is there a way to move the partitions
>around once I'm running from a floppy boot?

Not without removing them and recreating them (toasting any existing 
data).  But like I said, it really doesn't matter as long as the right 
information is in /etc/fstab and /etc/lilo.conf and the partition /boot is 
on is bootable.  Also, any time you make changes to lilo.conf or any of 
the files on the /boot partition, you must run `lilo` so it can update 
your system's MBR.


>Here are the partitions I created in no specific order:
>/boot - 16MB - Linux Native
>swap - 16MB - swap
>/root - 1.8 G - Linux Native (can grow)

Let me go on record as saying your /boot and swap partitions are too 
small.  I mean, it CAN work with those sizes, but you run into two 
problems.  First, your swap partition should be, bare minimum, twice the 
size of your system's total RAM.  Therefore, if you have 256MB of RAM, you 
should create a 512MB swap partition.  There are actual algorithms people 
use to determine the best-fit size for a system, but this is an easy 
rule-of-thumb that you can use.  Anything less will cause system 
performance problems.  Second, your /boot partition should be probably 
50-100MB.  16MB might be just enough to scrape by, but will leave no space 
for you to add new kernels from RedHat's updates site or compile a new 
(and larger) kernel yourself.

Hope that helps.

PaulM