I Don't Understand Partition Question on Install

[Guest packfan]

Here's my situation. I have been running a dual boot Linspire/Windows XP system for about a year. I want to try a Gnome desktop distro, and Mandriva Spring 2007 worked better for me than anything else on LiveCD. In fact I'm booted on Live CD right now. My HD is already partitioned with a Windows partition, a Windows recovery partition (useless I'm sure, but there anyway), the Linspire partition, and a fourth Linux formatted but empty partition. There's also about 50 gig of unused space on that HD. All I want to do is install the Spring 2007 OS on my already formatted partition. (I have a separate external HD where I keep all my data files.) I don't want to do anything that's going to screw up any other OS, or prohibit me from booting to either Linspire or Windows. What should I select when I get the screen that says "The Partitioning Wizard found the following solutions: Use existing partitions; Erase entire disk; Use the free space on the Windows partition; Custom Disk Partitioning." After I've made that choice, what do I do next? If I choose existing partitions I see two choices, which I presume to be the two Linux partitions, one of which has a slash in the box....I presume that's Linspire. What do I do on that page? Or do I select "Custom Disk Partitioning"? When I pick that one I see a bar graph showing my HD with its four partitions and unused space. How do I get where I want to go? I'm not any sort of geek. Why can't the darn thing just ask me which partition I want to install Mandriva to and then do it? Does anybody test these things using real people? I'm kinda frustrated because I REALLY like the way this distro looks and feels, but can't afford any screwups when I install it. Thanks in advance to all for your patience and assistance. I'm looking forward to using Mandriva.

[orts]

1. Choose "Custom Disk Partitioning"

2. Click on the empty partition.

3. Now you'll have some options at left side on the screen, where you can choose to Delete or Resize this particually partition.

4. If I was in your situation, I would Resize the partition, mark the unallocated partiton (this is the grey partition) and next at the bottum on the screen, I would choose "Allocate Automatic"

5. Now you'll have 3 new partitions, one marked as root, this is the one with the /, one marked as /home, and a green partiton marked as /swap

 

I hope this helps you, but please ask again if you are unsure at anything.

[Guest packfan]

I hope this helps you, but please ask again if you are unsure at anything.

Thanks orts, and I appreciate you saying I can keep asking, because I'm still unsure about some of what you mean. You say I should choose the empty partition, but resize it. How big or small should I make it? It is currently 9 GB, which I thought would be enough to hold the OS and any temp swap files. Also, what do you mean when you say "mark the unallocated portion?" If I'm going to use the empty partition, what does "marking" the unallocated HD space do? Why do I want three new partitions? I don't need a separate partition for data files, as I have an external HD for that which is accessible by all the OS's. I apologize for being dense, but there's a big gulf between what an experienced user can understand, and what a newbie like me cannot misunderstand.

[arctic]

Welcome aboard and once again with more detail:

When you choose the Custom disk partitioning, you take complete control over the setup of your system.

You have on your harddisk some unallocated space as you say. Some 9 GB. When you use the partitioning tool, you will need at least one partition:

/ (which is the root partition)

It is recommended to have / and /home (where the /home user settings are stored) and a swap partition in case there is no swap already installed by Linspire.

 

A fully partitioned harddisk could look like this:

 

||Windows (NTFS) | Linspires / (ext3) | swap | Mandrivas / (ext3) | Mandrivas /home (ext3) ||

 

/ is recommended to have some 4-5 GB (thus you have enough room left for installing more applications later)

/home is recommended to be as big as you like. If you have an extra storage drive, 4 GB will be more than enough. TIP: A 4 GB size is useful if you want to backup your /home on DVD. Perfect size ;) .

swap should be twice as big as your RAM.

 

When you click on the empty/unallocated space (that is also called "marking the unallocated partition"), on the left hand there is a menu box. Select "Create new" and set up a / and a /home partition with the ext3 filesystem. When this is done, continue the installation. The external drive can be added later to Mandriva for storage purposes.

 

The reason for having / and /home is very simple: Additional security and better recovery options in case you break your system. If you brake the base system or if you plan to upgrade the system, you can thus reinstall the base and use the still intact config settings of your user (including bookmarks, mails, passwords, look & feel of desktop) at once. Saves you some nasty configuration after a reinstall.

[Guest packfan]

OK, Arctic. Thank you. I think I'm getting closer to understanding what to do, but I'm (sorry) going to keep taxing the patience of you good people until I"m sure. I don't think I've been fully clear about how my HD is currently partitioned. I'm wanting to use my current partitioned space in as much as possible without having to do any additional resizing or re-partitioning. But if more partitioning is necessary, I want to be sure I do what I should.

 

I have a 80 GB harddrive. There are currently four primary partitions. The Windows XP (NTFS) partition is 15 GB. The Linspire partition (ReiserFS) is 10 GB. The Windows Recovery partition (FAT 32) is 7 GB. And finally, there is ReiserFS formatted partition of 9GB that is empty. The rest of the HD (about 40 GB actually) is just unallocated/unformatted space. I'm not clear whether you guys think I should use the 9GB ReiserFS partition already there, or if I should use the unallocated space, create (or ask the partition manager to create) a new partition(s) from that, and delete the empty Reiser partition, which I guess I would have to do since I can't have more than four primary partitions, right? That plan is starting to make more sense to me...at least then I'll know for sure that it won't be touching the other OS's or their partitions. I'm beginning to understand that Mandriva does things a little differently from Linspire, which doesn't create separate partitions for / and /home. I gotta admit that was throwing me. If I really am understanding it right, when I first chose "Use existing partitions" it was going to put / on the 10 GB partition, and /home on the 9 GB partition---which would have completely zapped my Linspire OS and made me very unhappy. Sure glad I cancelled out of that.

 

So I should select the big chunk of unallocated space, ask the partition manager to create new partition(s), format them with ext3, and get rid of that 9GB Reiser partition. Is that right?

 

Oh, and one other question: will Mandriva see my Linspire OS and include it in my boot up options, or will I have to rewrite the grub file?

[Guest packfan]

Well, it's installed, it's running, and I'm happy for now. Now to find out if I can really boot to Linspire.

[arctic]

You will most probably have to configure Mandrivas bootmanager for booting into Linspire, but that is an easy task. Do the following (added is a detailed explanation, so do not wonder about the length of this post):

 

Open a terminal window (black monitor icon) and log in as root (type su and enter root password). Now type

fdisk -l

 

The result could look like this:

Platte /dev/sda: 80.0 GByte, 80060424192 Byte
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9733 cylinders
Einheiten = Zylinder von 16065 × 512 = 8225280 Bytes

  Gerät  boot.	 Anfang		Ende	 Blöcke   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *		   1		1288	10345828+  83  Linux
/dev/sda3			1289		1543	 2048287+  82  Linux Swap / Solaris
/dev/sda4			1544		9733	65786175	5  Erweiterte
/dev/sda5			1544		9733	65786143+  83  Linux

Platte /dev/sdb: 160.0 GByte, 160041885696 Byte
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Einheiten = Zylinder von 16065 × 512 = 8225280 Bytes

  Gerät  boot.	 Anfang		Ende	 Blöcke   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *		   1		1275	10241406   83  Linux
/dev/sdb2			1276	   19457   146046915   83  Linux

 

the "fdisk -l" command lists all partitions you have. Now type

df

 

this will tell you exactly, which of the listed partitions belong to Mandriva. You might get something like this as a result.

Dateisystem		  1K-Blöcke   Benutzt Verfügbar Ben% Eingehängt auf
/dev/sda1			 10021540   3071252   6433000  33% /
/dev/sda5			 63725672  14157768  46278600  24% /home
tmpfs				   485000		 0	485000   0% /dev/shm

As you see, sdb1 and sdb2 do not belong to my Fedora installation (they are my Mandriva partitions), while sda1 to sda5 belong to Fedora (sda1= /root, sda3 = swap, sda4= extended partition that holds sda5 = /home).

 

You should get now an idea, which partition is your Linspire partition. It can be a sda/sdb/sdc/... or hda/hdb/hdc/... entry, depending on your harddisk type (sata is listed as sdX usually in Mandriva, while ata is listed as hdX)

 

Now after this little lesson about partitions, let's add Linspire to Mandrivas bootloader. :) If I am too fast or if you don't understand something I wrote above, just tell me.

 

Knowing now, which partition is your Linspire partition, you will have to mount the partition (mounting=make the partition accessible). For this, you will need the mount command. It can look e.g. like this:

mount -t reiserfs /dev/hda4 /mnt

 

this means: Mount the partition with the reiserfs-filesystem that is located on /dev/hda4 to Mandrivas folder /mnt. (for an ext3 filesystem, replace reiserfs with ext3 in the mount-command). If no errors are reported, the whole Linspire partition will be visible (and thus accessible) in Mandriva. You can take a look at it with the filemanager (konqueror or nautilus,...) if you like.

What we will do now is some simply copy and paste job.

Open Linspires menu.lst file, which holds the information for the bootloader with an editor. Let's use e.g. kate:

kate /mnt/boot/grub/menu.lst

There should be something similar to this:

title Fedora (2.6.22.4-65.fc7)
	root (hd0,0)
	kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22.4-65.fc7 ro root=LABEL=/1 rhgb quiet
	initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.22.4-65.fc7.img

This is the important part that Mandriva needs. Now let us copy it over. Mark the entry, right click on the marked area and copy it. Now open in the terminal window a new tab from the menu. Log in as root there, too. Now open Mandrivas menu.lst file

kate /boot/grub/menu.lst

Now add the Linspire entry that you just copied below Mandrivas boot entry but before the Windows boot-entry. Save the file and exit. Finally unmount the Linspire partition:

umount -t reiserfs /dev/hda4 /mnt

Exit and you are done. You should have a working triple-boot system.

 

If it doesn't work, then post both systems menu.lst files, so we can fix things.

 

Good luck and have some fun. :)