Installing Debian 4 after WinXP

[Niels Olson]

Hello,

I botched a Debian 4 install and need some help. I started installing Debian Etch on my windows box. Initial state: Windows has data on three partitions on two disks and recognizes a fourth empty partition:

hda1 60.2 GB - C:
hda2 59.8 GB - H:
hdb1 79.ish GB - D:
hdb2 79.ish GB - E:

BIOS boot sequence: FD, CD, HDD, Network

I wanted to install Etch on hda2 and leave the rest formatted ntfs.

Etch's installer gave me the options of partitioning a whole disk, three different ways, or manually partitioning the disk. So I chose to manually partition the disk. The graphical installer gave me the option of (this may not look like the dialogue, but you get the jist)

hda1 Partition #1 (primary)
hda2 Partition #5 (logical)
hdb1 Partition #1 (primary)
hdb2 Partition #5 (logical)

I selected hda2, planning to split it into swap and root. First I chose to reformat the partition and turn the boot flag on.

The installer said I would need to write these changes before proceeding.

Okay.

Hmmm, stilll a 59.8 GB partition, but reiser and Boot flag on. Okay. Resize to 10 GB, this will be my swap space.

Failed. Abort or go back?

Oh, man. Go back. Back all the way out. Take the CD out. Reboot. BIOS loads and drum roll please, failed to start OS. Not even a blinking cursor.

Use the BIOS setup to change boot sequence: HDD, FP, CD, Network. No joy.

Changed the boot sequence back to FP, CD, HDD, Network. No joy.

Put the Debian CD back in. It gives me the same options; hda2 is still reiser and boot. Back out.

Put Ubuntu live CD in, install to my dorked up hda2, which Ubuntu 6.06 installs, happily, in all it's orange splendor, and installs grub. Everything works. Windose XP, with Creative Suite 2, works. (don't ask me why I got CS2 is Windows. The last few years have been a long, strange trip).

I don't want Ubuntu. I want Debian, mainly because a rather esoteric client wants some page-flow and design work done on a long-running OpenACS install and I need to practice on something besides the live version before I go to the site in June. I need to install AOLServer, threaded TCL, PostgreSQL, and OpenACS; the OpenACS community seems to favor Debian. Sounds like for good reason.

Suggestions? Where did I go wrong? How can I fix this?

Regards,

Niels Olson
http://nielsolson.us/

[devils casper]

Hi Niels Olson,

Welcome to the LinuxForums.

its not possible to create more than 4 Primary Partitions. Harddisk has 3 Primary Partitions ( hda1, 3 and 4 ) already and Debian installer is trying to make two more.
download GParted LiveCD OR any other Partition Manager you like, and create Extended Partition. there is no limit on the number of Logical Partitions in Extended.

[Niels Olson]

Harddisk has 3 Primary Partitions ( hda1, 3 and 4 ) already and Debian installer is trying to make two more.
download GParted LiveCD OR any other Partition Manager you like, and create Extended Partition. there is no limit on the number of Logical Partitions in Extended.

Devils_casper, thanks for the quick response. Ah, I forgot the whole-disk partition, hda. So right now I have hda, hda1, and hda2. And I can only have four. But if I delete hda2 then I'm back down to two, hda and hda1, so I should be able to make two new partitions, say hda2 and hda3, right? The rest of my questions are still hanging out there for anyone who wants to jump in. In the mean time, I'm downloading GParted now.

So I'm clear on this . . . with Gparted I'm going to set up an extended partition, and within that I'm going to set up swap and root, and probably /home, and then I'll load debian and skip the partitioning?

[devils casper]

hda is your Harddisk's name and it doesn't represent any partition.
hda1 is first partition and hda2 is second and so on...
you have hda1, hda2 and hda3 right now.
delete hda3 and create Extended Partition out of free space left.
create Logical Partitions in Extended Partition. Logical Partitions number starts from hda5. hda4 is reserved for third Primary partition.

hda1, hda2 -- Primary Partitions
hda3 --- Extended
hda4 --- number Reserved for future use
hda5 to hdax... Logical Partitions.

if you hav any confusion, boot up from GParted LiveCD, open its terminal and post the output of 'fdisk -l' command. i want to check your existing partition structure.

[Niels Olson]

Appreciate your help, here it is:

gparted ~ # fdisk -l
Disk /dev/hda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 53 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units  = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device  Boot       Start        End       Blocks      ID   System
/dev/hda1    *            1       7317     58773771       7   HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2              7318      14593     58444470       f   W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5              7318       8612     10402056      82   Linux swap / Solari
/dev/hda6              8613      14593     48042351      83   Linux


Disk /dev/hdb: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device  Boot       Start        End       Blocks      ID   System
/dev/hdb1                 1       9795     78678306       7   HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb2              9796      19457     77610015       f   W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5              9796      19457     77609983+     82   HPFS/NTFS
gparted ~ #

[devils casper]

Partition structure is good. start installation. select hda5 as SWAP and hda6 as / (root) in partition section during installation.

you can shrink Extended Partition ( hda2 ) anytime and create two more Primary partitions. you wont need that though. Unlike Windows, Linux doesn't care about partition type. you can install it in Logical Partition too. i have six Linux distros + WIndows XP installed in single harddisk.

[Niels Olson]

Thanks, truly. I have three other computers dual booting; one has XP, SuSE and Ubuntu, and another SuSE that's not registered with grub. This threw me for a loop, though. Thanks.