The plan is... WinXP and SUSE 10.1 dual boot

[phich65]

Okay I have the following hard drives to work on as a blank(ish) canvas
(I've used linux style volume labels under WinXP)

(disk 1) HDA - 40GB
partioned as -> HDA1 - 40GB
(disk 2) HDB- 160GB
partioned as -> HDB1 - 160GB (presently contains ~30GB backup of the rest of the PC)
(disk 0) SDA - 80GB
partioned as -> SDA1 - 80GB (presently split into 4 primary partitions of ~20GB each, but I plan to wipe them out and restart for the Linux install))


The idea is to put a fresh install of WinXP on HDA1 and SUSE on SDA1, leaving the 160G drive as a shared space in FAT32.

Note: SDA1 isn't actually a SCSI drive it's hung off a SIlicon Image ATA/133 controller (supports upto 4 IDE drives)

I've used LILO (on a floppy) before to dual boot between SUSE and Win2K, so I'm not a complete newbie but it was quite a while ago... so I need a bit of a refresher on the best way to partition up the Linux drive.

Linux partitions... as best I can remember

/boot - SDA1 - 100M (to ensure it's within 1024 block limit ?)
/ (root) - SDA2 - ~20G
swap - SDA3 - 1G (double the installed memory)
/usr - SDA4 - ~45G
/var - SDA5 - ~10G
/tmp - SDA6 - ~200M

/home (~60G) can go on HDB (the 160G drive) if I split that into at least 2 partitions.

Hows that look? alternate suggetions please

fish

[TheBigPhish]

The idea is to put a fresh install of WinXP on HDA1 and SUSE on SDA1, leaving the 160G drive as a shared space in FAT32.

Ok, so what do you plan to use to bootload this monster? I always recommend using the BIOS to do this...if you can set your bios to boot off the secondary HD or anything i would...i have XP on /dev/hda1 and debian on /dev/hdb1, using grub to boot from...the bios looks there and bam! no problem boots up bootloader and gives me my options...and if it breaks and i need REALLY need XP access...i just BIOS the settings back to /dev/hda1 and there i go, back in a XP world.

Note: SDA1 isn't actually a SCSI drive it's hung off a SIlicon Image ATA/133 controller (supports upto 4 IDE drives)

I've used LILO (on a floppy) before to dual boot between SUSE and Win2K, so I'm not a complete newbie but it was quite a while ago... so I need a bit of a refresher on the best way to partition up the Linux drive.

Linux partitions... as best I can remember

/boot - SDA1 - 100M (to ensure it's within 1024 block limit ?)
/ (root) - SDA2 - ~20G
swap - SDA3 - 1G (double the installed memory)
/usr - SDA4 - ~45G
/var - SDA5 - ~10G
/tmp - SDA6 - ~200M

/home (~60G) can go on HDB (the 160G drive) if I split that into at least 2 partitions.

Hows that look? alternate suggetions please

fish

That scheme will work, but i would be careful about mounting /usr separate (i use debian / slack - and some of the stuff that the boot procs need reside there, and if anything goes foul and for some reason that /usr is not mounted, i get foulups with the boot proc - i mount /usr/local elsewhere instead) I don't think you will have to worry about the 1024 sector problem with booting, that is only if you have DOS doing the booting, if you boot from grub / lilo you needn't worry. I would say this if i was partitioning your drive . . .

/boot = 100 mb (reiserFS or ext3)
/ = 20 gb (reiserFS or ext3)
/usr/local = 30 gb(reiserFS or ext3)
/var = 20 gb (you get the picture)
/tmp = 8 gb (...)
swap = always at the end for me...so if i have to increase swapspace i can scalp off /tmp and not feel guilty...plus they are two rather forgiving partitions to work with.

/home = on /dev/hdb (or what ever you called it) and MOST DEFINATELY FAT32!!!! works great with BOTH systems, and you can create partitions greater than 2gb if you use mkfs on the Linux system, XP i think limits the size of the partition that you can CREATE / not use.

[phich65]

Cheers, looks good to me

Nice point about the /usr & usr/local and putting 'swap' at the end

I was planning on using GRUB to boot the beastie, just need to do a bit more reading on how to make GRUB do the job.

I'm pretty sure the WinXP 'system' partition is presently on 'disk 1' HDA.

Though there's no reason, other than laziness, why I can't swap the drives around on their IDE connections so that;

disk 0 = HDA = 40GB -> WinXP
disk 1 = HDB = 80GB -> Linux
disk 2 = SDA = 160GB -> shared space

That may even save me trouble with needing to get linux to boot off the Silicon Image ATA/133 controller - but it's possible the BIOS does all that anyway

Thanks

fish

[devils casper]

Hi !

best way is ... plug in second disk ( Linux ) as primary master.. unplug other two disks... install Linux. after installation, plug-in second (windows) and third disk(storage). keep Linux disk as primary Master... edit GRUB.conf file and add an entry for windows in it... its Dual Boot now........

actually with this method, your windows disk will remain intact... you didn't change/add anything in its master boot record..... its the safest way...



casper

[TheBigPhish]

Casper, that's essentially the same thing i suggested, but yours actually involves removing the drives (mine involves booting off drives other than DISK0 in BIOS) He may not be able to do that, as he didn't know if his BIOS will let him boot off an offboard ATA controller, which is what his 3rd drive is. We both have the same idea, leaving the XP alone...but my solution is to make the BIOS boot to the 2nd drive, install grub there, let the bootloader find the XP partition and go from there...allowing you a quick f10 / del / f2 (whathaveyou) jump into the BIOS settings to revert back to good ol' in an emergency booting from the other disk. I am currently doing that with one computer that has XP / 98SE / DOS 6.2 / Debian and i have NO problems (did take some VERY careful partitioning to get all four to boot)

[devils casper]

Hi TheBigPhish !

agreed ! Linux tends to install itself in Primary Disk...specially GRUB. in all distros, default loaction for GRUB is /dev/hda, MBR of Primary Disk. for newbies, its a bit confusing... i came across a lot of cases where users installed GRUB in Windows Disk's MBR and later suffered a lot.....

well ! both methods work fine......
My Machine has XP + seven Linux distros...



casper

[phich65]

Since I'm planning to wipe the entire computer and re-install from scratch leaving XP alone is not exactly relevant...

I guess it would be better to add a few more details to the proposed config.

What I have now...

Pri Master = 40GB -> WinXP
Pri Slave = 160GB -> back up of entire computer
Sec Master = DVD Writer
Sec Slave = no drive

ATA1 Master = 80GB -> virtually empty drive split into 4 partitions
ATA1 Slave = no drive
ATA2 Master = DVD-ROM
ATA2 Slave = no drive

After swapping stuff around...

Pri Master = 80GB -> Linux
Pri Slave = DVD Writer
Sec Master = 40GB -> WinXP
Sec Slave = no drive

ATA1 Master = 160GB -> shared space
ATA1 Slave = no drive
ATA2 Master = DVD-ROM
ATA2 Slave = no drive

(Note; ATA1 and ATA2 are the two channels of the SiImage ATA/133 controller)

But the above depends on whether I can get all the relevant IDE cables to reach...

Then for the Linux disk, I guess the partitions will be

/boot = 100M
/ (root) = 25G
/usr/local = 25G
/var = 20G
/tmp = ~4G
swap = 1G

Adds up to ~75GB, so if I get more than that as usable space on the drive I'll make /tmp or /var bigger.

I'm not worried about manually creating the partitions either, quite happy to get my hands dirty with fdisk or diskdruid - I've used both before.

Plan was to wipe and re-install WinXP on Sec. Master, get that going so if needs be I can boot back into that.
Then burn the Suse 10.1 ISO file i'm downloading to DVD using Nero, then install it on the Pri. Master
Mess around with GRUB and there I have it... a dual boot beastie

LOL that's the plan anyway.

fish

[TheBigPhish]

agreed ! Linux tends to install itself in Primary Disk...specially GRUB. in all distros, default loaction for GRUB is /dev/hda, MBR of Primary Disk. for newbies, its a bit confusing... i came across a lot of cases where users installed GRUB in Windows Disk's MBR and later suffered a lot.....

which is EXACTLY why i recommend not touching the XP MBR at all, install grub somewhere else and use a rather simple and (hopefully) always available BIOS failsafe. (If a person is gonna install Linux on a computer, they damn well better be able to understand the BIOS boot order...that's like someone planning a cross country car trip and they don't know how to drive) I don't expect every person to know how to build a computer from scratch, but i think that they can learn the keyboard aspects of interacting with it.

All in all, either of our methods work...mine just doesn't involve opening the case. Great for low profile mounts or embedded systems.

My Machine has XP + seven Linux distros..

but no DOS? you haven't lived until you manage to make grub play nice with DOS. And all that for one game.

[phich65]

/home = on /dev/hdb (or what ever you called it) and MOST DEFINATELY FAT32!!!! works great with BOTH systems, and you can create partitions greater than 2gb if you use mkfs on the Linux system, XP i think limits the size of the partition that you can CREATE / not use.

Grrr... SUSE setup won't allow me to format this as FAT32...

Error message reads...

"FAT filesystem used for system mount point (/, /usr, /opt, /var, /home...)
This is not possible"

I used expert partioner to shrink the existing 153GB partion so that I would get ~40GB to use with Linux, and as you suggested BigPhish tried to format as FAT32...

Any ideas? Trying to leave it as 0x0C Win95 FAT32 format still won't let me set the mount point as /home.

For now I'm going with RieserFS on there instead, as I selected that for all the other partitions.

fish

[devils casper]

i never heard that Linux can be installed on FAT32 partition....

SuSe default format is 'reiserfs'. select that only. why dont you leave it as unformatted/free space. SuSe installer will take care of formatting and partitioning.



casper