Dual boot Unbuntu on FC5

[pauld]

I am attempting to install Unbuntu on an FC5 system. Unbuntu installation failed on a 20Gb partition saying that /var was not big enough. Below is my current partition layout. I would like to be able to keep and/or share the current information in my /home/xxx dir. Any suggestions would be appreciated, I am still a relative newbie at this.



Thanks,

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB,

Device Boot label
/dev/sda1 101MB /boot
/dev/sda2 20GB /
/dev/sda3 20GB /usr
/dev/sda4 111GB Extended
/dev/sda5 20GB /home
/dev/sda6 20GB /usr/local
/dev/sda7 512MB swap
/dev/sda8 512MB swap
/dev/sda9 512MB swap
/dev/sda10 20GB /opt
/dev/sda11 20GB /media/sda11
/dev/sda12 * 28GB /media/sda12

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sdb: 160.0 GB,

Device Boot Label
/dev/sdb1 * 50GB HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb2 10GB FAT32
/dev/sdb3 20GB linux
/dev/sdb4 73GB Extended
/dev/sdb5 20GB /var
/dev/sdb6 20GB Linux
/dev/sdb7 512MB swap
/dev/sdb8 512MB swap
/dev/sdb9 512MB swap
/dev/sdb10 20GB Linux
/dev/sdb11 10GB /tmp

I'm not exactly sure what's in sda11 or sda12

The original plan was to dual boot Fedora and XP, but I am considering using VMware workstation to run XP.

[devils casper]

why are you creating separate partitions ? i prefer only Home on separate partition.

EDIT: three SWAP partitions ???




casper

[pauld]

If I combine some of the partitions is there an easy way of moving the directories or to I have to reinstall fc5?

[devils casper]

okkk... i thought you are replacing FC5 with Ubuntu. well ! i must say, your partition structure is very bad. you have two harddisks... where you wanna install Ubuntu ?

post the output of

fdisk -l (.. its small 'L' )




casper

[pauld]

Doesn't matter since I have space on both drives. the layout that I posted was taken from fdisk excluding system and start/end blocks the partition sizes are rounded to MB/GB. I was attempting to install Unbuntu to sdb3 when the install failed. Sys ram is 1.5g so I doubled it as recommended and allocated it to the 2 drives

[devils casper]

you already have 1.5 GB RAM... more than enough. you dont even need SWAP partition. i have only 512MB RAM and i created 750 MB SWAP space. system never used more that 30% of SWAP space till now.

best way to install.... delete partition you created for Ubuntu. leave it as unpartitioned/free space.... no formatting... during installation, select "unpartitioned/free space" and let installer create and format partitions.... you can delete SWAP partition coz you have a lot of RAM. Ubuntu will recognize FC5 partitions and mount those for you. you can share data in FC5 home partition.




casper

[pauld]

does each distro need its own / dir, during install ubuntu named all partitions as /media/sda1...12 and /media/sdb1...12 including /boot, /, /home and will not install without /. Is it possible to move dir's from one partition to another.

When i attempted to load ubuntu before and specified /sdb3 as /, the install failed and I was unable to reboot into FC5, had to use Knoppix - QTparted to erase ubuntu to restart fedora

still getting the hang of this.

[devils casper]

why are you creating partitions yourself ? let installer do it. / (root) is the main partition of Linux.
check this link




casper

[pauld]

Since the disks are already partitioned the installer is not finding any of the empty partitions. since I do not have an lvm my choices are limited during install, format a drive, use the lvm or guided partitioning?

[devils casper]

i prefer guided partitioning coz its tough to resize LVM later on.

you have dual boot. you can use windows 'Disk Management Tool' to delete one of the existing partition ( Last paritition would be better ). dont format. just delete it. installer will recognize it as free space. Ubuntu's default is ext3.



casper