Partitons.

[TheSickEmpire]

I'm a Linux noob.

Now that that's over, I can get on to what I need help with.

I've been searching for a few hours now for detailed noob instructions on what exactly I need to do in Partiton Magic partition wise.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

Thanks.

[PsypherPunk]

That depends entirely on what you're hoping to achieve. As this is the Slackware forum i presume you're trying to install Slackware...?

In which case, do you need to use Partition Magic? Can't Slackware create the relevant partitions for you at install?

[antidrugue]

The way to do it is to leave some space unpartitionned on your drive, so that Slackware can take care of its own partionning sheme.

The only use for partition magic I could think of is if you want to shrink an existing partion (your windows partition) so you will end-up with some unpartitionned space for your Slackware install.

Have fun!

[TheSickEmpire]

Alright, so slack does it's own partitioning?

Btw, I'm useing a secondary hardrive for this, so, I'd be booting windows on hda and slack on hdb.

[Gnux]

Alright, so slack does it's own partitioning?

Btw, I'm useing a secondary hardrive for this, so, I'd be booting windows on hda and slack on hdb.

So yes slack could partition ur disk using cfdisk but u must sacrify the data.
Afaik if there is nothing on ur second harddrive, just install slack by booting on the cd...Then lilo will auto-detect all that not a matter.
Dont forget to read the slackbook, u will find in it a lot of useful tips to manage ur slack

[TheBigPhish]

i would recommend that you not use PM to do the partitioning, but much rather use cfdisk whichi is run after booting the slack CD for installation partitioning and stuff.

If you are doing the hda (winxp) & hdb (slack) routine, i would suggest the following...

1) install the slack system to HDB
2) change NOTHING on the winXP system (hda)
3) install LILO to the MBR of HDB & configure it to dual boot WinXP & slack *which it should do easily*
4) drop into your BIOS, and tell your computer to boot off HDB first...(this prevents one OS from borking up the other one - and allows you to dual boot easily)

these steps allow you to retain an untarnished MBR on the XP partition that you can easily directly boot back into (should your slack partition & LILO / GRUB die) by reverting your BIOS boot order back to HDA.

i just don't trust LILO to change the MBR on a mission critical XP install (which sounds funny to say in the least) but this allows each install to be indedpendant & ultimately hardware controlled. (and if you have to pull the 2nd HD out for some reason, your initial system is still up and running)

[deek]

I have always used LILO installed on the MBR. If I have run into an issue (which I have a couple times out of 100 installs), you can always go back to rescue windows (2K or XP) by performing a FIXMBR command...it has always worked for me, and with them being on two different drives, I would think the chance of issues are even slimmer...

But, the BIOS change is a very good idea!

[DrCR]

TheSickEmpire, are you familiar with the windows/dos fdisk utility and comfortable with it? If so (and even if not) I would highly recommend you us cfdisk for all your partitioning needs (except resize a partition, that's PartitionMagic's baby).

I used the GUI QTParted and got burned *twice*...so stick with something like cfdisk if you can.

2cents from a computer geek, but noobish linuxer.

[TheBigPhish]

But, the BIOS change is a very good idea!

if you think about it, it really is the safest way to install a "hardcore" OS onto an established system w/ XP installed already.

If you think about it, the MBR on the second drive will do the booting, so you can completely install it any way you want...all you have to do is point your BIOS at a different MBR and you can install as much as you want! Even if you start using DOS's fdisk or cfdisk or diskpart to do things, you can rest assured that can almost assuredly dual boot with even a base install of Slackware w/ LILO. For a n00b user doing a dual boot install, it prevents you from getting smoked when you botch that LILO install and now have a dual system install that will not boot at all.

[DrCR]

it prevents you from getting smoked when you botch that LILO install and now have a dual system install that will not boot at all.

Isn't that what live CDs are for? I've had the above happen to me, but I just used the FIXMBR command to get up and running partially, must have used a live CD to fix the lilo.conf, but then again I throughly noob at the time (now just mostly lol) that I may have just reinstalled.

IMHO the best thing is using two hard drives so you don't acidentally repartition or format your Windows partition and loose unbacked up data.