Installing Open Suse 10.3 on Microsoft Dynamic Volumes

[vaibhav92]

Hello Experts,

I am laying my hands on Linux (open Suse 10.3) for the first time. However i am having hardtime figuring out how to install it on my twin hdd system formatted as microsoft dynamic volumes. My partition structure is as follows

HDD1
C: 20 GB
D:115 GB
F: Raid 0 stripped volume (98 GB)

HDD2
E: 98 GB
F: Raid 0 stripped volume (98 GB)
Unallocated Space (40 GB)

I would like to install the distro on HDD2 free space. I would be really greatful if any one please provide me with detailed instructions as to how should i proceed installation without risking my data on other partitions.

Thanks,
Vaibhav

[arodlinux]

Hi,
First, I am not a expert, yet But openSuSE should automatically detect the presence of the Windows partition and use the unpartitioned space for it’s partitions.

[vaibhav92]

Thanks for replying..

However my installer isnt detecting the windows partitions at all infact theres an error message during disk partition detection it says something like " cannot read /dev/sdb ... The towported tool cannot be used to add ,delete or resize partitions. Same message is shown for drive /dev/sda..

When i proceed to the disk partitioning phase in expert mode all my NTFS volumes are shown as linux native!!! and no free space on the drive sdb is shown infact i have 40 GB of free space on that drive..

Seems that the installer is not detecting the Dynamic disks properly or i may be doing something wrong..

Please help me get my first linux system up and running.

Thanks,

[gogalthorp]

Are you using software/hardware RAID?

You may have to manually specify the partitioning.

[vaibhav92]

I am using software raid solution as provided by windows disk management software.

If I need to manually do the partitioning then please guide me how to do so.

Thanks

[HROAdmin26]

Once you change the disk in Windows to a "dynamic disk", you have changed the entire way partitioning is done on that disk. It is a proprietary partitioning schema that has its roots in Veritas Volume Manager.

By default, Linux will not be able to use partitions on dynamic disks. You would need to revert them back to "basic disks" in Windows in order to use them during Linux install.

[vaibhav92]

I came across this ( Overclock3D.Net :: Article :: Dual Boot RAID Windows and Linux :: Preparation is the key )article where the author claims to successfully install linux on Dynamic disks including setting up a linux raid volume over dynamic disks. But being new to linux i cannot follow the instructions that he has mentioned there. How am i supposed to compile a kernel before a getting linux installed... etc etc..

Can you guys please help me understand meaning of these instructions .

[HROAdmin26]

The LDM support mentioned in your article is already enabled in the default openSuSE 10.3 kernel.

I just checked:

system:/boot # cat config-2.6.22.5-31-default | grep -i ldm
CONFIG_LDM_PARTITION=y

Are you using Vista? There may be small changes...

Regardless, if the installer can't read the partition table, you won't be able to use that disk without hosing the existing data.

I checked Google and I don't see any information that this has changed...

*IF* you can get dynamic disks recognized, I would characterize that in the same way that NTFS support was just a few years ago - shaky and prone to problems. Thus, I still would advise against it.

* Background: Windows dynamic disk has always been a weak point of Windows. The performance of a stripe with DD has historically been horrible, Windows wouldn't boot from a DD, MSFT Clustering won't use DD (more of a license agreement than technical issue), etc. For these reasons, I would use basic disks in Windows and then use Linux md for striping in Linux. This will also allow you to use GRUB (vs. LILO) for the bootloader.

Further info:

From LDM developer - Mar 2007:

OpenSUSE kernels have LDM enabled in the kernel and will therefore recognize your dynamic disk and create partition devices for it that you can then mount.

Translation: LDM support is there, and your mileage will vary. This may also require that fuse and ntfs-3g are available as well to get a device representing the LDM stripe created - this would be something done after Linux is installed...

Unless you are very familiar with Windows, Linux, and partitioning, I think this will be very difficult.

[vaibhav92]

Sorry for the late reply...

Well i am using windows Xp sp 2.

Well i tried the installation by making some partitions using windows on the dynamic disk.

/boot 500 MB
/ 30 GB
swap 2 GB

I formatted them with ntfs. After then i booted from suse dvd and started the installation. The new partitions were recognized. I assigned them the respective mount point and marked them for being formatted with ext 3. So far so good but the boot loader issue scared me. I opted for Grub but it said that it would overwrite my MBR!!! well if my mbr is overwritten then how will windows be able to identify dynamic disk... Is it possible for me to make a backup of my mbr befor i proceed to installation of grub?

[vaibhav92]

I finally gathered enough corurage to go with the installation. Its my summer holidays now so i have plenty of time to play with linux now . Since the suse installer wont let be create partitions on my disk so i used the windows disk manager to create partitions as :

500 MB /boot (ext3)
34 GB / (ext3)
3.5 GB swap

all this done and mont points defined i selected grub as the boot loader and configured it to be installed to my MBR. After the installer copied the formatted partitions and copied the packages the installer proceeded to instaling the boot loader, this is where it blew up on my face.

Incidently grub displayed an "error 22: no such partitions" so i was forced to change my bootloaded config in between. However i even installing it on the boot/root partition but it all failed. Ultimatly i had to select "No boot loader" option and abort the installation.

So how can i really boot into my linux installation now. Is it possible? or is it possible to resolve the "error 22" issue. Please guide.

Regards,
Vaibhav