Suse Questions

[JimHebert]

I'm new to Linux. My interest is in Suse 10.3. I have a new Acer Aspire 7720-6794 64 bit machine. Also 750 Gig external drive that I wish to install Suse into. From the little that I know, I don't have to worry about losing any data in the external drive due to Suse formatting the drive because it is new drive (empty) and I don't stand to lose anything. So much the better. I went over the installation at Installation/10.3 - openSUSE and I was wondering at which point in those instructions do I install it to my external HD? I do not want to install to internal drive.

[HROAdmin26]

That is a basic "please let the installer do it all for me" install guide. In the Step 5 screenshot, you can select the "Expert" tab and setup your partitions manually.

If you have never done this before, take extra steps to protect your data because you *will* mess something up (eventually.) It's part of not knowing what you're doing.

[JimHebert]

Well I guess that leaves me out. I don't know enough about partitioning much less have the time to get into that. I thought maybe the installation did partitioning automatically. I appreciate your straight forward answer. Thank You.

[HROAdmin26]

That is what the "please do it all for me" installer is doing - automatically setting up the partitions. The default would be to set up partitions on the first disk in the system.

If you don't want this (which is what you indicated), you need to tell the installer to do something different.

[JimHebert]

I want it to do "please do it all for me" in my external hard drive. Not in the internal. I repeat not in the internal drive. Is that an option?

[gogalthorp]

LOL

Yes you just tell it to install on the second drive. The installer will at some point have a partitioning scheme that it will present to you if you do not like the provided one you can change it. One of the choices will be the second drive. Suse will want to create 3 partitions.

1) Swap this is used for temp storage 1 gig is more then enough This is special and does not need mounting

2) / also know as the root partition this is where most programs and the kernel is stored. I recommend 20-30 gig but you can get by on 12 and if you don't plan on install very much 7 is enough

3) /home this partition is where the personal files/data and settings are stored. Assuming you are dedicating the disk use the rest of the disk space for this partition.

Linux does not use drive letters for partitions like Windows. In Linux partitions are mounted and they simply show up in the directory tree at the defined mount points. So the home partition shows up as the /home subdirectory

It is handy to have a separate home partition (but not required) because you can reinstall or upgrade or change the OS with out effecting your personal data. You simply tell the installer to not format the partition with your data on it and just mount it as /home

Now not to scare you but partitioning in any OS is critical because if you make a mistake you can wipe data. This is why we always recommend that you backup any critical data before making changes to partitioning schemes. If this is a problem then I suggest you find someone local that knows more about computers to help you the first time.

[JimHebert]

Thank you gogalthorp. Let me begin by saying that you're a good technical writer. Most of the stuff I've read in the past is written in a manner that only someone with years of experience can understand. You, to the contrary, explained, in a brief, simple, and layman's language so clear that a child could understand. Do you know of any e-books that explain in the same form?

Concerning the loss of data - I have no data on the external drive. Therefore, I'm not worried about the external hard drive. What worries me is if the installation goes squirley or I enter the wrong click and wipe out my internal HD. See this, "whatever configuration steps YAST2 ran totally destroyed the winxp partition. YAST2 reported some error about failure to configure xen and at the same time I noticed that the /mnt/windows mount had become invalid (/dev/sdb was now totally unmountable)."

windows xp partition totally destroyed by xen/virtualization - openSUSE Forums

That's why I want to know about the option of selecting the external drive for installing Suse and hopefully Yast or whatever won't wipe out my computer.

I have a 64 bit machine and want to download to CD the 10.3 version of Suse, since from what I've read, it works well with Skype. I saw there was an i386, x86_64, and maybe a couple of other download options. Can you give me a good reputable download site URL and which one of those options to download?

[gogalthorp]

There is always the possibility of doing something wrong, but the installer is very good and allows you to review your selections/setup before continuing. Just pay attention and don't blindly click continue. Review each screen and be sure you understand what the installer is telling you before continuing. Up until you select/define a partitioning scheme the installer has not made any changes to your hardware so you can quit and any time up until then. Once you select the partitioning the installer will make the changes you have selected when you hit continue.

In order to dual boot the installer will change the boot record of the first drive to point to grub (a Linux boot manager). Since grub is installed in the root (/) directory of Linux the second drive must always be available or the boot will fail. So it is not a good Idea to do this with removable disks. You can change the boot record to point back to Windows by using a Windows install disk and repairing the boot record. Then of course you would not see Linux until you replaced it and point it to grub again. You may consider downloading gparted which is a Linux based partition manager. This can be used outside of what ever OS's you have installed thus act as a rescue disk.

Partitioning on a live system (ie one with important data) is scary and you should alway backup anything you want to keep just in case. This is true no matter what you use to create/change partitions.

good luck

[gogalthorp]

BTW the the form thread you pointed to is a whole other thing what this guy was trying to do is a lot different then setting up a dual boot. Xen is a virtual machine program. Xen uses Linux as the underling disk format and places files on it the represent the virtual disk and memory of the virtual machine. So when he told it to use the existing Windows partition it simply reformatted it thus wiping the data. Normally in a VM you designate a directory where you will store the VM data (this may or may not be a separate partition mounted on the directory tree). Then you install the guest OS in this new virtual machine. You may be able to use an existing OS partition but it is tricky to set up and this guy simply botched it.

[thorkelljarl]

It would seem to me that you would have a better chance of getting all parts of your Aspire working well with linux if you chose the newer SUSE 11.0 over 10.3, perhaps as 32-bit if you have problems with the 64-bit and skype. However, Index of /distribution/10.3 Google tells me that 10.3 will not be supported after 30 Oct. 2009. Your choice. Luck.