Linux partitioning - ready for install.

Hello, everyone.

Well, I’m ready to go with my first installation of Mandriva 2006 (or I will be when the DVD arrives). I have read up quiet extensively on how to get the OS up and running and things are starting to fall into place.

I want to install the OS on my secondary HD (which has 74.2 GBs of free space). I understand that Mandriva has its own partitioning tool and will use that free space to install itself. Is it possible I could, during set-up, do, say, a ‘Custom’ set-up that will allow me to dedicate, say, 35 GBs of that drive’s free space to Mandriva – leaving the rest of the drive’s capacity for Windows data? I understand that I should move any Windows data off that drive before I install Mandriva, or it will be lost in the install.

Additionally, do I have to reconfigure my BIOS - disabling the Plug & Play facility before installing Mandriva? I read-up somewhere that you need to do this when installing Mandriva, that's why I ask. Any other help/advice would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,

Dave.

 

Unlike Windows, Linux requires that you make several partitions. Whereas Windows usually resides on one partition (very bad idea), Linux uses serveral.

A general guideline is as follows:

10GB Partition for / (root drive, system files)
1024MB Partition for Swap Space (virtual memory). This size should be at least double your physical RAM.
20GB Partition for /home (My documents)

I recommend that you format in ReiserFS, but the choice is yours

That leaves the remaining disk space for your Windows files.

You do not need to disable plug & play

 

Thanks, Megamaced.

That's a good help - I'll go with that.

Dave.

 

Megamaced, thats not entirely correct.

Linux does not require 3 partitions to be set up, you can run all in one root directory without a swap space. I have mine set up with a 550mb swap partition, it never gets used since the kernel only uses the swap space until it runs out of RAM.

I guess that the /home directories being mounted on a separate partition is useful for backing up and recovering data, but is not essential. The performance increase is non existant if its on the same hard disk.

The guidelines may be good, but not required. I suggest creating a swap space just incase. ReiserFS is probably the best file system for a desktop computer, excellent performance with small files over the ext2/3 file systems. The ext2/3 FSs are used for reliability and easy recovery on servers mostly.

 

It's not a requirement, but it's safer.

Why?

• You won't loose your personal files everytime you reinstall the OS.
  
• You won't loose your personal files if the root partition becomes currupt

 

Update:

I have now re-partitioned my D: Drive into 2 partitions. So, I now have: partitions D: & H: (both having 37.25 GBs of free space – formatted in NTFS.

I’m completely new to disk partitioning, so bear with me - does this now mean that I can install Mandriva 2006 on either one of those 2 partitions?

Note: I set the D: partition as ‘Active’ under “Disk Management” in XP & when I went to do the same for the H: partition, I got his message:

“Changing the active partition on a disk might make the disk not startable if the partition does not have valid system files. Do you want to continue?" I didn’t continue, but the said partition seems to work fine, as I can save data to it. Any comments?


Many thanks,

Dave.

 

Doesn't matter, Mandriva will format those partitions. It won't use the NTFS file system.

 

David, did you somehow miss my post about partitioning?

Firstly, you should not set partitions D: & H: as active. The only partition that should be active is your C: drive

Secondly, you cannot install Mandriva on an NTFS partition. You will have to reformat it again using a native Linux filesytem such as ReiserFS.

I suggest you delete all the partitions you have made and wait til you install Mandriva.

Make 3 partitions for Linux, as described in my other post, and make a 35GB partition for Windows (formatted in FAT32)

 

I guess I was 'just jumping the gun', so to speak. Typical of me! I'll pay more attention in future . I didn't know that partitions other than C: should not be set to 'Active' (I'm only a learner ). I'll delete those partitions and start over again when I install Mandriva.

Cheers,

Dave.

 

Hey Dave,

I just wanted to jump in and say don't worry too much about installing Mandriva, I think you'll be fairly impressed with the installer and the partitioning tool. As for the reason you can't use NTFS to install Linux, it's that NTFS support is reverse-engineered. In other words, Microsoft doesn't want to share the specifications of their filesystem (or almost anything else) so others had to figure it out for themselves. Even so, NTFS is a horrible filesystem compared to Reiser, XFS or even the old ext3 filesystem, all of which are available for Linux. So even if you could install Linux to an NTFS (actually you technically could, but let's not get into this scenario), you wouldn't want to since NTFS is not very good anyway.

My advice in your case is to give your root ( / ) partition a 15gb reiser filesystem, create a 128-512mb swap (the more RAM you have, the smaller the swap you need in Linux), and dedicate the rest to your home ( /home ). I'd use reiser for everything but the swap -- the swap has it's own 'swap' filesystem. If this sounds confusing to you, just make a large reiser filesystem mounted at root ( / ) and a small swap partition at the end of the volume. Drop us a line if you need more help once you have the disc.

 

Thanks, Anti-Trend.

It's good of you to take the time to help me - much appreciated! I'll try to take one thing at a time and do my best. At this stage, I'm a little confused as to the application of ReiserFS.

I don't know if it's something I have to download or will be an included option in the Mandriva setup DVD, which should be arriving shortly. I've heard of the ext3 filesystem, which I gather, will be an included option in the Mandriva setup DVD. Apart from that, I'll just have to be patient and try to learn more as I go along.

Cheers,

Dave.

 

ReiserFS is available in the Mandriva partitioner. When installing, you will have the choice between that and ext3, possibily some others too.

If you are looking for some background information about the native Linux filesystems, do a search on Wikipedia.

I think you will have an enjoyable time with Linux. As long as you don't rush things or expect too much too soon, you'll be OK!

Oh and be warned, you might just fall in love with it

 

Thanks, Megamaced.

That's considerably cleared things up for me! I'll take it easy, as I know it won't be plain sailing. If I get it working on the first day I'll definately have a few :simpson:. However, I won't hold my breath.

Dave.

 

UPDATE:

Well, the Mandrake Linux DVD came this morning and I set about the installation. Everything went well. I followed all the instructions I had been given and adhered to an "Installation Walkthrough Guide" that I found.

However, I encountered 2 major problems when the installation was complete.

Firstly, on reboot, the boot loader options asked me whether I wanted to boot into Windows or Linux (and a couple of other choices). I hit the Linux option and was asked to type in a username followed by a password - both of which, I had set up during the installation procedure.

Well, Linux would not accept the password (and it was the correct one). So, having tried a few times, I decided it was a 'no go', so I decided to take the boot into Windows option. No joy there - XP initially began to boot-up, but quickly reverted to the boot loader options screen, and of course, asking for the username and password again. Tried again and again, but no joy.

Long story short, I just could not get back into XP. In the end, I decided to do a disk-image restore. I use Acronis True Image for my full-system backups and had the archive restore file on my USB drive (luckily). I only did a full backup the other day, so that proved to be a good idea!

Acronis True Image flawlessly restored XP for me and I was able to delete and reformat the partitions that Linux had created - back to square one now!

I guess I screwed-up somewhere with Linux, but for the life of me, I don't know where.

Well, some good came out of it all. I now know that Acronis True Image really does work!

I'll have another go at installing Mandrake, maybe read-up a bit more and try to figure out what I did wrong. Any comments would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Dave

 

How strange....

Were you asked for the password straight after the boot loader screen disappeared? Normally you'd only get asked for the password once the login manager appears.

I am not a Mandriva user so I can't provide much help I am afraid. You may have to wait til Anti-Trend or Addis see this.

Just a thought, did you log in with your user password or the root password? Remeber that they are two different things. If you recall, you would have been asked to enter two passwords when installing.

 

I was asked for the password straight after the boot loader screen disappeared. I logged-in with my username. The only two things I ever used in the setup were my username and password. Not too sure what I set as my root password, but it would have only either been 'dave' or my normal password. I tried all the combinations of those and nothing would get me into Linux. It's probably some very basic error that I have made and will get sorted.

However, I'm still perplexed by the boot loader option not letting boot back into XP. One of the mysteries of life! I'll get there in the end!

Dave

 

When you install Mandriva (as with any other Linux distro) you will normally set up 2 users.

The first is the root user and password, Mandriva will prompt you to create a password for the root user during installation. Its important not to forget this, as it will be needed for basic administration of the system. Then you will also create a normal user.

When logging onto the Linux system, you will use your normal user account, as this has restrictions to stop your system being accidentally damaged. When you need to make system configuration changes then you will need to supply the root password you set.

Can you say what the screen looked like when it asked you for the username and password? Normally it is a blue background with a mouse icon available.

 

Hi,

No, it was a black (DOS-like type of screen) and it just said 'enter username'. When I did that it then said 'enter password'. I did that then it said 'incorrect password'. To recap, do I have to enter different passwords for normal user account & root?

I feel I may have messed up when I got to the User Account part of the setup, re: passwords.

I'll try again on your advice. Many thanks!

Dave.

 

Ah, not so sure if I did set it up for 2 users - probably thinking that only one was required. I'll have another go soon

 

Normally you would enter your username and password at a graphical login.

I can think of three possible reasons for this:

1. Something went wrong when you created the user account
2. The X Window Manager wasn't installed properly
3. You accidently installed Mandriva on the wrong partition, thus corrupting Windows

Did you edit the partition table manually, or did you let the Mandriva installer decide what to do? There's a good chance that something went wrong here. You Windows installation would not have been touched had the installation gone normally.

Anyways, if you have a blank CD and a CD-Rewriter, how about trying Ubuntu?

Download THIS and burn the image to a CDR.

The Ubuntu partitioner is easy. It will detect that you have 2 hard drives and all you need to press is 'use the whole of hard drive hdb'