Dual boot Linux Mint and W7 on eepc

[DarkTXKnight]

I have a new Asus eepc that currently has Win7 on it so that I can do stuff for work. I would really like to dual boot this box with Linux Mint 9 ( or peppermint if thats a better option) so that I can get myself more used to Linux while traveling. There is a 160 GB drive that I need to shrink in order to give room for Mint - how can I do that? Also are there any other useful guides or advice on how to accomplish all this?

thanks in advance!

 

[sivart]

Check this out from the mint forums:

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=32031

I have one laptop that is Mint / Windows 7 and one netbook that is Ubuntu / Windows 7 (Dell Mini 1012). It is very possible.

 

[BTA]

When I did it on my Wind, I think I just installed Windows 7, then ran the Mint installer and let it partition off a portion of the hard drive for itself. Works fine.

 

[VinDSL]

[...]Also are there any other useful guides or advice on how to accomplish all this?

If you don't mind me quoting myself, this previous post might help you... 🙂

Originally posted by: Scouzer
Blah, I tried Puppy Linux off a live CD and it nuked my Windows install [...] How the F that happened, I don't know... what a piss off [...] Now I have to format, I formatted only three weeks ago =\

Heh! Hard to say what you did (or didn't do) ... 😀

If you're trying to multi-boot your drive, here are some tricks I use that work every time.

Basically, what I do is 'hide' the partitions from each other during installation using GParted - then I edit the GRUB bootloader to 'hide' and 'unhide' the partitions from each other during subsequent boot ups. And, I always write GRUB to the MBR!

GRUB is akin to a MSDOS batch file. GRUB is very powerful and very easy to manipulate using a text editor - just like a Windows batch file.

Simple pimple once you get the concept down!

Do these 2 or 3 things and you'll never have a problem...

Now... If you DO NOT hide the partitions from each other during installation and (later) during each boot up (which most ppl don't) Linux will tend to write data to free blocks in Windows partitions, and Windows will do the same thing in Linux partitions.

Not hiding your partitions is just asking for trouble! It's particularly vexing and problematic when your drive is fragmented - like a ticking time-bomb waiting to explode!

Sometimes (and I mean sometimes) you can get away with multi-booting a drive without hiding the partitions during installation and boot up, but more often than not, in the long run a multi-booted setup will fail if you don't hide the partitions from each other. Might take a minute, a month, or a year, but you WILL have problems down the road, guaranteed!

Conversely, if you 'hide' and 'unhide' your partitions, you can run as many OSs on your drive as you want.

This guy multi-booted 145 operating systems on his PC:

• 3 - Dos
• 5 - Windows
• 137 - Linux

Using this simple principal!

SOURCE: http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?t=150551

Your PC should be able to handle 2 or 3 OSs, yes? 😉

To answer your other question...

There is a 160 GB drive that I need to shrink in order to give room for Mint - how can I do that?

GParted is my weapon of choice!

There are any number of 'disk utilities' and Linux distros that include GParted.

My favorite 'disk utility' is: SystemRescue CD

SystemRescue CD contains GParted, and other useful utilities.

The Puppy Linux Live CD contains GParted too: Puppy Linux

Puppy Linux has a nicer interface, and it loads/runs in memory, e.g. it's fast!

Sooo... to wrap this up, here's what I would do:

• Defrag your Windows install.
• Use GParted to resize the Windows partition. Hide the partition when you're done (flag it).
• Create 2 Linux partitions with GParted - 1 primary - 1/ swap.
• Optionally, you could create 3 partitions - 1 primary - 1 /home - 1 /swap. Your choice.
• Install Mint. Make sure to save GRUB to MBR.
• Before booting into Windows, edit your GRUB so it hides the OSs from one another.

That's it! I've multi-booted many, many, machines and never had a problem using this mechanism -- except for Solaris, but that's a different story.

I'll go fire up my EeePC, and post the contents of my GRUB here. That might help you too.

BBL

 

[DarkTXKnight]

Man thats a great write up guys and I agree about hiding the partitions during the install. If you can provide the contents of your grub Id really appreciate it.

So after I setup MINT, is there anything else that needs to be done ? any tweaks \advice would be really useful to me .

Also about hiding the partitions, would this mean that I would not be able to see the Windows 7 profile with my documents in it? I was hoping to be able to save all of my files into that area so that I can work and save in the same place regardless of OS.

 

[VinDSL]

Man thats a great write up guys and I agree about hiding the partitions during the install. If you can provide the contents of your grub Id really appreciate it.

I'll get that for you in a few minutes.

LoL! I made the mistake of booting XP on the EeePC. Don't ask me why (but I did).

Everything was out-of-date... AV software, XP (including .NET framework), blah, blah, blah.

I thought I'd better update, while I was thinking about it.

So after I setup MINT, is there anything else that needs to be done ? any tweaks \advice would be really useful to me.

Well...

It depends on how much of a tweak you are.

Personally, I'm neurotic as hell (worry about fine little details that nobody else cares about) :sneaky:.

I'm running a full desktop version of Mint 7 on my EeePC. I scaled-down Mint 7 to fit the smaller display, disabled unneeded/unwanted cruft, and all that sort of stuff. But, that's just me...

I'll post a screenie of my Mint 7 desktop, when XP gets done updating.

Also about hiding the partitions, would this mean that I would not be able to see the Windows 7 profile with my documents in it? I was hoping to be able to save all of my files into that area so that I can work and save in the same place regardless of OS.

You'll be able to mount/access the hidden partitions just fine.

Hiding the partitions simply protects them from the various core OSs...

 

[VinDSL]

Well, that was fun... not! 🙄

6 hours to update XP, and 6 hours to update Facebook. LoL!

Anyway, back on topic...

Here's my /boot/grub/menu.lst file:

default 0
timeout 10
color cyan/blue white/blue
gfxmenu=/boot/gfxmenu/linuxmint.message

title		Linux Mint 7 Gloria, kernel 2.6.28-11-generic
root		(hd0,4)
hide		(hd0,0)
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-generic root=/dev/sda5 ro quiet splash 
initrd		/boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-11-generic
quiet

title		Linux Mint 7 Gloria, kernel 2.6.28-11-generic (recovery mode)
root		(hd0,4)
hide		(hd0,0)
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-generic root=/dev/sda5 ro single
initrd		/boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-11-generic

title		Linux Mint 7 Gloria, memtest86+
root		(hd0,4)
hide		(hd0,0)
kernel		/boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

# This is a divider, added to separate the menu items below from the Debian
# ones.
title		Other operating systems:
root

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/sda1
title		Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
rootnoverify	(hd0,0)
unhide		(hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader	+1

That should give you an idea of what I do.

Here's my EeePC Mint 7 desktop

And, here's my freshly updated XP Home :\

Not bad for $249...

 

[DarkTXKnight]

This is great - so let me run my thoughts on partitions past you . This is a 1005HA EEPC with 2 GB RAM and 160GB HDD:

I should have :
Windows 7 Partition - 80GB
Linux Mint swap partion - 1024MB ( or more? )
Linux Mint primary partition - not sure how big it needs to be
/home partition - not sure how big it needs to be

I was reading that its a good idea to have a partition that is FAT32 for both OSes to read as opposed to NTFS, is that the case? I wanted to be able to read some documents from both OS loads . Is there anything else Im missing ?

 

[lxskllr]

I'd use 10gb for the primary, and give the rest to home. Linux can read NTFS. It can write to it also, but I've never done that. You could make a fat32 partition so Windows can read stuff you created in Linux, but I personally wouldn't. The way I dual boot, I use 1 O/S for 90%+ of my uses, and the other is for a very specialized use; it could be months between booting it up. Using 2 O/Ss equally makes maintenance a hassle, and I really don't see the point. It's better to stick with one, and learn it's idiosyncrasies.

My thoughts... Linux works especially well for portable computers. It's more secure, and if it gets stolen, you're data will be slightly safer since Linux isn't a common O/S. It won't stop someone who knows computers, but it'll keep your average ghetto punk out of your system. I'd try to use virtual machines for my "dual booting" purposes. That's a much more elegant way of handling it if your specific uses will allow it.

 

[DarkTXKnight]

Windows 7 Partition - 125GB
Linux Mint swap partion - 1024MB
Linux Mint primary partition - 10
/home partition - 20GB

...and call it a day
Most of the time will really be Windows, and I would rather leave the windows area as NTFS anyway .

as fars as the 2 Os thing - this machine wont do VM's well, and it allows me to play with Linux on a portable machines, but be able to use windows or let my wife use the machine when necessary. I actually did this setup on an older n610c laptop using Mints automatic installing stuff, but i wanted to adopt the partition hiding practice mentioned earlier since this machine should be less prone to changes than the knockaround laptop i tested earlier.

 

[VinDSL]

I'd use 10gb for the primary, and give the rest to home. Linux can read NTFS. It can write to it also, but I've never done that. You could make a fat32 partition so Windows can read stuff you created in Linux, but I personally wouldn't. The way I dual boot, I use 1 O/S for 90%+ of my uses, and the other is for a very specialized use; it could be months between booting it up. Using 2 O/Ss equally makes maintenance a hassle, and I really don't see the point. It's better to stick with one, and learn it's idiosyncrasies.[...]

We're in concurrence!

I'm using an 8GB primary on my EeePC, a 1GB /swap, and the rest is /home.

Yes, Linux reads/writes NTFS, even in hidden partitions.

Example: If you look at the time/date on the pics above, you'll see that I made the XP snappy first.

• I saved the XP snappie to 'My Pictures' in 'Documents and Settings'.
• Then, I closed XP and booted Mint 7, took a snappy of it, and saved it to my Desktop.
• I mounted the 'hidden' XP partition and copied the snappie from 'My Pictures' to my Mint Desktop.
• Finally, I shelled into my Web Server in Atlanta, and uploaded the 2 snappies to VinDSL.com.

Simple pimple!

I use Mint 99% of the time (on the netty) -- and it's been months since I booted XP. Thus, 6 hours of updating required.

Gawd, I hate updating Windows! I use Secunia PSI on Win machines, and that damn proggie catches everything! :twisted:

I have no use for Windows, soooo why do I dual-boot my EeePC?!?!?

I'm not going to waste a license -- it's as simple as that. LoL! :awe:

 

[VinDSL]

I should have :
Windows 7 Partition - 80GB
Linux Mint swap partion - 1024MB ( or more? )
Linux Mint primary partition - not sure how big it needs to be
/home partition - not sure how big it needs to be

I was looking around my web server for a pic, and ran across this...

This snappie is from 20-July-2009, but nothing has changed, except I'm running a 4GB flash card now (for Sneakernet).

This is how I have my EeePC partitioned... 🙂

Linux Mint doesn't take up a lot of room. You could easily run it in (say) a 10 GB partition, with room to spare.

EDIT

BTW, that 31.38 MB /sda3 'unknown' partition (at the bottom) is an Asus thing. It's used for booting a virgin install hyper-fast, crash recovery, et cetera. If you have a 'mystery' partition like this, I suggest leaving it alone! I don't know what kind of alchemy they are using in that thing (and I don't care).

LoL! It's like Haitian Vodou. You're better off just leaving it be...

 

[DarkTXKnight]

followed the instructions to a "T" but now im stuck where it comes to editing grub... cant find the file you speak of and apparently Mint 9 uses grub 2 so im not sure what im looking for at the moment.. any help would really be appreciated.

 

[DarkTXKnight]

ahhh even worse... so I rebooted the machine and sure enough grub loads up and gives me a menu. I can select linux and it boots great. If i reboot and select windows 7 though, the bootloader in 7 hangs indefinately. Im not sure where to go from here

 

[sivart]

Did you try this (again) in the terminal?

sudo update-grub

Does it see Windows 7 when you do this?

This is the last step I do after adding an OS to my system.

 

[DarkTXKnight]

i just did that, and grub does see and list thewindows 7 partition, its just that windows hangs at the loading screen

 

[lxskllr]

Doesn't Win7 create a small boot partition? Grub may be looking in the wrong place.

 

[DarkTXKnight]

yes win7 does create a small boot partition, but i never found the right file in grub to even check which partition it might be pointing to

 

[lxskllr]

I don't have much to offer in the way of help, but in Linux go into the disk utility, and see what partition the Win7 boot is on. See this page for particulars on Grub2. Maybe you can tie it together that way. If no one more knowledgeable replies I'll poke around tomorrow, and see if I can come up with something.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2

 

[DarkTXKnight]

Actually I did a restore last night ( yeah clonezilla) and Im going to reload Mint but choose the wizard this time around. I did a dual boot on another Win7 \ Mint machine going that method and it let me resize everythnig and grub found the right partition before successfully. It may be that there is some voodoo about how ASUS sets up these other partitions etc, and Im not ready yet to rebuild from scratch . If that still blows up then I'll consider other options but this has been a learning experience so far 🙂

 

[VinDSL]

[...]cant find the file you speak of and apparently Mint 9 uses grub 2 so im not sure what im looking for at the moment.. any help would really be appreciated.

I haven't had a chance to play around with GRUB2...

My #1 source for GRUB tutelage is "saikee", over at Just Linux. This guy is the best!

I did a quick search and found this: How to use Grub2 to boot Linux manually

It might help. If not, click on saikee -> Find all posts by siakee and look through his posts.

If saikee can't help you, nobody can. He's (like) the Albert Einstein of GRUB... :awe:

 

[VinDSL]

Actually I did a restore last night ( yeah clonezilla) [...]

Clonezilla rawks, doesn't it?!?!?!? The interface is sort of a kludge, but it just flat works!

I use a Thermaltake BlacX ST0005U docking station and Clonezilla to mirror my machines.

USB2 speeds are so-so, but eSATA is fly!

Best thing they invented since water!!! 😀

I was looking around the OS Forum yesterday, and ppl are complaining about (native) W7 backups taking days to complete. I was *thinking* about posting the above, but I figure that's what they get for using Windows. LoL!

Hell, they could perform a complete D2D mirror in a couple of hours using BlacX/Clonezilla... 🙄

 

[DarkTXKnight]

yes clonezilla proved to be very reliable for this. It took about an hour to restore but then everything was back to normal by last night, then did the following:

Boot into windows 7 and use the new partition shrinker in disk management
reboot and make sure you can still log in
reboot and boot off Mint 9 Live USB
run installer
select option to install mint using largest continuous free space
doing it this way will install grub 2 into sda

after doing this I can now boot into either OS, and grub did find the correct partition to boot windows 7 from pretty painlessly.

I know that there may be risks in not hiding the partitions from one another as you described, but Im betting its the extra service and restore partitions that ASUS uses on this drive that confused grub. Im not ready to blow away everything and do a fresh windows install with all of the drivers, so going the standard method appears to work for me .
Thank you guys for all of your useful advice, Im going to have to save this thread for reference

 

[VinDSL]

I know that there may be risks in not hiding the partitions from one another as you described, but [...]

LoL! I should have warned you...

I'm fairly unique in this 'hiding the partitions' viewpoint.

Glad everything worked out for you.

Now, let's see how long it takes you to abandon your (former) mistress -- Microsoft Windows... :sneaky:

 

[DarkTXKnight]

well really thank you for your help.... so are there any cool things i need to do with my fresh linux install? Only thing ive done so far is installed chrome as my default browser 🙂