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Help a Linux n00b!

B

BlitzRommel

Golden Member
Alright, I have Linux Mnadrake 8.0 PowerPack suite or whatever it's called and I want basic Linux Functionality with the gnome desktop.

Check out my computer's stats in my sig.

I have two 20GB IBM drives in RAID 0 using the Highpoint370 controller, with a FAT32 partition w/Win2k Pro on it that takes up 80% of the array. The other 20% is unpartitioned. This 20% I want to dedicate to Linux and the swap file or whatever.

How do I set up Linux without puking my Windows 2000 partition? I tried once but I destroyed the 2k partition before... 🙁
 
Boot from the linux CD, and create new partitions. Make them in the free space, you need at least a swap and a root partition, which is shown like a slash: /

Also, don't install Lilo or boot from the hard drive at all if you've nuked things before, keep yourself safe (or your computer safe from you 🙂) and have it make a boot disk.
 
The bad news, is that I trashed my 2k partition. It's all cause of how Linux saw my RAID. It looked at my HDDs in their nakedness and not my RAID array...

The good news, is that I reinstalled 2k and removed RAID0 and I installed Linux successfully. But now Linux has problems starting. I gotta reinstall it...
 
Ah, yeah you're using those IDE RAID cards. Yeah, Linux sees right through their cheapness...

Software RAID through Win2K for you, if you want Linux. You could also get smart, try experimenting. If the RAID card fills the hard drives start to end, you could give Win2K 90% of the space, which would leave 5% of the each drive at the end. Like if you have two 20's, that's 40GB. Give linux say 3 gigs at the end of each one (which is plenty), that leaves 40 - (2 * 3) = 34 gigs for your Win2K partition. Make Win2K 33.5GB to be sure, then create Linux partitions in the last 3GB of each drive.

That's of course pure speculation....

As for how much, best to make a /boot partition first, like 40MB. Then /. Then leave 200MB at the end for swap. If you spread it accross two drives, use software RAID 0 to use two RAID partitions as one drive. The funny thing is that it's a smart software RAID, the partitions can be different sizes! It worked for me in Mandrake 7.2, the leftover bits that don't have a mate on the other drive(s) is trated like a single disk (which it is if it's biogger then the rest and has the bare tail).

If you want to go traditional, make the first 5GB of each drive for Win2K and Linux repectivly. Install Win2K in 5GB of the first drive. Then give Linux the next 5GB. Go ahead and give it like 50MB /boot, 200MB swap, and remaining of the 5GB / (root). Then, in Win2K, format the rest as you choose. You might might might be able to get Win2K to use it's software RAID on the remaining 15GB of each drive... but you have to do something special to the partitions... and that might mess up Linux. Worth a try though, I might be doing that soon (experimenting with Linux and Win2K software RAID on the same drive).
 
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