how should i set up my linux partitions?

[slycat]

Originally posted by: notfred

Originally posted by: Walleye
oh, and one last thing before i take the nose dive... should i kick myself in the ass and try debian right off, or should i go with Mandrake before i take the plunge?

Not to be offensive or anything, but since you don't even know how the directory structure works, I say you should dtart with mandrake

agreed

 

[notfred]

Originally posted by: Walleye
it took the whole drive...

Well then you're going to have to make it un-take the whold drive. Just leave empty space for linux,and your installer will be able to fill it up for you, while leaving the XP partition alone.

 

[manly]

KISS: Keep it simple, stupid

I would suggest:

/
/home
swap

512 MB for swap is a good figure. How much for / and /home depends on personal preference, but 14 GB for / and the remainder (5.5 GB) for /home is reasonable. Don't do what Jugernot suggested; it's unnecessary for Linux beginners.

You "set aside" space for Windows by installing it first. If you go with Linux first, you can carve up your hard drive into partitions, allocating a 20 GB partition for Windows. The particulars of this procedure will vary depending on the distro, but if you're smarter than the average ATOT'er, then you should be able to figure it out. You should RTFM first, but unfortunately most people are too proud and stupid to do that.

Mandrake Linux probably has the most mature partitioning tool of all the major distros, but I don't think it's advisable to let it shrink your NTFS filesystem. I'd use a commercial tool such as Partition Magic; or else simply backup data off "C:" and then carve up the drive from scratch before reinstalling Windows. Most people in your situation would probably get a 2nd drive to make things simpler.

 

[slycat]

Quote

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Originally posted by: Walleye
it took the whole drive...
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i get the feeling you don't really even fully understand Windows partitioning...

 

[Walleye]

Originally posted by: slycat
Quote

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Originally posted by: Walleye
it took the whole drive...
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i get the feeling you don't really even fully understand Windows partitioning...

what tipped ya off?

 

[Walleye]

Originally posted by: manly
KISS: Keep it simple, stupid

I would suggest:

/
/home
swap

512 MB for swap is a good figure. How much for / and /home depends on personal preference, but 14 GB for / and the remainder (5.5 GB) for /home is reasonable. Don't do what Jugernot suggested; it's unnecessary for Linux beginners.

You "set aside" space for Windows by installing it first. If you go with Linux first, you can carve up your hard drive into partitions, allocating a 20 GB partition for Windows. The particulars of this procedure will vary depending on the distro, but if you're smarter than the average ATOT'er, then you should be able to figure it out. You should RTFM first, but unfortunately most people are too proud and stupid to do that.

Mandrake Linux probably has the most mature partitioning tool of all the major distros, but I don't think it's advisable to let it shrink your NTFS filesystem. I'd use a commercial tool such as Partition Magic; or else simply backup data off "C:" and then carve up the drive from scratch before reinstalling Windows. Most people in your situation would probably get a 2nd drive to make things simpler.

i just printed out the manual.

will AUTO set up all my free space to be linux only? or will it allow me to set what i want?

 

[notfred]

Here's an Illustration:

to start, this is your drive:

|_______________ blank _________________|

Then you install windows. Make it take up only half the drive (or however much you want)

|______ windows ______|______ blank ______|

Then run the linux installer. It will fill that second "blank" section for you.


I'm not sure exactly what the mandrake installer lets you do, but if it's like redhat, it will let you do auto with either "use all empty space", "erase existing linux partitions" or "erase ALL partitions". If you want to leave empty space, then you can't do "Auto".

 

[Walleye]

windows OWNS the drive... I remember when i was loading XP that it had a partition utility. should i use that to declare an area for windows and future programs i want on the hard drive? if i just set it to auto, wont it just not let windows have any more space? and thus, i wouldnt have any more install room for programs in Windows?

 

[notfred]

Originally posted by: Walleye
windows OWNS the drive... I remember when i was loading XP that it had a partition utility. should i use that to declare an area for windows and future programs i want on the hard drive? if i just set it to auto, wont it just not let windows have any more space? and thus, i wouldnt have any more install room for programs in Windows?

Yes, when you install windows, it asks you if you want to use the whole drive. it says something like

"How much space to use? (max is 40,000MB)"

Instead of using all 40GB, only use 10 or 20 or however much you want. Then the rest of the drive will be empty.

 

[Walleye]

so i should reinstall windows?

 

[manly]

Windows reinstallation is up to you. If Windows is already a little creaky, or there's not a whole lot of stuff to backup, I would strongly lean towards reinstalling Windows. It isn't strictly necessary, of course.

Hint: no Linux installer will wipe out any part of the Windows filesystems unless you tell it to. At the same time, just because Windows isn't occupying all 40 GB of space it's been allocated does not mean it's a simple matter to squeeze Linux into the second half of that drive. NTFS spreads data all over the drive, so shrinking NTFS is not trivial.

In short, you'd first need a specialized utiilty to shrink the NTFS partition from 40 GB to 20 GB. Mandrake Linux should be able to, but I wouldn't recommend it as the best tool for the job (i.e. something like Partition Magic, a commercial product). If you do go this route, defrag your NTFS filesystem first, but that step really isn't crucial in and of itself (it used to be for FAT filesystems before shrinking). A good tool like PM will handle all the tricky parts, and do a reliable, safe job. I don't want to sound alarmist, but NTFS is relatively undocumented, and Microsoft changes it for each OS release; how well Mandrake adapts to meet those changes is the concern.

Assuming you care about some of the stuff lying on your C: filesystem, you should have some form of backups already in place so reinstalling Windows from scratch wouldn't be a big problem. I say this somewhat in jest because when I recently built a new PC, backup up data and migrating was actually a chore for me. And I even had a new hard drive to use. In the end, I didn't really backup and re-use the old drive. It's somewhat of a "live" archive right now.

As far as "AUTO", Linux won't simply "take over" the entire 40 GB drive because Windows is already there. You'd first have to manually delete the NTFS partition(s), then intruct the partition tool to use all 40 GB. Since that isn't what you want, you simply have to manually create the partitions (and desired sizes), and then assign the appropriate ones to Linux. Since this requires additional knowledge, it's a bit easier to install Windows first, leaving blank area on the drive for the Linux installer (see notfred's illustation).

 

[Walleye]

so it would be best for me to simply delete the file structure on the hard drive, reinstall windows running X gigabytes, then install mandrake with the auto installation over the rest of it?

 

[Walleye]

alright, that was relatively painless, i just deleted the partition on the drive, and am currently formatting a 25 gig partition for windows.

 

[Walleye]

oh, and i have to add, 2 computers with a KVM switch is awesome

 

[Walleye]

just finished formatting, it's installing winblows right now.

 

[Walleye]

windows installed, i'm inserting the Mandrake CD now...

 

[Willoughbyva]

Mandrake 9.1 will resize NTFS partitions unless there is data at the end of the drive. I always use mandrakes expert install. There really isn't much to it. You also might want to check out alt.os.linux.mandake. It is a pretty helpful/useful thing.

 

[Walleye]

i've installed mandrake, and am booting to it now, for some reason it's stuck at "mounting local file systems"

 

[Willoughbyva]

The first time it boots it will take an extra second to load, but it really shouldn't take long at all. Is it still stuck?

 

[Walleye]

yes, i rebooted, same result. then i rebooted again, went to text boot, it got past that, got stuck on mapping keys.

then i rebooted again, in failsafe, still stuck on mapping keys.

then i rebooted again, in linux normal mode, and it's still fscking stuck on mapping keys.

this is fscking pissing me off.

 

[Willoughbyva]

It might be your KVM switch. Hook the stuff up directly to the computer and try it. I remember someone on usenet had a similar problem.

 

[dighn]

holy shlt you downloaded a lot of files.

anyway I would just use a swap partition and one big root partition. no need for seperate usr, home partitions for regular use, especially if you are new to linux. well maybe /home if you want to keep your settings and files seperate from the rest of it all. and modern bios doesn't have that boot limitation so /boot partition is not necessary either.

 

[Walleye]

Originally posted by: Willoughbyva
It might be your KVM switch. Hook the stuff up directly to the computer and try it. I remember someone on usenet had a similar problem.

then at what point could i hook the KVM switch back up?

 

[Willoughbyva]

Originally posted by: dighn
holy shlt you downloaded a lot of files.

anyway I would just use a swap partition and one big root partition. no need for seperate usr, home partitions for regular use, especially if you are new to linux. well maybe /home if you want to keep your settings and files seperate from the rest of it all. and modern bios doesn't have that boot limitation so /boot partition is not necessary either.

That reminds me. You might also want to turn off "plug and play" in your bios, if you have that setting.

 

[Willoughbyva]

then at what point could i hook the KVM switch back up?[/quote]

Not sure. Thought you might want to do it to see if it would work, then you could hopefully find a way to fix it.