11.3 Install, Partitioning question

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hi,

First of all, I am relatively new to Linux, so please forgive any ignorances at my part. Now here is the scenario where I am stuck. I recently got my shiny new Dell Inspiron 15R :D, at that time I didn’t have OpenSuse DVD with me, so I kept a separate partition reserved for OpenSuse, on the rest I installed Windows 7.

As a primary partition is needed for Linux and as 2 primary partition is used by Windows 7 itself, I created a 100GB primary partition and formatted it EXT3 with help of third party s/w.

This is the current partition setup at my end.

HDD (SDA) : 500 GB (465 GB usable)

100 MB - System Reserved (windows) - System, Active, Primary
79.90 GB - C: - Boot, Primary
100 GB - FORSUSE - EXT3, Primary (RESERVED PARTITION FOR SUSE)
285 GB - Extended - contains other logical partitions

Now, I got my hands on a OpenSuse 11.3 DVD, booted from the DVD and got stuck at partitioning. Using automatic partitioning, it takes reserved 100 GB, formats it to EXT4 and mounts as /home, for rest it shrinks the partitions in the end of disk.

Now, the issue is that I don’t want my windows partitions to get shrink.

I think the issue here is related to the restriction of no of primary and extended partition. 3 primary and 1 extended. I understand that this is due to my short sightedness :(, please don’t add salt to injury :D.

Now, I want to know if this 100GB reserved partition can be used in any way? One thing, I am planning to try is create a ~100GB partition and not to use separate home partition, but what for swap??

Also, can I use LVM here? I have never tried LVM and don’t know how to use LVM.

Another option I was thinking of to delete reserved EXT3 partition, create a 100 GB NTFS partition and use this from windows using VBox. But, my concern here is unnecessary extra system load.

I am planning to use this new installation for casual usage and learning Mono programming .

Please help me out here with your suggestions.

TIA,
Vivek

2

You could put Linux on the single partition and have no swap, or use a swap file. It would not separate /home from / and would make reinstalling a newer release of openSUSE more hassle as you would have to backup and restore /home at least.

A more thorough fix would be to delete the 100GB partition and expand the extended partition to fill the space, then you can install Linux inside it with as many logical partitions as you need. I don’t know if this is possible with parted while retaining partition data since I’ve never had to do this.

3

Thx a lot Ken, for your quick suggestions. Actually I am having ext3 partition (reserved one) before the extended partition, so I am not sure whether moving the start of the extended partition backwards will work in my case. Also, I am a bit reluctant changing windows partitions, as these partitions are holding my work related data. Backing up and restoring ~250 GB of data is a bit too much work for a lazy person like me :D.

I can try the first option as I won’t be keeping any critical data in /home. It will be used for learning purposes only. But I don’t know what are the implications of not keeping a separate swap partition??

TIA,
Vivek

4

If you have plenty of RAM, you won’t miss swap. If you need swap, you can use a swap file instead of a swap partition. The overhead is negligible.

5

You should always enable swap if possible. as the linux kernel afaik suports dynamic swapping which increases the speed of your machine.

a good rule is to use twice as much swapspace as you have for RAM if you have less than 2 GB RAM. With more than 2 GB RAM you would be use the approximate same size as swap.

My own Method for installation: is this but there is no need to take this:
Disk Space - 1GB /tmp
- SWAPSPACE ()
- 30 GB /
der rest /home

6

Why didn’t you simply started the installation DVD and checked what it offers you as partitioning? I doubt about what you say that openSUSE needs to be installed on a primary partitition (that is to put it mildly because I have a system here running for years with swap on sda5, root on sda6 and /home on sda7, all of course logical partitions within the extended partition which is sda3 in my case). Also pre-creation of an ext3 file system is not what I would recommend, as the installer will offer you to create ext4 file systems as a very acceptible default.

7

On 2010-10-12 11:36, ken yap wrote:

> A more thorough fix would be to delete the 100GB partition and expand
> the extended partition to fill the space, then you can install Linux
> inside it with as many logical partitions as you need. I don’t know if
> this is possible with parted while retaining partition data since I’ve
> never had to do this.

I concur.

I think that space could be moved to the extended partition, it doesn’t need to move any partitions
inside. Something like this:

Current setup:

±------±------±--------------±---------±-----------+
| sda 1 | sda 2 | 100 GB ext3 | existing | partitions |
| boot | C: |

Proposal:

±------±------±----------------------------------------------->
| sda 1 | sda 2 | extended partition sda3
| W.boot| C: ±--------------±---------±-----------±->
|· · · ·|· · · ·| 100 GB free | existing | partitions |

And linux would simply use that 100 GB of space which it was originally thought to go, but with
another name. This requires GRUB to go the MBR or in sda3 (I prefer the later).

Another possibility would be use a primary for a linux boot partition (200 MB, ext2), the rest for
the extended:

±------±------±------±---------------------------------------->
| sda 1 | sda 2 | sda 3 | extended partition sda4
| W.boot| C: |L.Boot |
| | | 200M ±--------------±---------±-----------±->
| · · · | · · · | · · · | 99.8 GB free | existing | partitions |

In this one grub would go to sda3 (or MBR if your prefer (I don’t, if there is a windows involved))

Neither of these methods needs moving the partitions inside the extended partition. The extended
partition is resized, the contents remains. And the order of the partitions inside would be “funny”,
but would work without problems.

How exactly to move them… Mmmm… I would make a full image backup to an external disk (a single
command and a long wait), then play with fdisk for a while (units: sectors). I’m unsure if it would
work, but that’s what I’d try first. I think I read somewhere the first logical partition is a bit
special, that’s my only doubt.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

8

Can you tell us what partitions are on the extended, 1 data partition for windows (or more), followed by linux " /swap", followed by linux" / "? A different order, and/or combination?

What third party partitioning tool was initially used?

Also, I am a bit reluctant changing windows partitions, as these partitions are holding my work related data. Backing up and restoring ~250 GB of data is a bit too much work for a lazy person like me .

Partition changes or not, carefully consider the need for a backup , there is a long list of other things that can, and do go wrong.

If you could open a console type su - press enter, then type fdisk -l (thats a lower case L)and post the output here would help,

Or a screen shot of the partition layout from the yast partitioner, or even from that third party tool.