Dual Booting Ubuntu with OpenSuse - Same Mountpoints?

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hi,

I have an Acer Aspire One D150 with the following partition table:

160GB HDD

  • 6.4GB XP Restore Partition
  • 111GB Windows 7 Partition
  • 43GB Ubuntu 9.10 Partition With:
  • 31GB Filesystem (/)
  • 10GB Home (/home)
  • 1.8GB Swap (/swap)

I would like to free up a bit of space from the Win7 partition and install OpenSuse 11.2 KDE alongside my existing OS’es. Trouble is no matter what I do YAST wants to install OpenSuse in / and /home over the top of Ubuntu. It won’t let me create any new mountpoints for / and /home. Furthermore, I’ve heard that even if I can successfully install OpenSuse I will face problems as Ubuntu uses Grub2 and OpenSuse still uses Grub-legacy.

Can anyone offer any advice please?

Thanks!

2

You need a separate / for openSUSE, there’s no avoiding that. So you need some space for that and you don’t have any. You can share /home, sort of, with lots of caveats.

3

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

I can shrink my Win7 partition down to make extra space, thats no problem. The issue lies with the partitioning - OpenSuse wants to format the Ubuntu / and /home and install the filesystem & home to these partitions. I want to avoid doing this and have Ubuntu, OpenSuse & Win7 dual-booting.

Thanks.

4

If you provide the space, you can choose manual partitioning and tell it to do what you want.

5

Thanks for the replies.

Guess it must be something I’ve missed in the partitioner. I was trying to do it manually but when I create a new partition and give it a mountpoint I can only name it /boot or /tmp etc…

Will try again and post back, Cheers!

6

Tried again, under “Hard Disks” i shrink the Win7 partition and create a new partition for Suse, but if I try to set it as / i get a “this mount point is already in use” message. The summary always states that it is going to format Ubuntu / and Ubuntu /home no matter what I do.:\

7

Choose manual partitioning, then cancel the suggestion for / and reassign to the free space. For /home tell it not to format the existing partition.

8

Hi ken_yap,

Thanks to your help I think I know where I was going wrong; I was clicking Edit Partition Setup to try and change the suggested setup, whereas I needed to click Create Partition Setup and specify the partition. I had assumed that Create Partition Setup would wipe the disk and start afresh, perhaps its just me but I find it a little illogical.

Furthermore, when I do this I cant install because I havent shrunk any partitions yet, and when I go back to the Edit Partition Setup screen to do so the Create Partition Setup button doesnt take me back to the right form, it takes me to the Edit Partition Setup where it wont let me manually specify which partition to use.

Guess I’ll have to create the partitions beforehand using a Live disc. I must say that I’m a little dissapointed with the OpenSuse partitioner, although I’ll put it down to my incompetence and too much Xmas dinner.

Thanks again kenn, would have been stuck without your help. Happy holidays!

9

The problem is that there are several feasible solutions, one being to shrink the Windows partition and another to replace the existing install. Without any guidance from the user, the installer has to suggest a solution, and it probably decided that you were more likely to want to replace the existing Linux install than add another Linux distro to the mix. But it guessed wrong in your case. Hence in some cases manual intervention is necessary.

10

Thats a fair point and I was a little harsh. It did pick the logical option actually so credit where its due indeed.