Hi All,
It has been a long time since I’ve used SuSE. I went to do the install the 32-bit CD and became confused about the partitioning of the HDD. I have Linux Mint 12 on my PC, but it has only created problems. So, I want to erase Mint, but am confused about setting up the Swap partition. I want to use SuSE on my entire HDD. Any help? Please.
On 2012-03-14 00:56, jjmacey wrote:
>
> Hi All,
>
> It has been a long time since I’ve used SuSE. I went to do the install
> the 32-bit CD and became confused about the partitioning of the HDD. I
> have Linux Mint 12 on my PC, but it has only created problems. So, I
> want to erase Mint, but am confused about setting up the Swap partition.
> I want to use SuSE on my entire HDD. Any help? Please.
Just tell the installation to use the entire disk, it should make an
appropriate proposal.
To suggest a swap size, tell your memory size, disk size, cpu type and
speed, intended usage… If you want a figure, minimum 4 GiB and more than
your ram.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
openSUSE does not want to remove anything from your system and if you want the whole thing to be openSUSE, you might consider downloading the KDE LiveCD from here: software.opensuse.org: Download openSUSE 12.1, boot from the CD and make sure it works as you wish. Then, you can start the YaST / System / Partitioner and remove all existing partitions on your hard drive. Then, when you decide to install openSUSE, just take the defaults and let it rip. As for SWAP, 2-4 GB is enough, depending on the amount of memory your system has and if big enough, just let it be 4 GB and carry own. If your memory is low, the default may be small as well, but is is OK to use the default. Here is more info on partitioning.
Each hard drive can have up to four PRIMARY partitions, any of which could be marked active and bootable. No matter what you might hear, only one of the first four primary partitions can be booted from. That means you can boot from Primary partitions 1, 2, 3 or 4 and that is all. In order to boot openSUSE, you must load openSUSE and the grub boot loader into one of the first four partitions. Or, your second choice is to load the grub boot loader into the MBR (Master Boot Record) at the start of the disk. The MBR can be blank, like a new disk, it can contain a Windows partition booting code or generic booting code to boot the active partition 1, 2, 3, or 4. Or, as stated before, it can contain the grub boot loader. Why load grub into the MBR then? You do this so that you can “boot” openSUSE from a logical partition, numbered 5 or higher, which is not normally possible. In order to have more than four partitions, one of them (and only one can be assigned as extended) must be a extended partition. It is called
an Extended Primary Partition, a container partition, it can be any one of the first four and it can contain one or more logical partitions within. Anytime you see partition numbers 5, 6 or higher for instance, they can only occur inside of the one and only Extended Primary partition you could have.
What does openSUSE want as far as partitions? It needs at minimum a SWAP partition and a “/” partition where all of your software is loaded. Further, it is recommended you create a separate /home partition, which makes it easier to upgrade or reload openSUSE without losing all of your settings. So, that is three more partitions you must add to what you have now. What must you do to load and boot openSUSE from an external hard drive? Number one, you must be able to select your external hard drive as the boot drive in your BIOS setup. Number two, you need to make sure that the external hard drive, perhaps /dev/sdb, is listed as the first hard drive in your grub device.map file and listed as drive hd0. I always suggest that you do not load grub into the MBR, but rather into the openSUSE “/” root primary partition which means a primary number of 1, 2, 3 or 4. If number one is used, then that will be out. You will mark the openSUSE partition as active for booting and finally you must load generic booting code
into the MBR so that it will boot the openSUSE partition. I suggest a partition like this:
Thank You,
Hi All,
Thanks for the sugestions and feedback. I am sure to be back!
On 2012-03-14 02:06, jdmcdaniel3 wrote:
> 0. /dev/sda, Load MBR with Grub
> 2. /dev/sda1, Primary SWAP (4 GB)
> 3. /dev/sda2, Primary EXT4 “/” openSUSE Partition Marked Active for
> booting (80-120 GB)
> 4. /dev/sda3, Primary EXT4 “/home” Your main home directory (Rest of
> the disk)
If there is enough space, I would do:
sda 2 same
sda 3 10 GiB, extra bootable partition for testing the next version
sda 4 home, rest of space.
Another possibility:
sda3 same size as 2, for alternative system.
sda4 home.
This way, sda2 has one bootable system, sda3 the next. For example, sda2
would have 12.1, and when the times come, sda3 would have 11.2. When 11.2
is ripe, change default boot to that one. The next cycle, sda2 will have
11.3. You never have to format on top and if the new system fails, you
still have the old one intact.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
Hi All,
I plan on staying with the GNOME live CD, but – as I said – got freaked on the partitioning of the HDD during the install. I only need 2 partitions (I think) one for the system and the other for SWAP. That’s what I am trying to do.
Thanks for those replies.
Typically that’s what a Ubuntu type install would give you, but openSUSE leans towards 3 partitions so your personal files are separate.
So swap, / and /home
I only ever use the custom partitioner
Here is an example
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10573557/12.1_install/12.1_slideshow.odp
caf4926,
Thanks for the slide show and the explanation about partitioning. I am fleeing both the latest Ubuntu and Linux Mint. I started life in Linux with SuSE before Novell took over. So, these questions are a little embarassing. LOL!
Is there a difference between the KDE and GNOME istaller? I used KDE a long time ago, but switched to GNOME. I do know I can switch gto GNOME from KDE, but would rather stay with the original install. I’ll have to check out the KDE Desktop!
Again, thanks for your response.
The installer is the same regardless of the choice of desktop environment.
I favor KDE
caf4926,
I just pulled down the Live openSuSE KDE CD, and am about to burn it. Maybe it is time for a change.
There are one or two bugs in KDE, but it’s KDE not openSUSE. Mostly affecting the PIM, but I don’t use any of that.
And all my machines are updated to kde4.8.1
KDE 4.8> for openSUSE 12.1 - Blogs - openSUSE Forums
(The upgrade) Is it worth it?.. Without question.
You might be interested in this too
http://forums.opensuse.org/content/107-re-multi-media-restricted-format-installation-guide.html
And I am now using KDE 4.8 as well on my PC’s. It works great and the only issue I have run in to is the system sounds not working due to needing the full path in front of the sound file name which is missing. Its easy to add this back in though many don’t want the desktop to make noise on login and such, but I guess I do.
Thank You,
On 2012-03-14 05:06, jjmacey wrote:
>
> Hi All,
>
> I plan on staying with the GNOME live CD, but – as I said – got
> freaked on the partitioning of the HDD during the install. I only need 2
> partitions (I think) one for the system and the other for SWAP. That’s
> what I am trying to do.
That’s a mistake, IMO.
You /need/ a separate home, too. Otherwise, when the time comes to install
the new version, you have to format the entire disk (except swap) and
destroy your data.
Unless you prefer to do upgrades, which many people here avoid. But even in
that case, a separate home is an advantage.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
robin_listas,
I appreciate your comments. But, I back up my data on a peripheral HDD and have e-mail / docs in the cloud. So, I think that having only 2 partitions will work.
What I am now thinking is that I should wipe my HDD so that when I do the install the installer’s recommendations is what I will follow. I have been installing various versions of Linux distros for the past week and want to wipe everything out. Do you have a recommendation for a good wipe / HDD formating software CD? Thanks in advance for your respoonse.
On 2012-03-14 15:16, jjmacey wrote:
>
> robin_listas,
>
> I appreciate your comments. But, I back up my data on a peripheral HDD
> and have e-mail / docs in the cloud. So, I think that having only 2
> partitions will work.
Oh, of course it will work. It is up to you.
> What I am now thinking is that I should wipe my HDD so that when I do
> the install the installer’s recommendations is what I will follow. I
> have been installing various versions of Linux distros for the past week
> and want to wipe everything out. Do you have a recommendation for a good
> wipe / HDD formating software CD? Thanks in advance for your respoonse.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX count=1
or “fdisk /dev/sdX” and then “new partition table”.
Then use the installer.
If you want to do it another way, you can download the distro “cdrescue”,
but there is no need.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
robin_listas,
Thanks. I’ll run dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX count=1
Hope to be back soon. LOL!
Hi All,
Well, I am up and running openSuSE 12.1 with the KDE Desktop with a few issues that I will get to later. LOL!
To prepare for the install I seriously had to look @ my HDD because over the last week I’d tried to install just about every Linux distro there is with no real success. First I downloaded the SystemRescueCD. Then I used GParted to check on the number of partitions that I had. I had in fact 4. I deleted 3 of those and now had 1 partition.
After that I ran SHRED in terminal from the SystemRescueCD menu. I ran this command:
shred -vfz -n 1 /dev/sda
This actually ran two passes across my HDD add, may have been overkill. But, I wanted a clean partition.
Next, I tried to install openSuSE 12.1 using the GNOME desktop. However, I got the error message that my HDD could not copy the Live CD. The fun keep on coming!
I had the KDE desktop CD and did the install with that after accepting the recommended partitioning. Success! But,
YAST is now crashing and
I can port video to my HDTV over an HDMI cable, but get no sound. This might have something to do with my ATI/AMD drivers.
I will be going through the Forum here to try to resolve these issues.
All in all this has been a nightmare. IMHO the installer needs to be changed to the ease of use of both UBUNTU and Linux Mint.
Well, at least I am up and running but without a few valuable things as I mentioned above.
Get they system updated
Open a terminal
su -
zypper patch
Once that’s done, run it again.
Then reboot
Then do
su -
zypper up
Now you are in a possition to address your issues in the approriate part/s of the forum
caf4946,
When I run your suggestions in terminal I get this:
jjmacey@linux-5zoo:~> su -
Password:
linux-5zoo:~ # zypper patch
Loading repository data…
Reading installed packages…
Resolving package dependencies…
Nothing to do.
linux-5zoo:~ # su -
linux-5zoo:~ # zypper up
Loading repository data…
Reading installed packages…
Nothing to do.
linux-5zoo:~ #
YAST still crashes. Thanks for the input.
On 2012-03-15 07:26, jjmacey wrote:
> To prepare for the install I seriously had to look @ my HDD because
> over the last week I’d tried to install just about every Linux distro
> there is with no real success. First I downloaded the ‘SystemRescueCD’
> (http://www.sysresccd.org/SystemRescueCd_Homepage). Then I used
> ‘GParted’ (http://gparted.sourceforge.net/) to check on the number of
> partitions that I had. I had in fact 4. I deleted 3 of those and now had
> 1 partition.
gparted is included in systemrescue.
> After that I ran SHRED in terminal from the SystemRescueCD menu. I ran
> this command:
Useless overkill, unless you work for the CIA and have security sensitive data.
> * YAST is now crashing and
You have to post those problems one per post in the appropriate forum, with
full details.
> All in all this has been a nightmare. IMHO the installer needs to be
> changed to the ease of use of both UBUNTU and Linux Mint.
IMO, the installer is perfect.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)