Hey all, I am new to Linux and really want to try it out but I need help installing. I have an HP Laptop with vista and I want to install openSuse on the free space of my hard drive without deleting all of the content already on my hd. The problem is that I have no experience partitioning hd’s. Yast wants to format my hard drive and then install Linux. I read somewhere that I could shrink portions of my hard drive to crate space for linux but I haven’t been able to figure it out. Also my laptop came with a partition designated to system recovery (incase this info changes anything). Any and all help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks for the help, i got it working. The only problem is that after installation it booted to opensuse and not to windows. Im guess that is because I installed boot-loader to the wrong area. Hopefully this doesn’t cause any problems…
I just used Yast to partition my laptop HD with Vista on it. You have to use custom partitioner and select the vista partition (be aware you may also have a small data partition first), you should see a slider to let you propose a shrink of Vista.
One you have done that, select the new space and choose New, to create a new partition
Your first one needs to be Primary, ext3, /
Next create a Extended Partition in ALL the remaining space
Once you have that - Create a New partition within the extended partition:
ext3, /home (use nearly all the space available to you)
Leave 512MB at the end to create a SWAP
Remember, nothing is actually written at this stage!
Select your Vista partition and enter a mount point like this:
/windows
(do not format)
Accept.
You will reach the proposed config screen-
Go to the bootloader - NOW, here is where I differ, because I expressly put Grub to the MBR and it works perfectly, but it’s easy for both Suse and new users to get things messed up here. I say Suse messes it up because it doesn’t always install Grub where it would be best - Hence I tell you to click on the Bootloader section in the proposal. Here you can edit it.
‘mooreted’ gave good advice too. EasyBCD.
If you go this way, my advice is the same, except Grub goes to /boot in the suse root partition. There is a thread running at the moment on this OpenSUSE 11 Vista and EasyBCD - openSUSE Forums
This is happening because grub has not been installed to the openSUSE partition’s boot sector. You can do that with the Repair System on the DVD (which, unfortunately, does not always work right) or from the command line from the DVD Rescue System. Once that is done, then in EasyBCD you select that disk/partition to be added to the Vista boot database (which from your description you may already have done). If you want the Rescue System commands to use, first boot into the Rescue System and at the prompt do:
fdisk -l
and post back here the output. It’s actually fairly trivial to do once we know the disk layout.
Boot into the Rescue System from the DVD, login as root. Then do:
grub
You will now be in the grub shell. Do this (be sure to be precise):
find /boot/grub/stage2
On your machine grub should return: (hd0,5). Then do:
root (hd0,5)
Grub should return a message that it found the partition and mounted it. Then do:
setup (hd0,5) (hd0,5)
quit
Now grub is installed to the boot sector of /dev/sda6 (which is hd0,5 in grub numbering). Now add the boot entry to Vista with EasyBCD (if you already had done this before in EasyBCD, delete that and reboot before making this new entry). You now have Vista set up to chainload to openSUSE’s grub.
