Help with installation

I would like to help out a friend in a foreign land by introducing him to openSUSE 13.1 32bit KDE. His box is running Windows XP badly with errors. I have not used windows since win95 so I really don’t know what I am doing. I understand that the installation (probably from a USB stick) will allow him to boot into XP but I believe I am supposed to defrag the NTFS file system before I start. How do I do that?

This is the layout of his existing system.

                          USED

SDA1     54.53GiB       15.31GiB
SDA2     Extended
SDA5     20GiB          65.20MiB

Partition1 looks like a normal Windows partition…

linux:/home/linux # ls /mnt
32881fe54d0ed1b2d48163  Documents and Settings  ntldr
AUTOEXEC.BAT            Downloads               pagefile.sys
Bootfont.bin            IO.SYS                  Program Files
boot.ini                MSDOS.SYS               RECYCLER
CONFIG.SYS              MSOCache                System Volume Information
dell                    NTDETECT.COM            WINDOWS

Parttition 5 looks odd, but then as I said I am not familiar with XP…

linux:/home/linux # ls /mnt
RECYCLER  System Volume Information  Φάκελος
linux:/home/linux # 


linux:/home/linux # ls /mnt/*
/mnt/RECYCLER:
S-1-5-21-436374069-2077806209-1417001333-500

/mnt/System Volume Information:
MountPointManagerRemoteDatabase                 tracking.log
_restore{7D4A72C9-D053-4437-80B9-EEF0C00785DE}

/mnt/Φάκελος:
linux:/home/linux # 

Any suggestions would be highly appreciated.

Both partitions are normal.

Do you wish to defrag the system from Linux or from Windows?

Well I do have a live 12.3 USB stick that boots on it so I believe a Linux defrag would be more familiar.

On 2014-09-21 15:06, ionmich wrote:
>
> Miuku;2665572 Wrote:
>> Both partitions are normal.
>>
>> Do you wish to defrag the system from Linux or from Windows?
>
> Well I do have a live 12.3 USB stick that boots on it so I believe a
> Linux defrag would be more familiar.

I don’t think you can /defrag/ from Linux, it has to be done from
Windows. It is the move and shrink partitions which you can do from
Linux, and I think it is impossible with Win XP.

I think you can use gparted to shrink partitions, available on the
openSUSE XFCE 13.1 rescue image. There are other specialized rescue CDs
that can do it, but I’m not very familiar with that situation. YaST can
do some of it, I think.

Your main problem is that the hard disk is very small. sda5 seems almost
free, so you can simply install Linux in there (no home partition) and
be done. I recommend NOT to install grub in MBR, and NOT to write
generic MBR code, but leave the original one from Windows (although this
is almost moot, as there will be no updates to XP).

Eventually, if your friend likes it, destroy Windows and claim sda1 for
/home.


Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)

If I understand you correctly then I should use all of sda5 for a swap partition and an ext4 root partition. That would not destroy any of the existing XP? Then if that’s the case I would be better off to delete the extended partion, shrink sda1 using gparted and give myself some more room for the openSUSE root partition. Do you agree?

On 2014-09-21 16:16, ionmich wrote:
>
> robin_listas;2665588 Wrote:
>>
>>
>> Your main problem is that the hard disk is very small. sda5 seems almost
>> free, so you can simply install Linux in there (no home partition) and
>> be done. I recommend NOT to install grub in MBR, and NOT to write
>> generic MBR code, but leave the original one from Windows (although this
>> is almost moot, as there will be no updates to XP).
>>
>
> If I understand you correctly then I should use all of sda5 for a swap
> partition and an ext4 root partition.

Oops, no. I forgot swap. I meant all of sda5 for “/”. But you do need a
swap, so you will have to split it into sda5 and 6.

> That would not destroy any of the
> existing XP?

No, XP is in sda1 only.

> Then if that’s the case I would be better off to delete the
> extended partion, shrink sda1 using gparted and give myself some more
> room for the openSUSE root partition. Do you agree?

Yes, that’s another way. More invasive changes, but the result would be
better. You do have ample margin for reducing sda1.

Be careful: create an image backup on external disk, in case things go
badly and XP is destroyed.


Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)