I am attempting to make my HP DV6000 laptop dual boot with WinXP and OpenSuse 11.3.
I’ve upgraded the hard drive in this system to 500GB and have WinXP in a 100GB primary partition. There is also a 12GB system recovery logical partition. In preparation for Linux, I used the Windows disk manager to create a 50GB primary partition. I’ve defragged and run check disk on both of the primary partitions and found no problems.
For the Linux install, I downloaded the OpenSuse 11.3 DVD image using metalink and DownLoadThemAll so I’m pretty confident I got a good image. I burned it to a DVD, verified that, then verified the install image using the openSuse installer. Everything looks good.
When I attempt to do the install of Linux however, the suggested partitioning says that it wants to delete partitions /dev/sda1 (99.06GB), /dev/sda2 (48.83GB) and /dev/sda3 (11.72GB). In each case, it says resize is impossible due to inconsistent fs, Try checking under windows.
It then says that it wants to create three new volumes for /dev/sda1 (2.01 GB), /dev/sda2 (20.00GB) and /dev/sda3 (443.75 GB). In other words, it wants to devote the entire disk to Linux.
I thought that I would be able to tell it to install Linux in the 50GB partition that I had created for it and that it would subdivide that into volumes as appropriate. If it wanted to delete that partition and create a new one that would be fine too, but I don’t understand why it thinks that it needs to delete the WinXP and recovery partitions.
Is there a way I can work around this by using either the Create Partition Setup or Edit Partition Setup options available in the installer? Or better yet, is there something I can do via windows partitioning before I install that will prevent it from wanting to delete my windows partitions in the first place?
In openSUSE setup, choose the last option “Create partition setup” and expert mode. Then you can create partitions for openSUSE (or use/reuse existing partitions) and do what you want, including of course keeping your Windows partition. Using the Windows manager to resize your NTFS partition before installing Linux was absolutely right.
Ok DON’T create a partition just leave fee space and let the Installer create what it needs in the free space.
Inconsistent file systems are caused by improper shutdowns to Windows in the most part. But you could have Windows file system problems in the works. If you don’t fix it you will not be able to mount r/w the Windows partition In Linux. The installer want to erase them because it could not find space to install because you made 30 gig partition of the free space and it had to resize something but nothing could be resized because of a problem in the Windows file system.
In any case Linux requires at least 2 partitions and Suse defaults to 3 (swap,root.home) I recommend you follow this scheme.
What is that supposed to mean? Aren’t we going to confuse the OP somehow? Creating partitions is absolutely right, creating partitions in advance - before running setup - is even better. Creating partitions in free space is also right. Better don’t trust any setup in dual or multibooting situations. If you’re not able to create 3 partitions yourself - without touching your Windows partition - you might just not be ready for multibooting.
Well, here are two of my best friends not in agreement with what to do here. First off, please_try_again is by far the most knowledgeable person about disk partitions I have ever known. I might add though it is my first inclination is to allow openSUSE to create the partitions it wants to just as gogalthorp suggests. But there is a problem that must be fixed first.
Now I want to add in a little more to the mix. Why is there a problem with the Windows setup here? Let us analize, so to speak, the situation. How would one end up with the Windows setup of /dev/sda1 (99.06GB), /dev/sda2 (48.83GB) and /dev/sda3 (11.72GB) in the first place? I am thinking that before one can do anything else, you need to fix or undo the Windows problem. I think the odd setup was due to several things such as restoring or copying the original partition setup to the new hard disk. Most often, the restore partition is first, not last. Further, you do not need or want to create a partition for openSUSE from Windows.
I would surely expect you would need to boot up Windows and run FDISK on the Windows partition and allow Windows to fix this problem before you install openSUSE. I might suggest you delete the 50 GB partition you made for openSUSE. You may want to resize Windows to reuse the 50 GB if indeed it is between the 100 and 12 GB partitions and then install openSUSE at the end of the disk with a logical partition, including all of openSUSE. So the real story here is how did you end up with the Hard Disk setup you are trying to install openSUSE in to anyway?
There is also a 12GB system recovery logical partition.
The recovery partition should not be a logical volume, you might not be able to use it. “?”
Do you have any live linux cd so you could post output of ‘fdisk -l’ ?
the suggested partitioning says that it wants to delete partitions /dev/sda1 (99.06GB), /dev/sda2 (48.83GB) and /dev/sda3 (11.72GB)
The way I read its present setup is :
sda1 =MS Windows
sda2 =partition made for SuSe
sda3 = extended parition 11 g
sda5= logical volume - recovery
that is not good at all.
I began by creating a backup of my original hard disk (apx. 120GB unformatted) using Acronis True Image. Then I installed the new 500GB unformatted drive and use my True Image boot CD to restore the two partitions that I had backed up. It seemed logical to me (but what do I know?) to put the WinXP partition at the start of the 500GB space and put the recovery partition at the other end, which left a big unallocated space in between. It was from that unallocated space that I then created the 50GB partition onto which I wanted to install Linux. I think you’re telling me that my layout was unorthodox and confused the installer. I can fix that easily enough I guess by doing another restore from my backup image and positioning the two partitions contiguously, leaving unallocated space after them. Is that what you’re suggesting?
LostFarmer, I think you’re correct about the present disk setup. I don’t have a Live linux cd, but I had downloaded the image, so I’m making one now and will try to use it to get the fdisk info.
Thanks, Bob
Hmmm… You said you upgraded the hard disk. Is it a new one then? If so, chances are that it has a 4KB sector size. Windows XP cannot natively handle such drives and needs a partitioning trick … which might prevent Linux to read the geometry correctly - I’ve seen cases with preformated external drives, which were made compatible for XP but became unreadable under Linux. You could boot any Linux live CD, open a terminal as root (the superuser under Linux), type the command:
fdisk -l
and post the output here. Linux live CDs have network support and firefox installed, so you could post in the forum from there. fdisk would tell if your hard disk has a 512b or 4kb sector size. If it’s 4kb, dual booting Windows XP and Linux might be tricky … probably possible if you leave a gap before creating the next partition, so that the logical and physical sectors will be aligned - at least for that one … but much more complicated as you would first expect.
I began by creating a backup of my original hard disk (apx. 120GB unformatted) using Acronis True Image. Then I installed the new 500GB unformatted drive and use my True Image boot CD to restore the two partitions that I had backed up. It seemed logical to me (but what do I know?) to put the WinXP partition at the start of the 500GB space and put the recovery partition at the other end, which left a big unallocated space in between. It was from that unallocated space that I then created the 50GB partition onto which I wanted to install Linux. I think you’re telling me that my layout was unorthodox and confused the installer. I can fix that easily enough I guess by doing another restore from my backup image and positioning the two partitions contiguously, leaving unallocated space after them. Is that what you’re suggesting?
Yes, that is what I would do AND run fdisk on the Windows partition when done to make sure it thinks all is OK. Now, you can try to load openSUSE and see what it suggests and it should not want to delete the Windows partition with over 300 GB free at the end. Or, you could go for a custom setup like this:
Load MBR with Generic Booting Code
/dev/sda1, Windows Primary NTFS Partition, 120 GB
/dev/sda2, Restore Primary FAT32 Partition, 12 GB
/dev/sda3, / Linux Primary EXT4 Partition, 100 GB Marked Active for Booting, loaded with Grub
/dev/sda4, Primary Extended Partition, a Logical Partition Container, about 256GB
/dev/sda5, SWAP Logical Partition, 8 GB in size
/dev/sda6, /home Logical EXT4 Partition, 248 GB in size
This is the setup I would suggest if you were going to make a custom partition setup. Partition sizes are just guesses and suggestions I have made. Good luck and keep us informed of your success.
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 12931 103868226 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 12932 19305 51199155 6 FAT16
/dev/sda3 59272 60801 12289725 f W95 Ext’d (LBA)
/dev/sda5 59272 60801 12289693+ b W95 FAT32
What do you think? Should I proceed to re-do my restore from backup and make the two windows partitions contiguous, in two primary partitions at the start of the disk, then try the Linux install again?
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 12931 103868226 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 12932 19305 51199155 6 FAT16
/dev/sda3 59272 60801 12289725 f W95 Ext’d (LBA)
/dev/sda5 59272 60801 12289693+ b W95 FAT32
So, you may have not seen my other post yet, but you do not need to create any partitions for openSUSE from Windows. This should be done by or from openSUSE during the installation. I would not create /dev/sda3 or /dev/sda5 from Windows, just leave that space free until you get into openSUSE and look at my previous suggestions.
First you have 2 primary partitions, then unallocated space, then an extended partition which contains 1 FAT32 logical partition. In this unallocated space, you could only create one single primary partition. This is not enough for Linux. That’s why openSUSE setup proposed to delete some other partitions. Using parted Magic, you should expand the extended partition to the left and/or create a primary partition directly after your second primary. You don’t need to move your last partition. You could … but there is little benefit to do so.
Your partitions could look like this:
The primary partitions are highlighted in red. The extended partition (just a container for the others) is in dark red. In openSUSE “Create partition setup”, you would then select sda3 for /, sda5 for swap and sda6 for /home . (the present sda3 should became sda4).
It looks like I have a couple of options to try. Thank you everyone for your help. I’ve already started the restore process to make my two windows partitions contiguous at the start of the disk. Both will be primary partitions. Then the rest of the disk will be unallocated. I’ll try installing onto that and see what the SuSe installer thinks.
James, you said that I should run fdisk on the Windows partition after the restore to make sure everything is OK. I’m not sure what you mean. Are you talking about the Linux fdisk, like I used above from the live CD? If so, I don’t know how to use it to tell me if the partition is OK. Or maybe you meant to run the windows Check Disk utility on the partition.
James, you said that I should run fdisk on the Windows partition after the restore to make sure everything is OK. I’m not sure what you mean. Are you talking about the Linux fdisk, like I used above from the live CD? If so, I don’t know how to use it to tell me if the partition is OK. Or maybe you meant to run the windows Check Disk utility on the partition.
After the restore of Windows, boot into Windows and make sure that it does work. I would then start Windows Explorer, the file manager. Right Click on the C: Windows drive and pick properties. Go to the Tools Tab, under Error Checking, pick Check Now. When the Check disk window comes up, check both options and press the start button. I expect you to get a notification that you must reboot to perform the check. Say OK and reboot. Allow the check to complete and this can take a while so go watch TV or something else while this runs. Once complete, reboot back into Windows again and all should be good. openSUSE should have no problems with your Windows partition.
Thanks for the clarification James. What you described is what I meant by the windows “check disk” utility.
Things are working much better now. I placed the windows recovery partition right after the windows boot partition and left the rest of the disk space unallocated. After verifying that all was OK with check disk, I re-ran the openSuSe installation and this time the partition suggestions that it came up with were all within the unallocated space, as expected. The only change I made was to downsize the Linux native partition to 75GB instead of letting it have the entire remainder of the disk. I’m not sure what I’ll do with that remaining space in the future, but wanted to keep my options open.
When I was done and rebooted, I was very pleased to see that it gave me the option of booting either OS. From the reading I’d done, I thought that I was going to have to do some additional work with GRUB to accomplish that. Perhaps this is a newer, smarter GRUB that can figure that out on it’s own. One puzzle is that it shows three Windows boot options on the menu. The first two boot into WinXP and the third boots into the recovery partition. After I tried that third one, I no longer got the menu at startup and it would only boot windows, so I think it must have overwritten the MBR. No problem. Since I hadn’t really done anything with the Linux OS yet, I just removed the partitions that contained it, then re-did the install.
After that I thought it would be a good idea to create a new backup of the entire disk, including both OS’s. However, when I tried to do so with Acronis True Image, it told me that “some of the partitions have errors and can only be backed up sector by sector”. Through the process of elimination, I determined that it was the Linux partitions that it thought had errors. My guess is that it just doesn’t understand their file system and therefore doesn’t know how to tell what part of the partition contains real data and what part is empty space, so it could back it up, but would back up all of the empty space too, creating a huge backup file. I’m sure there must be a better way.
So, that brings me to a new question. What is the best way to create a backup of the Linux partition(s) that is comparable to the kind of backup I use for Windows?
And, thanks again to everyone that offered suggestions for help. When I originally posted my question, I figured that I might get one or two replies in a few days. The quick, high quality responses I got were really amazing and I appreciate them all.
I wanted to make a minor correction to what I said in the previous post. On the startup menu that shows three entries for “Windows”, the first one boots WinXP, the second one boots into the recovery partition and the third just gives a disk read error message and tells you to press Ctl-Alt-Del to reboot. I wasn’t paying close enough attention to which option I tried the first time. Anyway, this makes a little more sense. I still don’t know what the third option is for. I think it was probably just a bad guess on the part of GRUB, but it isn’t really a problem.
I confirmed that choosing the second option and booting into the recovery partition does indeed overwrite the MBR and eliminates the boot menu. This is true even though I didn’t tell it to restore anything and just exited at the first opportunity. This time though, I was prepared. I made a backup of the MBR first. Then after confirming that the boot menu was gone, I restored the MBR and voila, the boot menu is back. I love it when a plan comes together.
On 03/07/2011 09:36 AM, rjheath wrote:
>
> The quick, high quality responses I got were
> really amazing and I appreciate them all.
welcome to open source and openSUSE!
just to let you know: we here are users who volunteer to help other
users…
come back as you run into tough spots…which you will (as Linux is
neither Windows nor Mac–and you might assume something you have done
hundreds of times will work here, and poof. . .)
–
DenverD
CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD
[NNTP posted w/openSUSE 11.3, KDE4.5.5, Thunderbird3.0.11, nVidia
173.14.28 3D, Athlon 64 3000+]
“It is far easier to read, understand and follow the instructions than
to undo the problems caused by not.” DD 23 Jan 11