Ok I just went to windows vista’s disk management and I shrank my C: partition down 25GB and created and formatted a partition O: with that extra space.
My question is (I’m a newb), how can I use the disk (I have the dvd) to install openSUSE 11 on my O: partition. I went to advanced but I’m afraid that I may end up losing windows. Can someone give me specific instructions to get openSUSE installed?
I’m excited to try out openSUSE. I’ve already tested ubuntu and loved it.
when you get to the part where it proposes install for you, choose - Create Partition Setup
and progress to Custom Partitioning (for experts)
Eventually you will see your HD (probably as sda)
you will likely have
sda1
sda2
1&2 being vista and a recovery partition
sda3 should be the one you created for suse
create one primary ext3 partition from sda3 for ‘root’ /
use 10GB
now the remaining space create one extended partition with all the space
then within the new extended partition create a SWAP (1GB is plenty)
then use all the remaining for /home (ext3)
highlight your main Vista partition and make sure the do not format radio is marked
but in the mount point box type: /windows
All right. I tried something but it failed. I do not have a sda2 or recovery.
I have
sda which is basically the entier size of my hd
sda1 which is my windows
sda2 which was for opensuse
i deleted sda2 and created a primary partition and set mount point to “/” . I re-sized it to 10GB and then created an extended partition. I then created a new primary partition and set mount point to “/home”. Then I resized it 1GB smaller and created another primary of the last 1GB and set mount point to “swap”.
I was left w/ something like:
sda
sda1 /windows
sda2 primary / 10GB
sda3 extended 14.4GB
sda4 primary /home 13.4GB
sda5 primary swap 1GB
What you describe you did is not technically possible. An extended partition is a primary, so in your list above you have 5 primaries - there can only be 4 on a PC.
I suggest you delete all those partitions with Vista, leaving the ~25GB as “unallocated” space. Then install openSUSE; if the installer does not recommend further down-sizing of the Vista partition, then you can accept the recommendation. If the installer does offer to change the Vista partition, then go into Expert mode and create 3 new primaries:
sda2 = / (root)
sda3 = /home
sda4 = swap
Furthermore, since this is Vista, IMO it is best to install grub to the openSUSE root partition instead of the MBR (the installer may very well suggest this anyway); at the Boot Loader step enter the dialog and you will see the option under the Boot Loader Installation tab. Then under Boot Options check the box for “set active flag in partition table . . .”. With this setup, the Vista MBR will boot openSUSE, and from the openSUSE menu you can boot Vista. There is another alternative controlling this exclusively from within Vista with its boot loader, if you want to do that instead (just ask).
Yes, I would like to have it so that when I turn my computer on it will ask me which (either vista or opensuse) it will boot into by default. Can you tell me how to do this?
This can be done whether it is Vista or the openSUSE’s boot manager that is in control. With Vista you will get a white text menu on a black background showing both choices, and you can choose which OS boots by default (meaning, which OS boots if you don’t select the other). With openSUSE it is very much the same, except that you will get a green graphical menu.
The openSUSE installation will automatically set up its boot menu to include booting Vista. If you want Vista to control, the tool that Microsoft provides to set that up is technically complex and, well, pretty awful. But there is a neat free tool called EasyBCD which makes this easy to do. You would need to install openSUSE’s boot loader to the root partition boot sector (as I posted above, best to do this regardless of which boot loader you are using), and then in EasyBCD add an entry pointing to the root partition (probably sda2). EasyBCD is here EasyBCD - NeoSmart Technologies. Good idea to read the nice tutorial first.
i have a problem. i already have 3 partitions-
sda1 Dell Utility Partition
sda2 Recovery
sda3 Main
and i had already created one for the purpose of opensuse
sda4 and it showed sda5 to be an extended partition (the size and name of sda4 and 5 were same)
so i deleted the sda5 and sda4 also got deleted.
then i created an extended partition from sda3 with original size of sda4. now do i create a primary partition from sda4 for ‘root’\ or an extended. and how do i do that. i am a first timer at installing anything other than windows, so please explain generously:shame:
Delete everything except sda1,2,3
with **all **the free space create an extended partition
then inside the extended you create logical partitions
swap (2GB)
/ (10-15GB)
/home (all the rest, as large as possible)
hi,After many attempts to get Ubuntu & Kubuntu running correctly, I’ve decided to try openSUSE. Downloaded the dvd last night and plan to install later today. But just a few question before I start. I have 1 640Gb hard drive partitioned as follows.
C:Windows XP - 100gb
M:Media Drive - 400gb
B:Backup Drive - 40gb
O:Other systems Drive - 100gb (unused & defraged)
My system is fairly new, 4mb ram,32bit & 64bit compartable.
My question is, how & can I install openSUSE onto my O:drive only. I don’t mind using the whole drive for Linux, just hoping to get a system that works, unlike the butu products. I want to be able to boot into either XP or SUSE on startup.
My question is, how & can I install openSUSE onto my O:drive only.
Use custom Partitioning, you will want to make all O a extended partition and then create 3 partitions inside it:
swap 4GB
/ 15GB
/home All the rest GB
