I’m trying to create a Linux instance on a Windows 7 PC and use dual-boot. I have created 64GB of space for Linux. Is this enough? When I boot from the live DVD and go through the setup, I get stuck setting up the unassigned space as a linux partition. I don’t understand what the setup is trying to tell me and I’m afraid I’ll wipe out Windows 7. The message I get says there isn’t enough space even though the unassigned available area is 64GB. I am very timid about following what Yast2 is telling me because to my untrained eye it appears the setup wants to use my entire hard drive. Where can I find more information about the disk setup section of the installation process? Any hints, tips are appreciated greatly.
The exact message I get during the installation is: “The current selection is invalid: Too few partitions are marked for removal or the disk is too small. To install Linux, select more partitions to remove or select a larger disk.”
The other partitions are the Win 7 partitions I don’t want to remove.
Yes
Go for the last option ‘Create partition setup’ (for experts) an create the following partitions in the free space.
/ 25 Gb
SWAP 2 GB
/home (the rest)
Don’t let it do that !
Even easier would be to boot from Partedmagic and use its partitioning tool to create partitions. So partitioning and installing remain to separate things. Then boot from openSUSE install CD/DVD and select ‘Create partition setup’. If you handle that carefully nothing wrong or irreversible can happen.
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Can you type out what is set to happen per the partition summary? Red
text is typically a concern… it usually reads, “Delete such-and-such”
which means something bad. Resizing can also be risky with windows
because of NTFS fragmentation or partition allocation.
Where is the 64 GB free on the disk? Beginning? End? Other? I believe
BIOS’s still have limitations regarding where they can find boot loaders
so maybe it wants to be earlier on the drive, but I’m just speculating.
The more output and system (hard drive in this case) data the better.
Good luck.
On 11/23/2010 07:06 PM, BLJeffery wrote:
>
> I’m trying to create a Linux instance on a Windows 7 PC and use
> dual-boot. I have created 64GB of space for Linux. Is this enough?
> When I boot from the live DVD and go through the setup, I get stuck
> setting up the unassigned space as a linux partition. I don’t
> understand what the setup is trying to tell me and I’m afraid I’ll wipe
> out Windows 7. The message I get says there isn’t enough space even
> though the unassigned available area is 64GB. I am very timid about
> following what Yast2 is telling me because to my untrained eye it
> appears the setup wants to use my entire hard drive. Where can I find
> more information about the disk setup section of the installation
> process? Any hints, tips are appreciated greatly.
>
>
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Don’t ! …
Hello BLJeffery, part of the problem is understanding disk partitioning. The second, is what does openSUSE require. What has Windows 7 and/or the manufacturer already done partitioning wise on my disk? First off, 64 GB is enough to load openSUSE, but the partitioning details depends on what you start off with. Here are some basics to consider.
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 have more than four partitions, one of them (and only one can be assigned as logical) must be a logical partition. It is called a Logical Primary 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 logical primary partition you could have.
What does Windows 7 normally do these days? It seems like it creates two partitions by default, both are primary. The first is very small, maybe only 100 Megabytes. It is marked active and bootable. The second is Primary as well and pretty large, most or all of the rest of the disk perhaps.
OK, here is the kicker, the unknown. If you did not build the computer yourself and purchased it. Manufacturers don’t like to spend money on disks and they may create yet another primary partition called a restore partition. It may be hidden or it may not, but it still takes up space and it reduces the number of Primary Partitions you can have by one more.
Now, what does openSUSE want? It needs at minimum a SWAP partition and a “/” partition where all of your software is loaded. Further, it is recommended you create a /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. It is for sure if Windows 7 is using more than one, then you need to create a logical Partition so you can have more than four total partitions. But remember, you can only boot from the first four OR, you must install the Grub Boot loader into the MBR (Master Boot Record).
I don’t like placing the Grub Boot loader into the MBR and Windows does not like it either, at least when you try to load a service pack after the fact. So, what solution might one suggest to you? Well, number one, I suggest you read more about partitions, Active and booting ones, total partitions and logical partitions and determine just how many partitions that you have before you start installing openSUSE.
Here is what I would recommend with what I know now:
- Load Generic Boot Code into the MBR, do not load Grub into it.
- /dev/sda1, Primary - FAT32, For Windows Boot Code (Before you load openSUSE, it will be marked Active for booting)
- /dev/sda2, Primary - NTFS, For Windows main OS Code
- /dev/sda3, Primary - EXT4, 30 GB, Active Booting with Grub Loaded, for main openSUSE
- /dev/sda4, Primary Logical Drive, - 34 GB to contain all other Logical drives (this contains sda5 - 2GB & sda6 - 32 GB)
- /dev/sda5, Logical - SWAP, 2 GB in size
- /dev/sda6, Logical - EXT4, 32 GB in size, for /Home folder
If your disks has more than two existing partitions, we will have to propose something else to you.
Thank You,
On 2010-11-24 03:06, BLJeffery wrote:
>
> I’m trying to create a Linux instance on a Windows 7 PC and use
> dual-boot. I have created 64GB of space for Linux. Is this enough?
Yes, of course. With 12 you are more than ready to go, bigger is better.
> When I boot from the live DVD and go through the setup, I get stuck
> setting up the unassigned space as a linux partition. I don’t
> understand what the setup is trying to tell me and I’m afraid I’ll wipe
> out Windows 7.
Make a photo and post it somewhere (not here). I don’t think
“http://paste.opensuse.org/” allows photos?
My guess is that you have all primaries used. It would help to know your
current partition layout.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)
On 2010-11-24 03:36, BLJeffery wrote:
>
> The exact message I get during the installation is: “The current
> selection is invalid: Too few partitions are marked for removal or the
> disk is too small. To install Linux, select more partitions to remove
> or select a larger disk.”
> The other partitions are the Win 7 partitions I don’t want to remove.
No, no, of course not.
We need to know the partition layout. If you can boot a linux live, get the
output of “fdisk -l” and if you can, “file -s /dev/sd*”.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)
My guess is that you started to create the 64Gb partition but you didn’t actually write the 64Gb partition. Usually that means you resize your HDD creating a 64Gb partition (as part of the extended partition), write the new partition information and reboot. When you reboot you should have the new 64Gb partition.
AFAIK, I should add that the YaST installer does not allow you to resize partitions; for that you’ll need software recommended by the other posters.
**Please don’t try anything until you’ve posted the photo or the output from the fdisk. **
The output of fdisk -l is as follows:
Device Boot Start End Blks ID System
/dev/sda1 * 1 26 203776 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on a cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 26 32071 257403904 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 32071 38901 17105920 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 38901 38914 105816 c W95 FATS32 (LBA)
I installed PartMagic but I’m not sure what to do with it.
Thank you all for your assistance.
BLJeffery The output of fdisk -l is as follows:
Device Boot Start End Blks ID System
/dev/sda1 * 1 26 203776 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on a cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 26 32071 257403904 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 32071 38901 17105920 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 38901 38914 105816 c W95 FATS32 (LBA)
So normally, if you said you freed up 64 GB in space, it would not be used. I see here about a 300 GB disk, is that correct? How did you run fdisk -l command? That is a Linux terminal command. Normally, you do not install Gparted onto your main hard drive. You do not use Windows to make your partitions either. /dev/sda1 looks like the Windows 7 boot drive I spoke of. /dev/sda2 is about 263 GB right? for Windows 7. /dev/sda3 is about 17 GB in size as yet another NTFS partition and /dev/sda4 is a small 108 MB. I am not sure what you are doing at present. In my previous message, I made a suggested partition setup. Leave the first two partitions alone and git rid of the last two. Of course, you did not tell us the full disk size and there is no way to guess what is free here.
Thank You,
On 2010-11-25 04:06, BLJeffery wrote:
>
> The output of fdisk -l is as follows:
>
> Device Boot Start End Blks
> ID System
> /dev/sda1 * 1 26
> 203776 7 HPFS/NTFS
> Partition 1 does not end on a cylinder boundary.
> /dev/sda2 26 32071 257403904
> 7 HPFS/NTFS
> /dev/sda3 32071 38901 17105920
> 7 HPFS/NTFS
> /dev/sda4 38901 38914 105816
> c W95 FATS32 (LBA)
With that setup it is not possible to install anything. You need to remove
on partition and add one extended that has all the remaining space.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)
The output of fdisk -l is as follows:
Device Boot Start End Blks ID System
/dev/sda1 * 1 26 203776 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on a cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 26 32071 257403904 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 32071 38901 17105920 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 38901 38914 105816 c W95 FATS32 (LBA)
I installed PartMagic but I’m not sure what to do with it.
Thank you all for your assistance.
Can you tell us some more, what is on sda4? is sda2 the partition you want to shrink?
You will need to save the data from one of your partitions and then delete the partition, if you are going to have more than 4 partitions, one of them has to be an extended partition, this extended can hold a number of partitions (called logical partitions), this is where you will need to install linux. (on logical partitions inside the extended partition).
The tool I recommend for this is Gparted run from The PartedMagic liveCD Downloads A main advantage of using a liveCD is that none of your partitions are mounted while making the changes.
More on my above post, you will need to resize a partition, unless you delete one that has enough room on it, (you need to delete at least one partition) this can be done from within windows.
I suspect you will need to move at least one partition, this is where PartedMagic comes in.
After this you will have free unpartitioned space that the openSUSE installer will use by default.
You need to give us more details before we can properly suggest the best solution. Those details are, which partition to delete? and which to resize?
The location right now would be ‘other’. It’s between partition 1 and partition 2.
/sda4 is showing as ‘HP_Tools’ 103MB Fat32 from the Windows view. The computer is an HP though I don’t know how to discern which tools are on the partition. Whatever they are, I would think I can live without them. I’ve created the live DVD for Partmagic and posted the results of the fdisk -l elsewhere in this thread. As I backup the PC, Windows 7 indicate that it does not back up the FAT32 formatted area. I wonder what this says about the value of the contents.
Betsy
The total disk size is 320GB. What I did based on advice from ‘elsewhere’ was shrink sda1 to free up 64GB. I know now this is in the wrong place and is probably causing the ‘partition 1 does not end on a cylinder boundary’ message. I have since put the unallocated 64GB back onto partition 1. /sd4 is probably useless - labeled ‘HP_Tools’ from the Windows viewpoint. So how dangerous is it to delete the ‘recovery’ partition /sd3? I’m not real comfortable with that. I guess if I’ve got a Windows System image dvd I shouldn’t worry about it? Thanks for your help.
On 2010-11-25 13:36, BLJeffery wrote:
>
> /sda4 is showing as ‘HP_Tools’ 103MB Fat32 from the Windows view. The
> computer is an HP though I don’t know how to discern which tools are on
> the partition. Whatever they are, I would think I can live without
> them.
There is a tool somewhere to make a backup copy in DVD to restore the
windows side of things, and that small partition is probably an important
part of the process. Search the forum, other people had a similar problem,
find out what they did.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)
There is a question on HP_Tools and a link to a pdf here Question Regarding HP_TOOLS Partition - HP Support Forum
On 2010-11-25 14:06, BLJeffery wrote:
> I guess if I’ve
> got a Windows System image dvd I shouldn’t worry about it? Thanks for
> your help.
You were supposed to create that recovery DVD as the first operation you do
when you get the computer 
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)