Hello!
I’ve got somewhat complicated situation here. I’ll explain briefly from the beginning to make things clear. I have a laptop with W7 and I have USB3 external HD (docked into a dock-station) with Ubuntu Desktop 14.04 Recently I kinda fell in love with YaST and I wanted to try OpenSUSE while keeping my other TWO operating systems. Couple of other things… I decided to go with OpenSUSE 13.1 since it’s a LTS (what you call “Evergreen”) and also because I like it’s default KDE dark theme. Partitioning-wise what I’ve got right now is this:
I use GRUB2 which resides on my external HD (somewhat inconvenient, 'cos when I need Windows, I must turn on the dock-station, but it’s a none-issue for me – just to let you know). There I choose either Windows 7 or Ubuntu 14.04 One more thing… Swap-wise… I have 6GB of RAM in my system. I created 2 GB SWAP partition for Ubuntu, which seems to be excessive – it has never been used at all so far). I want to install OpenSUSE on my external HD side by side with Ubuntu. The partitioning scheme so far is this:
sda is my internal HD with W7 on it. sdb is where Linux lives (externally so to speak). sdb1 is / ext4; sdb2 is swap; sdb3 is extended and there’s sdb5 ext4 home in it too.
My question is… what are the right choices for me during OpenSUSE installation under such conditions. One more thing that I don’t get… My external HD with Ubuntu is full. Where would OpenSUSE go? Do I have to first use third-party tools to make some empty space for OpenSUSE on my external drive?
On Mon, 08 Jun 2015 17:16:02 +0000, papakota wrote:
> Recently I kinda fell in love with YaST and I wanted to try OpenSUSE
> while keeping my other TWO operating systems.
If you want to try openSUSE, why not install it in a virtual machine and
play with it there? Then if you decide you like it (which you probably
will 
), then you can look at repartitioning your drives.
Jim
–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C
Thanks for your reply! I don’t like the idea of virtualization in general (and that to put it mildly). My philosophy is that OS must directly interact with the hardware to get a “real McCoy”. That’s just me, nothing personal against your proposal. It does make sense!
I would rather sacrifice Ubuntu as a last resort, if I had to choose. Can re-install it later if anything, just don’t want to waste time. I’m aware of an automatic partitioning done by OpenSUSE during installation process, but I’m unsure if in my particular situation it’s a good idea at all???
It is unclear how things are installed. With Windows 7 it may or may not be using EFI. If using legacy booting you can have a max of 4 primary partitions per drive one of which can be an extended which can have any number of logical partitions. So details must be provided before a firm recommendation can be made. From Linux give us
sudo fdisk -l
With all drives attached
Note that is a lower case L not a one
This will list all drives and partitions
Please put all computer output between code tags (# sign in the forum editor window) so that the forum editor does not reformat stuff.
Normally triple booting should be no problem assuming you have the free space and can make the partitions needed. But your short description indicates you may have painted yourself into a corner with your odd booting methods. That is why we need to see the actual layout not your description of what you think it is.
Thanks for your reply!
I’ve attached a print-screen, that’s easier and better than code (God knows how to copy it from Ubuntu’s terminal). Why would you think that I cannot distinguish between lower case l and 1? I’ve been using CLI since 1990… Before lots of people here were even born. It can’t be even in theory -1 after the DOS/UNIX command. Good you didn’t remind me to press ENTER after that 
Of course, it’s legacy BIOS, not EFI. Why would I use EFI with Linux?
On Mon, 08 Jun 2015 19:56:01 +0000, papakota wrote:
> Thanks for your reply! I don’t like the idea of virtualization in
> general (and that to put it mildly). My philosophy is that OS must
> directly interact with the hardware to get a “real McCoy”. That’s just
> me, nothing personal against your proposal. It does make sense!
I’m glad that you see that the idea makes sense. In some instances, I
agree with you - high performance computing, for example, you want to
minimize the overhead on the system, and bare metal installations make a
lot of sense there.
But virtualization technology has moved on from being a software-only
implementation of a hardware layer - it’s actually a mcuh way to get
better performance for the money you spend on hardware.
Idle CPUs are really “wasted money” in infrastructure operations. You
don’t want over-utilization (which is why some virtualization solutions
use dynamic scaling and other load balancing technologies to shuffle
computing workloads from over-utilized servers to other, un-utilized or
under-utilized servers).
For example, I work from home - I have a system with 32 GB of RAM in it
and a couple TB of storage. I write technical documentation for software
that can be installed as a clustered configuration.
I’m not going to buy 10 machines to run a cluster. The one I have has
sufficient capacity to run all 10 platforms independently, and the
configuration performs well enough for “lab work”.
I’ve also seen massively scaled implementations that use virtualization
technology heavily. Use Google? Very massively scaled virtualization
deployment using container technologies like Docker and Kubernetes.
So I would urge you to update your knowledge on virtualization
technologies. For what you’re looking to do, it’s a perfect fit.
But OK… you don’t like virtualization.
Another option would be to make a bootable flash drive to “try out”
openSUSE on your hardware. You can do that with the live DVD images, as
long as your hardware doesn’t need special firmware that’s not bundled on
the live image. That again gives you the option of trying it out.
> I would rather sacrifice Ubuntu as a last resort, if I had to choose.
> Can re-install it later if anything, just don’t want to waste time. I’m
> aware of an automatic partitioning done by OpenSUSE during installation
> process, but I’m unsure if in my particular situation it’s a good idea
> at all???
If you feel you absolutely must use real physical hardware and the
internal drive on your system, you will want to create separate
partitions for openSUSE, which means resizing or deleting the partitions
you have. You do /not/ want to install on a partition running another
Linux distribution - you’ll probably end up corrupting both installations.
You also will want separate home directories - user preferences are
stored in the directories, and if you have Ubuntu with one version of
GNOME, and openSUSE with a different version of GNOME, the preferences
may not be compatible with each other and may cause unpredictable
behavior.
Jim
–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C
Thanks a lot for taking your time to explain me about virtualization in details!
But here’s the difference, actually couple of them. You seem to be an expert in that particular field, since that’s what you do for a living. I’m on the other hand is a Jack of all trades. I know a lot about computers and all the related stuff, but not too deep. I run my own micro-business, in which I’m everything - owner, accountant, cleaner, cashier, web developer, marketing specialist, you name it. Frankly, I don’t care about my CPU being under-utilized. If anything worries me at the moment is that my GPU is not powerful enough to squeeze enough fps in Far Cry 4. I like high quality graphics, that’s how I got into gaming, used to learn about graphic cards and got addicted to some FPS’s. DirectX 12 is arriving and I will be getting Windows 10. Hope I won’t have to re-install GRUB for zillionth time. I have a bootable disc with simple Ubuntu distro (Xubuntu, Lubuntu, don’t remember), that’s how I repair GRUB2. Don’t know if that’s gonna help me with OpenSUSE… You probably could tell… I want to try to run my website from home, that’s why I need LAMP. Ubuntu is good enough for me, Windows is no good when it comes to web servers and networking – nothing is perfect… (though I love Windows in general). I use Adobe products and I even need IE 11 (funny!) to do online business transactions, so Windows is a MUST. Linux won’t replace it at all. It’s just I found out about YaST and I decided to try SUSE. Liked KDE on it too…
As per this topic… I keep some valuable (for me) information in Ubuntu home partition and I don’t want to take risks with data. And my quarter a century PC experience tells me that I might spend less time re-installing Ubuntu (EVEN if something won’t work with SUSE), than to climb a high tree with triple boot and then not to know how to get down. That’s what happened to my cat about a year ago when it was just a kitten. In short, unless I know for sure what I’m doing, I won’t do it.
P.S. Maybe I should wait till I install W10 before OpenSUSE, because then I might get into troubles with GRUB, what do you think? Is OpenSUSE’s GRUB recoverable?
If the machine is UEFI BIOS then you may want to completely redo to use GPT partitioning.
VM s are both hard and easy depending on what VM. I find that Virtual Box is really simple to set up
Thanks for your reply!
I don’t find VMs hard to set up. Opposite is true, it’s pretty straightforward when it comes to configuring them. I simply don’t like the whole idea (kinda like I don’t like social networks, though I personally benefit from them).
My laptop is about 2 yo. It came with W8 OEM which I hated with passion in the beginning. Now I care less and would have to get used to it, since I must have DirectX12 which can only be obtained with W10. In BIOS setup I can change the boot mode to either “Legacy BIOS” or to “UEFI”. Its set to the former.
Frankly, I kinda regret I started this thread – seems to be a waste of time. Complete beginner like me shouldn’t get into tricky installs like multiboots etc. I must go the easy way.
It reall is not that hard if you plan for it. But adhoc OS installation can be tricky since you must change the size and possible positions of possibly multiple partitions to allow space for the new OS. This is a semi dangerous process since anything going wrong can cause data loss. So you need serious backup. It is even more so for legacy installs since the limits of the old legacy partitioning makes things more complex. Using the newer GPT partitioning and EFI booting can actually simplify things. But if EFI or legacy you do need to have a basic understanding of partitioning and booting.
.
On Mon, 08 Jun 2015 22:26:01 +0000, papakota wrote:
> Thanks a lot for taking your time to explain me about virtualization in
> details!
You bet. 
> But here’s the difference, actually couple of them. You seem to be an
> expert in that particular field, since that’s what you do for a living.
Well, I guess I would describe myself as a computing generalist - I have
deep knowledge in many different areas of computing - virtualization is
something that I use professionally, and have for years.
> I’m on the other hand is a Jack of all trades. I know a lot about
> computers and all the related stuff, but not too deep.
A fair point.
> I run my own
> micro-business, in which I’m everything - owner, accountant, cleaner,
> cashier, web developer, marketing specialist, you name it. Frankly, I
> don’t care about my CPU being under-utilized.
That’s also a fair point.
> If anything worries me at
> the moment is that my GPU is not powerful enough to squeeze enough fps
> in Far Cry 4. I like high quality graphics, that’s how I got into
> gaming, used to learn about graphic cards and got addicted to some
> FPS’s. DirectX 12 is arriving and I will be getting Windows 10.
And virtualization is very poor at maximizing the use of video
acceleration, that is certainly true. It’s better than it was 10 years
ago, but you’re right, it doesn’t compare to native execution.
So I wouldn’t recommend you run Windows virtualized if you’re playing
Windows games - in fact, I have a native Windows 8.1 partition that I use
for certain Steam games that aren’t ported to Linux, so I’m with you
completely on that.
> Hope I
> won’t have to re-install GRUB for zillionth time. I have a bootable disc
> with simple Ubuntu distro (Xubuntu, Lubuntu, don’t remember), that’s how
> I repair GRUB2. Don’t know if that’s gonna help me with OpenSUSE… You
> probably could tell…
Indeed. The problem here is that Microsoft believes they’re the only
operating system that matters, and they’re happy to stomp over whatever’s
there. You will probably have to do a grub repair when you upgrade the
Windows partition to Windows 10 - and you’ll be able to thank Microsoft
for not caring that you have a different bootloader than theirs.
> I want to try to run my website from home, that’s
> why I need LAMP. Ubuntu is good enough for me, Windows is no good when
> it comes to web servers and networking – nothing is perfect…
> (though I love Windows in general). It’s just I found out about YaST and
> I decided to try SUSE. Liked KDE on it too…
Which is awesome. Here’s the thing, though - web hosting doesn’t have
any really special hardware requirements. Something like VirtualBox or
VMware Player (both of which are free; the former is open source, with a
proprietary add-on pack that’s also available gratis) is pretty easy to
set up - even on Windows (some might even say it’s easier to set up on
Windows). If you’ve got a gaming rig that can handle Far Cry 4, it can
handle a Linux VM so you can tinker with web hosting and play around with
YaST and get to know it better. Best of both worlds.
Just something to think about.
> As per this topic… I keep some valuable (for me) information in Ubuntu
> home partition and I don’t want to take risks with data. And my quarter
> a century PC experience tells me that I might spend less time
> re-installing Ubuntu (EVEN if something won’t work with SUSE), than to
> climb a high tree with triple boot and then not to know how to get down.
> That’s what happened to my cat about a year ago when it was just a
> kitten. In short, unless I know for sure what I’m doing, I won’t do it.
Understood. That’s one of the beautiful things about using something
like VirtualBox - you don’t risk your existing data at all - the virtual
hard drive is a file in your Windows filesystem (it grows dynamically, so
if you create, say, a 20 GB virtual drive, it only takes up the space you
use - or space that is allocated because of use). You don’t have to
touch your existing critical data, and it gives you a playground to look
at stuff in.
That’s one of the reasons I use it in my lab. I test software builds (in
order to write documentation for them), and every day, I’m installing
maybe 3-4 different internal builds to see what features are new and to
see changes in them. It’s an automated process for me (as you said, I’ve
got some expertise with this), so it takes me 5-6 minutes to tear down
and rebuild all 10 virtual machines - fully configured.
VirtualBox also has an option to create snapshots of the virtual drive -
so you can try something destructive out (like reformatting the entire
virtual drive - not the physical one, though - but using a physical drive
is a more advanced topic that you probably wouldn’t get into) and then
revert it to the saved state.
Which is really handy if you are trying to learn new things. You can
take a snapshot before doing a potentially destructive operation, try the
change, and see what happens. If it works, great - you delete the
snapshot. If it doesn’t, you can revert the snapshot, and you’re back
without having to reinstall - matter of seconds instead of minutes or
hours to reinstall and reconfigure everything.
Anyway - I didn’t really intend to take you down this path - so I hope
the information here is useful - or interesting - even if you opt not to
do anything with it.
Jim
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C
On 2015-06-08, papakota <papakota@no-mx.forums.microfocus.com> wrote:
> Thanks for your reply!
> I’ve attached a print-screen, that’s easier and better than code (God
> knows how to copy it from Ubuntu’s terminal).
Please don’t print screen. Many of us openSUSE forums users use an NNTP interface which makes it problematic. It would
be easier for everyone if you simply copy-paste code output into your forum post inside code tags (#).
Now we’ve established you use legacy BIOS, please output the results of:
sh-4.2$ for devsd in $(find /dev/sd* ! -name "*[0-9]"); do sudo parted $devsd print; done
sh-4.2$
Why would you think that I
cannot distinguish between lower case l and 1? I’ve been using CLI since
1990… Before lots of people here were even born. It can’t be even in
theory -1 after the DOS/UNIX command. Good you didn’t remind me to press
ENTER after that
Remember to press ENTER after the command above :).
Of course, it’s legacy BIOS, not EFI. Why would I use EFI with Linux?
Lots of (excellent) reasons. One of the best ones is so you can multi-boot with Windows with GPT partitioning. GNU/Linux
does not reject EFI, it embraces EFI, and openSUSE’s implementation of supporting SecureBoot with EFI is the best I’ve
seen of any distribution. So I find your question of `WHy would I use EFI with Linux’ rather strange.
Thank you all for taking your time to write back!
Well, I’ve decided not to proceed with triple boot, but rather to try to install OpenSUSE over Ubuntu (instead of Ubuntu, that is).
Anything is particular I should know about before I proceed?
It might take some time to finish all the backups. Would transfer all data to Windows disk. So if I install Ubuntu and then upgrade to Windows 10 on my other HD (the internal one), then in case OpenSUSE’s GRUB dies… Is there a way to revive it? I think I didn’t get an answer about this one…
As per BIOS and Linux. I don’t know – I could be wrong, but I got an impression (from what I read on the Internet) that new Microsoft’s approach doesn’t work well with dual-boot (there’re tons of complaints about that online). It’s kinda dual-boot killer even. My dual-boot (Ubuntu/W7) works okay in general, so I won’t touch legacy BIOS setting in BIOS Setup configuration. Sometimes though I end up in CLI mode of initramfs instead of normal GUI of Ubuntu Desktop GNOME-Unity environment, but it’s not the end of the world to re-boot again. Hope it won’t happen with OpenSUSE. I suspect I did something wrong while installing Ubuntu for the 1st time.
In my previous post, I made an error – I meant OpenSUSE, not Ubuntu when I was asking about W10 upgrade potential GRUB problem.
On Tue 09 Jun 2015 03:46:01 PM CDT, papakota wrote:
In my previous post, I made an error – I meant OpenSUSE, -not Ubuntu-
when I was asking about W10 upgrade potential GRUB problem.
Hi
I don’t use legacy booting, just efi, but no issues with either
installing windows 10 first or openSUSE or the other way, infact it
seems rather os friendly aside from wanting an additional partition
before the efi partition.
HP ProBook 4440s with openSUSE 13.2 and Windows 10 on sda7;
lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 119.2G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 300M 0 part
├─sda2 8:2 0 260M 0 part /boot/efi
├─sda3 8:3 0 128M 0 part
├─sda4 8:4 0 40G 0 part /
├─sda5 8:5 0 29.8G 0 part
│ └─bcache0 253:0 0 298.1G 0 disk /data
├─sda6 8:6 0 8G 0 part [SWAP]
└─sda7 8:7 0 40.8G 0 part
sdb 8:16 0 298.1G 0 disk
└─sdb1 8:17 0 298.1G 0 part
└─bcache0 253:0 0 298.1G 0 disk /data
ASUS K53U with Tumbleweed and windows 10 (installed after Tumbleweed) on
sda7;
lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 298.1G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 300M 0 part
├─sda2 8:2 0 260M 0 part /boot/efi
├─sda3 8:3 0 128M 0 part
├─sda4 8:4 0 40G 0 part /
├─sda5 8:5 0 150G 0 part /data
├─sda6 8:6 0 8G 0 part [SWAP]
└─sda7 8:7 0 99.4G 0 part
–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° LFCS, SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 GNOME 3.10.1 Kernel 3.12.39-47-default
If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface,
please show your appreciation and click on the star below… Thanks!
Well since 10 is not official it is hard to say how messed up it will be in the end. In general itshold be eaiser and less problems to use UEFI boot But in any case fixing the boot is no large problem, just a pain.
EFI is not hard and it is unknown by me if Win 10 will support legacy booting (Probably but not sure)
Issues with Ubuntu is that a default Ubuntu install only uses swap and root partitions so your home directory and thus data is stuck on the same partition. So if you have data you need to preserve you must first copy it off to a backup. Of course it is wise to backup any important stuff before fooling around with partitions and OS’s and such things.
By default openSUSE will want to install in 3 partitions. Swap/root/home. So home normally will be on it’s own partition which make version changes and even OS changes much easier.
We seem to be missing the message were you posted the pic of your partitions. Someone delete it??
So My suggestiojn is to back your home data (assuming it is of any importance) and wipe the ubuntu partitions and install the openSUSE with the defaults ( swap ~= memory,root 40 gig using BTRFS or 20 gig using ext4 home as much as you think you will need for all personal storage)
Note that if you did have a separate home just re use the partitions but you will have to explain this to the installer since it can not read your mind. You can not format home to save your personal stuff. Format root and just mount swap. The installer gives you great control but you do have to use your good judgement to instruct it.
Thank you all for your help!
-
Well, as for 10 it’s too early to seriously discuss it before it’s even here as a final release. I’ll cross that bridge when I get there. The main thing is that you would be able to re-construct OpenSUSE’s GRUB IF W10 upgrade messes it up.
-
What I have right now is 2 HDD’s (internal in the laptop with W7 and external with Ubuntu). When I was installing Ubuntu I made a separate home partition (it’s sdb5 inside of the sdb3 extended one).
-
Your last posted confused me a little in regards to file system. I thought that ext4 is a modern Linux’s FS. And you mentioned btrfs??? Why would I want to use it instead of ext4 on OpenSUSE 13.1?
-
As per swap – I have 6GB of DDR3 in my system which is too much for my needs (what is lacking is a better video card). Ubuntu never uses swap. Though I don’t know about OpenSUSE and especially if I install LAMP and run a web server (traffic is gonna be minimal at first). Would 1 GB be enough (I simply don’t want to lose a disk space, that’s all)? Another thing to consider (and here I’m not an expert) – after I install and run a web server on OpenSUSE… Will I have to use sleep mode or maybe hibernate mode or I must run the system at all times when the web server is available? Then maybe it would require bigger swap? What do you think?
-
Is it really neccesary to allocate 20 GB for OpenSUSE’s root partition? I mean, for my Ubuntu desktop 14.04 I currently have 15 GB for root and Ubuntu’s root files take about 6GB of space out of it. What, OpenSUSE’s root files are bigger?
On Tue 09 Jun 2015 09:56:01 PM CDT, papakota wrote:
Thank you all for your help!
- Well, as for 10 it’s too early to seriously discuss it before it’s
even here as a final release. I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.
The main thing is that you would be able to re-construct OpenSUSE’s GRUB
IF W10 upgrade messes it up.
- What I have right now is 2 HDD’s (internal in the laptop with W7 and
external with Ubuntu). When I was installing Ubuntu I made a separate
home partition (it’s sdb5 inside of the sdb3 extended one).
- Your last posted confused me a little in regards to file system. I
thought that ext4 is a modern Linux’s FS. And you mentioned btrfs??? Why
would I want to use it instead of ext4 on OpenSUSE 13.1?
- As per swap – I have 6GB of DDR3 in my system which is too much for
my needs (what is lacking is a better video card). Ubuntu never uses
swap. Though I don’t know about OpenSUSE and especially if I install
LAMP and run a web server (traffic is gonna be minimal at first). Would
1 GB be enough (I simply don’t want to lose a disk space, that’s all)?
Another thing to consider (and here I’m not an expert) – after I
install and run a web server on OpenSUSE… Will I have to use sleep
mode or maybe hibernate mode or I must run the system at all times when
the web server is available? Then maybe it would require bigger swap?
What do you think?
- Is it really neccesary to allocate 20 GB for OpenSUSE’s root
partition? I mean, for my Ubuntu desktop 14.04 I currently have 15 GB
for root and Ubuntu’s root files take about 6GB of space out of it.
What, OpenSUSE’s root files are bigger?
Hi
For 13.2 the default is btrfs for / and xfs for /home, you just need to
select the filesystem of your choice during install…
If using btrfs and snapper with it’s snapshots then min of ~40GB and
wind down the snapshots taken (it’s still a bit aggressive IMHO).
If using ext4 for /, 15GB should be fine… on my openSUSE and
SLED/SLES install even with btrfs they sit around 10-15GB with GNOME DE.
Swap, I still allocate it equal to RAM (8GB on my machines) even though
rarely hibernate/suspend I just wind down the swappiness and cache
pressure. If you had 4GB or less would recommend 1.5 times the RAM. If
it’s a server then a couple of GB just in case…
–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° LFCS, SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 GNOME 3.10.1 Kernel 3.12.39-47-default
If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface,
please show your appreciation and click on the star below… Thanks!
Thanks for your reply!
I’m a complete newbie to OpenSUSE, so I want to ask couple of questions to make it clearer for me.
- That Snapper tool (is it something similar to Windows’ System Restore?). Does this tool only work on btrfs?
- As per swap – I never use hibernate/suspend in Windows and never used in Ubuntu so far. Normally I don’t need it. BUT… what I was asking that IF those two modes come in handy (in terms of reducing operational costs and to avoid over-usage of hardware) if I run a web server that should be on at all times (or, realistically, most of the time)? Otherwise, why would I need 6 GB of swap for?