Ok, I have reloaded WinXP and so as NOT to get Suse confused I have it all on one partition. I baffles me the way Suse has an auto setup and the way it finds its values:. I started with a new re-load and I have a large hard drive 232.89GB to use. 99GB are used for WinXP and the rest is to be assigned to Linux when I can find one to work. This is how Suse set up my extra excess on my hard drive and if you can make the sums add up to 232.89 your an ingenious.
Extended 135.22GB
Swap 2.01 GB
Root 20GB
home 113.21GB
set Windows mount point
Yep, don’t add up
So I re-arranged to
Root / 50GB
Swap 3.88GB
Home/ 80.01GB
Easy and I set up a /boot on windows.
Now it told me about the boot on Windows and I could not see any other way of setting that boot as it has set one up on AUTO as you can see above. So as I have always done with any Linux is set up a boot to Windows for dual booting. Sorry it told me that there might be a problem with mount points when mounting onto an existing partition and OS.
Just as an addon, when I delete Extended 135.22GB all the other partitions go and leaves me with my Winxp partition. Why is that? And, what relevance is it to the other Linux partitions?
I thought, OK keep going and see what happens and it later told me about setting up the boot as there was a problem and go in and sort it. Well I was totally baffled and lost here. So I have come out and now am asking for advice. I have the feeling its setting that /boot on windows and yet I see it set up on the auto. So I am totally confused, unless it sets it up later in the process where it told me there was a problem. Please talk in simple terminology when replying my poor morphined brain likes it that way
The /boot is meant to be a separate linux partitition and can’t be part of a windows partition.
You have the right idea about the partitioning.
Set your linux / and home partitions as you suggested: You can use 20 - 30 gig for / and the swap, unless you are doing a lot of number crunching and don’t have much ram can be around 2 gig.
Get xp running and booting and then install linux as per above. Most distros will identify windows and allow you to multiboot correctly.
A standard (I think it’s DOS type?) partition table can only have 4 primary partitions in. The extended partition isn’t actually a partition as such, but a ‘container’ primary partition that allows you to put other logical partitions in it. Hence, the partitions in the extended partition (plus any unallocated space) should add up to the size of the extended partition itself.
Also - you don’t need a separate boot partition really. What I’d set up is /, home and swap - swap should be about twice your ram probably, 20 gigs is fine for root, and the rest home.
Then when it asks you about the bootloader (grub), put it on the MBR. It should find Windows automatically, and put it in your boot menu.
Thanks for your guys. I have since had another re-think and have gone for total Linux OS. So far all has gone ok, had a sound problem, now resolved. I have one more sticky prob and thats getting the external hard drive to be read. It states that its not mounted and if I have windows I have to clean dismount. I don’t have Windows now and I am at a loss as to what to do now to get it read. Hope you can assist
Although, as an afterthought - do you have access to another Windows machine? Might be as simple as mounting it on that, unmounting it cleanly, and bringing it back home again…
