I’m hoping to install openSUSE-11.3 on an HP P6510F desktop PC in a dual boot with an Windows7 installation, and I have some concerns.
I’ve read the PC requires in the BIOS the setting RAID changed to AHCI in order for openSUSE to boot, and that is the subject of a separate thread : can’t boot live cd when hard drive mode is “RAID” . (in essence, I can’t get Windows7 to boot with the AHCI setting that Linux needs).
But assuming I solve that, I have 2 other concerns … As a background to this, with the BIOS set to AHCI I was able to boot the openSUSE-11.3 64-bit KDE liveCD and it ran fine. When I ran fdisk, I noted 3 partitions on the hard drive
sda1 = 10 GB recovery partition which is also the boot partition
sda2 = 638 GB Windows7 partition
sda3 = 100 GB ‘system’ partition (I have no idea what this is)
So my concerns are:
what is the sda3 100 GB partition ? Given that partition is AFTER the sda2 638 GB Windows 7 partition, where can I put Linux on this ? Is it necessary to blow away the 100 GB sda3 ? and if so, what are the consequences? ,
the boot partition is sda1 which surprised me. What does that mean for Grub given windows7 is sda2 ? Does that mean when Grub is installed, does it need to point to sda1 for Windows7 to boot ?
I was planning to install openSUSE today, but I may defer this to tomorrow, in the hope of answering these questions before I blindly charge ahead.
What do you see re. partititions when you boot the “OS” that’s on the disk. i.e. what does W7 say about the partitions, does it see the 2nd and 3rd?
I’ve seen the boot flag on on the recovery partition before, hasn’t given me any trouble IIRC. ATM I don’t have a machine with W7 and 11.3 at hand, so I cannot be of much help here, Lee.
Its very strange. Windows7 see’s sda2 and flags it as c:, and Windows7 see’s sda1 and flags it as d:, … but it can’t see sda3. Given this is a 750GB drive and that Windows7 only can not see the 100 GB or so of sda3, I would think if I was an MS-Windows user I would be concerned that my hard drive can not see all off the hard drive.
I typed my first post incorrectly. I meant to say that the recovery sda1 is the ‘active’ partition as flagged by fdisk (when booting to the liveCD).
sda1 will boot the recovery system (you don’t want that) and sda3 should boot Windows7. I would reduce the size of sda2 with the Windows Diskmanager, create an extended partition + logical drives in the free space for Linux and install Grub in the extended partition. I don’t know why they put the system partition at the end … maybe just to irritate you. I did a similar installation (adding Ubuntu to a Windows 7 preinstalled) but in my case, the system partition (100 GB) was on sda2.
I have to apologize. I came up with the sda3 size of 100GB last night, being very jet lagged and tired. I got up this morning, double checked, and determined it was 100MB and I must have been way too fatigued to be working on a PC last night.
Here are some details on the partitioning, which I obtained by booting from an openSUSE-11.3 liveCD:
fdisk -l :
Disk /dev/sda: 750.2 GB, 750156374016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91201 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xc399f44c
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 13 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 14 89659 720081495 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 89660 91184 12241920 7 HPFS/NTFS
I then mounted all 3 partitions under the liveCD of openSUSE-11.3, calling them sda1=disk1, sda2=disk2 and sda3=disk3:
I am still astounded I made the mistake calling a 100 MB partition the size of 100 GB, but I can’t deny what I am seeing now. … The mind plays tricks when one is tired.
But my question still holds, will openSUSE-11.3 carve up the sda2, rename the partition mapping, and create an extended partition for openSUSE-11.3 to install ?
I like the recommendation of reducing the size of sda2 with the Windows Diskmanager so as to install openSUSE-11.3 in the available space (presumeably that will be made an extended partition after some partition remapping).
Further to this, MS win7 file manager only see’s the 686 GB C: drive and the 10GB D: (HP Recovery) partition, but does not see the 100MB partition. But my wife determined, by obtaining the win7 “system info” the following:
I would create the partitions ( swap / and /home) before running openSUSE install, format them as FAT32 under Windows (I don’t know if you can leave them unformated in Windows DiskManager), then in openSUSE partitioner, choose the third option ‘Create partition setup’, select the partitions (should be sda5, sda6 and sda7), set mountpoints, fs, etc. You’ll find out whether the extended partition is sda3 or sda4 (it doesn’t have to be sda4). If it bothers you, you can fix the partitions order later with fdisk.
Another possibility would be to resize sda2 under Windows, leave the space empty, use PartedMagic to move sda3 back into the empty space up to the end of sda2, then create logical partitions in the remainig space. I don’t know if the offset of the recovery partition matters to Windows however. It should not … but you never know with Windows.
I’d simply use the empty ~100 GB to create an extended partition, put the three linux ones as logical paritions in it. AFAICS you only have the three partitions, there’s no “holes” in between them, no extended ones yet. This would create /dev/sda4 as an extended partition, then /dev/sda5 for swap, /dev/sda6 for “/”, and /dev/sda7 for /home.
Unfortunately I was ‘lost in space’ and very fatigued and jetlagged when I halucinated about a 100 GB partition. In fact it was a 100 MB partition which purportedly is associated with the Microsoft Win7 licence.
In preparation to changing the BIOS to AHCI and re-installing Win7 from the recovery partitions (which purported is needed for Win7 to run with AHCI settings) I have created the Win7 System Repair Disk, and also created the 3 x HP Recovery Disks for Win7 (which purportedly can restore the PC back to its original factory state, which is what we want to be able to do, EXCEPT we want AHCI and not RAID in BIOS).
Yes. This is correct. It works, but I tell you now, it takes all day! Well it did with Vista that I did some time ago.
See this you quoted
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 13 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 14 89659 720081495 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 89660 91184 12241920 7 HPFS/NTFS
Suggests to me sda1 is boot partition. See the boot flag.
Personally I would have no hesitation deleting sda3
I don’t know any of these sorts of details myself. I confess I simply assume (possibly incorrectly) that HP knew what they were doing when they setup the partitions in this PC.
Tha’ts a great URL. I need to book mark that and study it. I don’t think I have time to do that now (too many social commitments in addition to trying to get this PC setup).
I’m now giving thought to how I will tell Win7 to partition the drive for Linux. I took a look at the old thread I had when I installed openSUSE on our Dell Studio 1537 laptop which came with Windows Vista (where that old thread sort of acts as my ‘notes’ to that experience) and I recall using Vista to shrink Vista to make way for the openSUSE extended partitions: Partitioning a Dell PC Hard-drive for openSUES install ?
I suspect win7 will be similar, and I found the win7 partition tool (it looks a lot like gparted gui, where I assume both GUIs trace back to the old MS-Windows product Partition Magic GUI). I also found where win7 virtual memory (pagefile) is tuned … however its not clear to me that I should try to delete that pagefile before partitioning. The display states the minimum win7 pagefile is 16MB, in which case if there is a minimum I don’t see the point in touching that.
Since I will be doing a system recovery (ie win7 re-install) after changing the BIOS ‘RAID’ setting to ‘AHCI’ I’m now trying to decide if I should create the Linux partition BEFORE I do the system recovery (ie before I change RAID to AHCI and before I re-install win7) or create the Linux partition after I re-install win7.
Since I have no idea as to how stable/fragile the HP recovery software (to re-install Win7) if there is an extra partition on the PC, I think I will create the Linux partition after I have completed the win7 activities. i.e. I will simply reboot, enter the BIOS configuration (press F10 to enter BIOS) change the BIOS ‘RAID’ setting to ‘AHCI’, and then when the win7 boot fails, restart, and this time press F11 to enter the HP recover system tool, which should re-install win7, but this time with the appropriate config to work with the BIOS AHCI setting.
After win7 is installed, I will then go to the win7 partitioner and have it reduce the size of the win7 partition. From what I can see, it will ONLY allow me to reduce that by 50% (ie from 686 GB to 343 GB, with 343GB reserved for Linux). The newly installed win7 should not be fragmented, so I should not have to defrag before installing openSUSE-11.3.
Once openSUSE-11.3 is installed, only then will I go back to win7 and install all the necessary win7 apps, and only then will I tune openSUSE.
Its been a learning curve (with the nominal pains along the way) but thanks to the suggestions/encouragement I think I am making progress.
I’m going to do the win7 system recovery (re-install) with partitioning today. I don’t think I’ll have time to install openSUSE today as I have major social commitments tonight.
I also need to stay focused. I made a lot of mistakes above in my initial checks (as seen in the initial posts I made in this thread). The more focused, the less mistakes.
I wish somebody could explain us the ‘real’ advantage of RAID mode on a Windows7 laptop (with obviously a single HD) - as you mentionned it was the default setting on that machine… or was it just another trick to discourage people from installing Linux on it (?)
On both my laptops I ended up wiping the entire disk
Installing Vista from a borrowed full DVD from Son, and using my key to get a new activation code.
With WIN7 I have a TechNet DVD of Ultimate - from my Son’s account
So in both cases Vista and Win7 I have just the one partition.
Both on Lenovo’s with these fancy One Button Recovery (now useless) - Ask me if I give a rats _ _ _
