Opensuse installation

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

Hi!
I want to install Opensuse with Gnome3 on my notebook.
There are Ubuntu 10.10 and Windows 7 are installed on hard drive, and I want to replace Ubuntu by the new system.
Ubuntu has such drives:
3 Gb - Swap
30 Gb - Root
47 Gb - Home
And Windows:
80 Gb - C
160 Gb - D
0.105 Gb -Reserved space
YasT installer has some plans for my drives, which are depicted on a image below.
http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/9364/screenshotxp.th.png](http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/52/screenshotxp.png/)

How I can save my current disk partitioning?
Home drive will be erased in any case?
And what about a GRUB?
Thank you.

#2

You have to find out which partitions you want to use for what. They are called sda1 … sda7, you only talk about sizes.Like:
sdax for Swap
sday for root
sdaz for home
You fill in the numbers for x, y and z.
Then you tell the installer that you want to change the partitioning and then you Edit any of those partitions to your liking. It is not needed to format the home partition, but be aware of all sorts of old dtuff lying around when you introduce new users (or want to reuse old users) allways take care, usernames are not important, but the uid numbers are.

#3

You need to go to Create Partition Setup > Custom Partitioning

You will now have manual control

From the live CD: Couldn’t you post the result of

sudo fdisk -l
#4

On Tue, 04 Oct 2011 14:16:02 +0000, rainbowsally wrote:

> When you are prompted to “format system partitions”? Don’t worry. It
> will only format the one you selected. If the swap is already formatted
> it won’t even reformat that one.

A better practice (and far more cautious approach) is to backup /home,
just in case something goes awry. It shouldn’t, but it can be easy to
inadvertently make an incorrect selection, and (having done so myself on
my laptop once), having a backup is always the best route to go.

It’s far better to have a backup and not need it than to need one and not
have it.

Jim

Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

#5

**caf4926 ** This command not found, maybe fdisk is not installed by default.

rainbowsally I’ve found that the experts dialog is too complicate for me.

Is it necessary to separate the home partition from root?
What will happen with my current home partition if I accept these settings?
http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/919/screenshotnsk.th.png](http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/3/screenshotnsk.png/)

#6

Ubuntu by default puts home and root together
When you re-install all your files will be lost (unless you back them up to a another device)
Get a look at these
https://picasaweb.google.com/107564133608385811033/114_DVD_Install

You could try this to get the fdisk. Open a terminal and do

su
fdisk -l

BTW: the -l after fdisk is a lower case L

#7

Just to illustrate why “/home” and “/” should be separated: the oldest files in my /home on my server/workstation date from 1998. In the old days I used to copy them to an external disk before install, restore them after install. These days I do backup “/home”, despite it’s 100GB size, then install the new openSUSE version, leaving “/home” untouched. After install I have my files, mail, settings back the way I had them, without having to restore the 100GB to a newly created “/home”.

One remark: please, do yourself a favor and stick to the defaults, until the moment you understand why you are stepping away from the defaults and what the impact can be. Stick to that simple rule and you’ll get there much sooner than you’ll expect. Analogy: when learning to drive a car, best start driving forward at average speed, not backward at full speed with eyes closed. That’s about what the difference is.

#8

You could try this to get the fdisk. Open a terminal and do

su
fdisk -l

Now, it works:

Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x516d077a

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *        2048      206847      102400    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2          206848   157040639    78416896    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3       312571904   625139711   156283904    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda4       157042686   312571903    77764609    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5       157042688   162902062     2929687+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6       162904064   221495295    29295616   83  Linux
/dev/sda7       221497344   312571903    45537280   83  Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order
#9

As I said
You should proceed to Custom Partitioning
Expand the tree of the HD sda n the left side, so you can see sda1-7
Edit sda6 > Format as ext4 and set mount point to /
Edit sda7 > Format as ext4 (unless you know sda7 is your current /home and want to keep it unformatted), set mount point as /home
Now proceed

#10

caf4926, I’ve already got that, thanks.
What will happen with the hidden configuration files in my home folder if I mount /home without format? Will they get erased? Or ignored?

#11

They will remain, so long as it’s not formatted

One thing to consider is that sometimes other OS’s like Ubuntu have some slight differences with config files and some things may need a tidy up.

#12

You seem to think that a “hidden” file is something peculiar. In fact the only thing where it differs from any other file is that the name starts with a . (dot).
Thus you can imagine what happens with them when they are on a file system that you do not touch. Yes, the same as with any other file on that file system: nothing.

While most of these files/directories (when inside a users home directory) contain configuration information for the users environment (desktop, applications), those configurations will all be there after your install. And they will be used when you start the (new versions) of those desktop and applications. For better or for worse. Most for better. When new versions of those files differ from old versions (and the version jump you make is not to big) the new version of the appplication will most probably convert the file on first start.

But because it is allways probable that some of this goes wrong (everybody has his own unique combination and bugs are a known phenomenon), the advice was allready that you make a backup of that file system before starting all this. When things become a mess, you can allways fall back to it, or compare the old with the new files. etc.

#13

Thanks to all of you for replies.

#14

You are welcome.

I reread your thread and your post count now being five, the start of this thread must have been your first post. And all (inclusing me) forgot to say welcome to you.

Thus, WELCOME. Hope you enjoy openSUSE and do not hesitate to ask here. Better first asked that your system borked :wink:

#15

On Mon, 03 Oct 2011 20:46:03 GMT, crankman
<crankman@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:

>
>Hi!
>I want to install Opensuse with Gnome3 on my notebook.
>There are Ubuntu 10.10 and Windows 7 are installed on hard drive, and I
>want to replace Ubuntu by the new system.
>Ubuntu has such drives:
>3 Gb - Swap
>30 Gb - Root
>47 Gb - Home
>And Windows:
>80 Gb - C
>160 Gb - D
>0.105 Gb -Reserved space
>YasT installer has some plans for my drives, which are depicted on a
>image below.
>’[image: http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/9364/screenshotxp.th.png]’
>(http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/52/screenshotxp.png/)
>
>How I can save my current disk partitioning?
>Home drive will be erased in any case?
>And what about a GRUB?
>Thank you.

As a matter of personal preference i never let the installer propose
partitioning. I just do it the way i want it. I know the choice is there
at install time, since i always use it.

?-)