Problems Partitioning

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

I am in the middle of an openSUSE v. 13.1 64 bit Gnome Net Install on a Lenovo ThinkPad W520 with 2 hard drives with 3 other OS’s already installed. I created a 50 Gb Btrfs partition on disk sda (sda10) for / and another 50 Gb Ext.4 partition on sda11 for /home.

openSUSE had proposed a different scheme on sdb7 which I deleted. The problem is, the installation wants to install a /home subvolume on sda10, in spite of my having edited the proposal to read /home on sda11.

I could delete sda11, enlarge sda10 and let it go ahead, but I’d rather that the installation would recognize the partitioning setup I established during the first part of the oSUSE installation program (now stalled. I dimmed the screen and am going to wait a bit, hoping some oSUSE installation guru can help point the way to a solution).

I decided to install oSUSE to the laptop after observing that the oSUSE Live DVD had no trouble connecting to the DSL WiFi connection, and rebooted to do the Net Installation.

I only use 1 of the other three systems, which must be connected through the ethernet port (a wired connection).

TIA

#2

I did the following:

I deleted the /home subvolume from sda10, changed sda11 to brtfs and added a /home subvolume there. I had to do it twice but it finally registered.

Now I have a different problem. The installation wants to put the boot loader on the MBR of sdb because that’s the disk that boots first according to the BIOS configuration. That is reasonable but is not what I want. I have lojack installed and want the laptop to boot automatically into Windows so the lojack will be activated in case it the computer is stolen.

I’ll have to look for a way to change that before proceeding.

#3

I changed the order of the disks and now it will boot from sda. (I may have to change it back again after installation, if the installation affects the BIOS settings. I boot using a supergrub2 boot disk, since the boot order is usb flash drive, dvd drive, sdb, then sda).

However - the installation failed. It didn’t like the partitions I created using gparted on the v 13.1 Live DVD and couldn’t create the subvolumes or use the /home partition.

A lot of time was wasted. The zypper dup upgrade installation went well on the desktop machine but the laptop installation is going to be more complicated. I’ll figure something out.

#4

Maybe you should show us your partitions. ie give output of fdisk -l

Your system is complex and I for one don’t understand it. So give use some facts

#5

On 2013-12-10 20:26, d hinds wrote:
>
> I am in the middle of an openSUSE v. 13.1 64 bit Gnome Net Install on a
> Lenovo ThinkPad W520 with 2 hard drives with 3 other OS’s already
> installed. I created a 50 Gb Btrfs partition on disk sda (sda10) for /
> and another 50 Gb Ext.4 partition on sda11 for /home.
>
> openSUSE had proposed a different scheme on sdb7 which I deleted. The
> problem is, the installation wants to install a /home subvolume on
> sda10, in spite of my having edited the proposal to read /home on sda11.

Just delete the proposal and create your own, or edit the proposal.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)

#6

These are the results:

root@tpw520:~# fdisk -l

  Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
  255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168      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: 0x86396a0e
  
     Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
  /dev/sda1       974663550   976773119     1054785    7       HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
  /dev/sda2         2088450   974663549   486287550    f  W95 Ext'd      (LBA)
  /dev/sda3   *        2048     2086911     1042432   83  Linux
  /dev/sda5       481773348   691501859   104864256   83  Linux
  /dev/sda6       691501923   796374179    52436128+  83  Linux
  /dev/sda7       796374243   901246499    52436128+  83  Linux
  /dev/sda8       901246563   953682659    26218048+   b  W95 FAT32
  /dev/sda9       953682723   974663549    10490413+  82  Linux swap      / Solaris
  /dev/sda10      376915968   481771519    52427776   83  Linux
  /dev/sda11      272058368   376913919    52427776   83  Linux
  
  Partition table entries are not in disk order
  
  Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
  255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168      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: 0x44f5acaf
  
     Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
  /dev/sdb1   *        2048     3074047     1536000    7       HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
  /dev/sdb2         3074048   160360829    78643391    7       HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
  /dev/sdb3       944003072   976773119    16385024   17  Hidden      HPFS/NTFS
  /dev/sdb4       160360830   944003071   391821121    f  W95 Ext'd      (LBA)
  /dev/sdb5       629424128   839137279   104856576    7       HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
  /dev/sdb6       839139273   944003071    52431899+   7       HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
  
  Partition table entries are not in disk order

My intention was to use brtfs for / and have home on a separate ext.4 partition. Data is kept on a third partition, so I can use the same data with various operating systems. (I began doing that in 1994).

Downloading the six sections of the net install is time consuming. I may try again using the Live DVD that I already burned. I was able to get the wireless connection working on the other distro installed on the w520 and had trouble logging into the forum from there.

#7

The partitions are out of order so it is hard to tell and you did not use code tags so the formatting is lost.

Just junk the recommended and make your own scheme.

Personally I don’t recommend btrfs and you need to be aware that you need to double the estimated size for a partition because it has snapshot feature on by default. But it is fine if you want to experiment.

In any case mounting a partition at /home should replace any that the btrfs manager thinks it wants or event creates. It would essential be just a mount point

.

#8

I have used open SUSE off and on since 2008 and began using btrfs when it was first offered. On the the desktop machine I am using to post this, / is a 40 Gb brtfs partition and /home is 100 (also btrfs) - but 85Gb are free, whereas the / has only 18 free. Also, a recent DistroWatch review mentioned that the snapshots don’t include /home so that’s why I decided to use ext4 for that. (Maybe an internal /home subvolume would be included, however).

I might delete the two partitions and make a new one of 75Gb but leave it unformatted and let oSUSE do what it wants.

NILFS2 might be a good option and is supported, apparently.

The partitions on sda are in reverse order. IOW, I made them from the outside in (from the end, to the beginning), except for partitions 1 and 3 (2 is the extended partition), and 1 is at the end and 3 at the beginning of the disk,/ both outside the extended and each is only 1 Gb.

Two other distros are on sda and only one boots (Sparky - Manjaro doesn’t). Each has a / and a home. That explains the number of partitions. With oSUSE, there are six plus the extended and the two little ones at the ends. (There is no sda4).

Thanks for taking a look.

#9

Well the idea of a separate home is to make migration and backup much much easier. So even if /home is created by BTRFS the mount should override it and be used as the true /home

#10

I was able to overcome that problem. When the installation finally began it was programmed to use sda11 as /home. The hang up was due to what the installation called the wrong fs (file system, I assume). Then, it began to download everything again, which I had no desire to do. So I’ll try installing from the Live DVD (900 Mb won’t fit on a CD) to unformatted partitions - otherwise, the installation is going to use all the free space there is, and leave none for anything else. And if I need to install more items I can use the net install disk to do an upgrade.

#11

This time the installation was realized without a hitch. I deleted the partitions oSUSE wanted to install to sdb and configured sda11 as / (brtfs) and sda10 as /home (ext.4), after deleting and recreating both without formatting. Then I changed the boot manager to the sda mbr instead of on sdb and the installation went smoothly.

However - the supergrub2 boot disk doesn’t find the installation and I can not boot to oSUSE on that computer. Gparted shows that 3.33 Gb was installed to / and 1.75 Gb was installed to /home on sda 11 and 10. But the only installations that supergrub2 encounters are the Win7 on sdb 3 and Sparky on sda6.

Maybe I could chroot into it from a cd or another installation but I don’t know how to use it. I see that oSUSE offers pam_chroot in yast’s software manager, however.

Or I could try installing the boot manager to the / partition.

#12

In this next description of the problem I will explain why the problem exists and possible alternatives for resolving it.

The computer in question is a laptop, which are generally purchased as a brand-named item with a proprietary operating system already installed. (Although exceptions exist to that scenario they are few and far between and often cost more than an assembly-line computer with a Windows or Mac OS installed). The Lenovo Thinkpad W520 was purchased 2 years ago with a 3 year warrantee and came with 2 hard drives and windows 9 pro 64 bit installed. A 3 year contract with Lojack (an anti-theft computer localization application) was included in the purchase, and is installed via windows.

Laptop computers are more easily stolen and I intend to keep windows on one of the two hard drives and have the computer boot directly into it for the next year. After that, I will take my risks. (The laptop has an Intel i7 and 16 Gb of DDR3 RAM and wasn’t cheap). But for now, I want the Lojack activated when the computer is used by someone other than me. (Lojack goes into the BIOS but is activated by Windows, AFAIK).

That’s why I boot into my real OS (the one I actually use - a Debian derivative named Sparky, at present) using a boot disk (or a usb flash drive), at present. Sparky uses Grub2 and a SuperGrub2 disk can be used to boot it. I installed openSUSE to the same hard drive as Sparky, using that drive’s mbr for grub2 on both occasions). openSUSE also installs Grub2 but for some reason the SuperGrub2 disk doesn’t recognize it’s presence.

So I intend to enter the BIOS and change the boot order to boot into openSUSE, but that is not an adequate solution because I want anyone stealing the computer to boot directly into Windows (which is on the second hard drive and no boot manager is installed there except the boot partition Win 7 uses).

The logical questions are:

Can another boot disk be used that will correctly locate the openSUSE installation? Or, can I change the boot order temporarily (which can be done by pressing the blue Thinkvantage button, then F12 to select a specific boot option). That is what I was doing prior to re-installing Win7 using DVDs that Lenovo sent me. (Now, doing that activates the hidden recovery partition - I’ll call Lenovo tech support about it).

Other solutions probably exist. I could re-install openSUSE with the boot loader on the / partition. Or, as I recall, openSUSE allows other boot loaders to be used (i.e. LILO) which could possibly be loaded or activated used a usb flash drive.

So while my situation is not a one found frequently, there are practical reasons for me to want to resolve it and posting this may help do so (if and when someone familiar with these issues reads it and responds).

Meanwhile, I am using openSUSE on my main desktop machine at the moment to write this, which I recently upgraded to v. 13.1 using zypper dub, aided by this forum.

As mentioned earlier, the Live DVD worked well on the W520 and so I decided to install it to that computer. After problems with the net install, I installed it using the Live DVD but can’t boot it yet.

TIA

#13

[SOLVED]

After it became apparent that I wasn’t going to get any responses here regarding how to boot the openSUSE v. 13.1 that was installed but remained unbootable, I called Lenovo Tech Support to ask how to avoid activating the Win 7 Pro 64 bit recuperation partition when pressing the blue Thinkvantage button but they either hung up or the call was cut off.

So I rebooted from Sparky Mate (which is now running perfectly) and pressed the F12 key when the Lenovo screen appeared (although nothing on the screen indicates doing that), which let me choose which hard drive to boot from. Next, the openSUSE login screen appeared. As I suspected, openSUSE v. 13.1 Gnome 64 bit had indeed been installed and I am using it now to write this while adding software and updating.

It couldn’t have been simpler. And though I have no idea why the SuperGrub2 disk failed to notice it’s presence, I no longer need a CD to boot to the first hard drive (behind the second, in the BIOS’ boot order). So my system is better than ever and I don’t need to learn about Lilo etc.

Thanks anyway for the suggestions I asked for.