Yes, I’ve read a bunch of threads on dual- and triple booting, but I think I have to be walked through this.
I have Windows 7 installed (+ some sort of recovery and HP partition, this is on a HP G72 laptop). I installed Mint (based on Ubuntu) alongside it, then OpenSUSE, whose boot loader didn’t see Mint. Installing OpenSUSE before Mint solves that problem, but I’d rather have OpenSUSE’s pretty boot loader than Mint’s. So how would I get that to work?
OpenSUSE and Mint creates their own separate swap partitions, I’d like them to share one, and also one “data” partition to share between all three OS’s.
It’s unusual that a distro installer would create another swap if one already exists.
Are you planning to re-do both Mint and SUSE or do you want to try and reconfigure?
If so we would need to see
fdisk -l
from either one of the running OS’s or a Live CD
Then it is very simple.
[ul]
[li]Boot with a live system like PartedMagic and delete all your linux and swap partitions except sda5 (the first swap partition)[/li][li]Create the following partitions and format them as ext4: [/li][LIST]
[li]sda6 ( Mint / )[/li][li]sda7 ( Mint /home )[/li][li]sda8 ( openSUSE / )[/li][li]sda9 (openSUSE /home)[/li][li]sda10 (/data)[/li][/ul]
[li] Install Mint. I don’t know Mint but if it is like Ubuntu you must have an option “Custom partitioning” or something like that. In any case, choose the option which sounds the most complicated and is in fact the only decent one (this is true for all setups). In this installation mode, you would select the partitions you want to use one by one, choose (or assign) a mount point and (optionally) format them. Give the partitions the following mount points and format them all in ext4: [/li][ul]
[li]sda6 /[/li][li]sda7 /home[/li][li]sda8 /suse[/li][li]sda9 /suse/home[/li][li]sda10 /data[/li][/ul]
and choose sda5 as your swap partition
[li] Let Mint install Grub in MBR (we’ll overwrite it later)[/li][li] Install openSUSE and choose Create Partition Setup, followed by Custom Partitioning (for experts) [/li][li] Same thing, select the partitions one by one but DO NOT FORMAT sda6 and sda7 ; also select sda5 as swap but do not format it (or its UUID will change). Choose the following mountpoints: [/li][ul]
[li]sda6 /mint[/li][li]sda7 /mint/home[/li][li]sda8 /[/li][li]sda9 /home[/li][li]sda10 /data[/li][/ul]
[li] By default openSUSE should write a generic bootcode in the MBR (one of the rare occasion where this debatable feature would be useful to anyone!) , install Grub in sda8 and set the extended partition active. In doubt you can check by clicking on Booting in the Installation Settings[/li][li]Where you’re done reboot. You might see Windows in Boot Menu (or not). You won’t see Mint. But I’m sure you’ll come back and we’ll tell you how to add it. [/li][/LIST]
Of course, there are many ways to do it. I just tried to make it as simple and efficient as possible.
I suggested this order because you mentionned that you wanted openSUSE’s Grub as your default bootloader.
please_try_again, your method of each distro having their own home partition seems messy to me, but it does make things easier on distro upgrades. I would install each distro into their own OS, not having a separate home partition. Then create symlinks for Documents, Downloads, Music, etc to the data partition. This allows each distro to have their own settings folders, but prevents an additional two partitions that eat up disk space.
Just my opinion.
Yes, you can do that do. It basically doesn’t change the method. You would just create two fewer partitions.
Yes.
This allows each distro to have their own settings folders, but prevents an additional two partitions that eat up disk space.
Agreed.
I’m actually more worried about that:
I don’t know why people (or setups) insist of creating the extended partition in the middle. In theory, it should not matter. But in fact, it does (although I’m not sure why). If you want to call something ‘messy’, that would apply to this partitioning rather than to separate /home partitions.
@funky_uncle
Actually, before installing any Linux, I would recommand defragmenting your FAT32 partition in Windows, then moving it up against the second partition with a partitoning tool (like partition magic under Windows or PartedMagic), finally creating all partitions you need for both Linux, including swap, data and either one or two for each distro, whether you decide to go with separate /home or not (neither big deal nor big difference). We’ve seen cases where openSUSE’s Grub would not boot from a logical partition if the partition table entries are not in disk order (which is the case here) or/and if the extended partition is in the middle. You would have to install openSUSE’s Grub in MBR in order to boot, which is uncomplicated, but maybe not the best option while multibooting with Windows.
Please be aware and keep in mind that it is advisable to backup your data before moving a partition.
there are other ways to fix this partition table entries order I did not mention because it would probably sound more complicated.
So taking up extra disc space is not messy just to keep things easy for an install in the future, which may need settings in the /home partition to be removed anyway.
You would just create two fewer partitions.
So two fewer partitions, thus simplicity is not messy?
I don’t know why people (or setups) insist of creating the extended partition in the middle. In theory, it should not matter. But in fact, it does (although I’m not sure why). If you want to call something ‘messy’, that would apply to this partitioning rather than to separate /home partitions.
Nice catch, I didn’t even bother to look at the heads, I just trusted the table.
How did the partition end up in the middle? If HP did a recovery, where is the 100MB “System Reserved” Boot partition?
I wouldn’t call two fewer partitions ‘simplicity’, but I might not be a good judge.
I don’t know. I guess one of the Linux automatic partitioning setups must have done that. There are a couple other posts describing a more or less similar situation.
I’m neither a Windows specialist nor a Windows user (for many years) … but sda1 and sda3 both look pretty small.
I’m keeping Windows only to play Monkey Island I & II, and for the rare occasions when something won’t work in Wine. I don’t plan to install much there, and I guess I don’t really need more than one partition for it. I won’t use the HP bloatware anyway. This PC is brand new and I don’t have any important data to lose, so if and install goes awry I’ll just try again.
Go for it
I like @please_try_again’s approach
I actually formatted my Lenovo’s, both came with windows. I then installed windows in a single partition (But I have access to proper installation media for windows)
next delete sda5, then delete the extended one, then move sda3 up against sda2, create the extended partition (sda4) that will fill the entire unallocated space, and finally create the following logical partitions:
sda5 (swap) : 2 GB
sda6 (mint / ) : 40 GB
sda7 (mint /home) : 10 GB
sad8 (openSUSE /): 40 GB
sda9 (openSUSE /home) : 10 GB
sda10 (/data) : the rest
or you don’t use a separate /home and in this case:
Right on, I’ll try this now. Another question though - if I figure out later I’m not going to use one of the OS’s, is it as simple as deleting those partitions and resizing /data?
Are you planning to share /data with Windows? In this case you should format it as ntfs, not ext4 and maybe make the /home partitions bigger (like 20 GiB). And it would be a little bit better to create it as the first logical partition (sda5) - that way you wouldn’t have to move it before resizing. Resizing an ext4 partition is possible but, as I never do it, I can not recommand it.
It should not. Forget it! There is no clear answer about the size of /home partitions.
In any case, I’ve got MInt and SUSE installed but only SUSE and Windows show up in grub, as you said.
That’s great. Now have a look at this howto: updategrub for openSUSE Legacy Grub (not update-grub!) and install updategrub, as described in the installation section. You can then run this script to add Mint entries to your Grub menu.
