Hi,

I am a Linux user (debian-sid mostly) for about two-three years, have some experience, but i cant really say i know my system inside out. Thus it's no surprise to me that i have had problems during installation. I am trying to install a relatively light-weight and more advanced distro, to both make the best of my old laptop (P3M 1,2Ghz, 256MB RAM..) and ultimately learn more about Linux. I chose crux and arch to be likely distros.

I started off by getting the install cd iso from arch website, around 560mb, and installing from that. The thing i sat up all night yesterday making a brand new clean installation of win2000 and all updates etc. The first thing that disappoints me is the lack of a resize function in the arch disk tools during the installation. No offense but it's really primitive to not have such a tool (maybe it's me who couldnt find it). I solved that problem with system rescue disk and qtparted. Following the steps in the official guidebook, i installed the base package and kernel etc. restarted the system to see that grub doesnt see my windows partition (prior to that i have had problems with NTLDR, whatever that is). After not giving a damn about the win partition, i just encountered more problems, the guidebook and the actual output of commands dont really match.

I couldnt set a root password, couldnt run pacman either. I got weird error messages that i havent gotten before. For example: "cannot lock the password file; try again later".. Needless to say trying again later doesnt really help

Then I decided to give a second try with Crux instead, still same problem with the root password. Not to mention half of the terminal commands i am used to acting not-so-usual.

Summary: i am somewhat lost with all that text only configurations, and weird error messages. Tho I am not the kinda person that gives up upon diffuculties, so I'd like to force my way to success. what i'd like to know is how to proceed in a more thorough way than in the guidebook, if i am making a mistake somewhere or not, and eventually if i need to start over with installing windows again, or not..

Thanks for your time, in advance..

Cheers,

hi there,
can you post your partition schema?
ex.
hda1 => windows
hda2 => swap
hdax => something1
...
regards,
slackie1000

Have a look at the following. I found it invaluable when installing Arch.

Arch install

When it gets to configuring X, I found it easier to install hwd and then run 'hwd -xa', as opposed to running xorgconfig. Running hwd will generate and write you an xorg.conf file. Just dont forget to add 'hwd' to your deamons list in /etc/rc.conf.

Good luck!

hi guys,

@slackie:
hda1 - win
hda2 - swap
hda3 - root (and eventually when i was installing crux, i did as recommended hda4 - /home)

@Ipsofacto:

i'll check the documentation thanks, as with the X config, i didnt even got there, before various problems took me down.

hi there,
it looks fine your partitions schema. arch won't set everything for you. but in the post-installation procedures you can edit grub/lilo as you want. just make sure to "tell" arch where to install things otherwise you can loose your windows partition.
regards,
slackie1000

just to make sure, what do you mean by "telling arch" where to put things? I mean which things do you refer to and where should they be placed?

I can only assume from Slackie1000's comments - and it is an assumption - that when he refers to "telling arch" he is refering to setting up your mountpoints so that they correspond with your partitions, eg:

hda1 - win
hda2 - swap
hda3 - root

Im stating the obvious, but it goes without saying that you do not want to create a file system on your windows partition.

As for grub not seeing your windows partition, you can change your /boot/grub/menu.lst file either during the installation when you install grub or post installation.

Keep us posted on how its going.

Edit - typo.

hi there,
indeed. this is exact what i meant. you need to write down your mountpoints structure and install arch according to it,i.e. not overwriting anything that you may need (windows??).
after that, edit grub as you need and you will be fine.
regards,
slackie1000

hi,

of course i set my mousepoints correctly.. as with windows not booting (NTLDR missing error) i had to reinstall windows on that partition... was a bit annoying but oh well..
As with linux issues, I just did a new installation of Crux with a friend that has experience in Crux.

Thanks all of you, for your help so far.
Cheers,

NTLDR is the Microsoft bootloader, mainly used with NTFS systems like XP and Win2000. It is not needed to boot Windows. It is needed only if you are going to use that loader to boot other systems. You will replace that with grub on the mbr to boot both windows and Linux

Bob