Anna,
I could be wrong but your original post suggests that you are using two phyiscally different hard drives? have you taken the side off? what does fdisk -l give from a live disk? Does the size corrispond to that you would expect?

fred.

System files are contained in /. /home is ordinarily also in / but you can put /home on a separate partition. The /home partition would contain data but also contains some configuration files. You can also create a separate partition instead of /home or in addition to /home for data, if you have a lot of movies, pictures, music, etc.

There are different applications to backup/clone. A common program for cloning is coincidentally called "Clonezilla", google it. It has a number of different options, cloning a full drive, cloning a partition, etc.

An Extended partition is a primary partition which is used as a container for logical partitions. Extended partitions do not hold data, logical partitions do. With the newer releases of windows, a pre-installed version will generally use 3 and sometimes more partitions. If it uses three, you need to make the fourth an Extended so you can create logical partitions. Since you are planning to create data partitions it would be wise to create and Extended before you use the fourth as some other primary.

Getting partitions on borders, etc. just use GParted and don't worry about it.
I don't know that swap would need to be on the first partition (there may be reasons?) but it certainly doesn't need to be on a primary partition.
Four primary partitions, see above. No, Linux does not need to be on a primary partition to boot. It does not need to have a boot flag set active either as windows does.

Drive partition designations on new releases of Linux will be in the form of sda, sda1, sdb (second drive), sdb1(second drive, second partition).

Given an ordinary computer user with only 2GB of RAM, there really isn't any significant reason to use 64 bit over 32 bit.

I'm not sure why you are dealing with Captcha and distrowatch. The link below is to the Ubuntu site for version 12.04 which will have updates and support until April, 2017.

http://releases.ubuntu.com/precise/

Just click on the link at that site where you see the line below:

PC (Intel x86) desktop CD

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(Q1)- What files are contained in / and /home?

/ is the root (not to be confused with a user named root) of your entire filesystem. /home is a directory in / which contains a subdirectory for each non root user. For example if you have users called root, anna, and george you will have the following directories in your system:

/root
/home/anna
/home/george

(Q2)- I would like my system files to be identified for imaging/cloning, so that I can completely restore my system, without touching my personal files, but is that / AND /home?

Use a command to restore the entire / filessystem but exclude /home from the restore.

...(Q2a)- Is there an app to do that? Or is "/" merely an access designation for greater 'authority'?

There are several commands to do that. cp is one of several such commands. / is the base point of the entire filesystem.

(Q3)- I would like my personal files, including email, to be in a separate partition for backing up a different way (and so they will NOT be included in the system image/clone files) - how to put my data files into a separate partition?

You have a single file system which encompasses all partitions. You include other partitions by mounting directories. For example I have / on my bootable partition and then I have /usr, /var, and /home/stites/data each mounted on three separate partitions. My /home/stites/data directory is mounted on its own partition and it contains all of my personal files.

(Q4)- In the sample partitioning you gave, what is sdb3-extended partition for? Formatted as?

Back in the day the disk formating scheme only allowed for four partitions, which are now called primary partitions. Now, in order to allow for more than four partitions a primary partition is set aside to be part of the partition control block. The converted primary partition is called an extended partition. Partitions that are described in the extended partition are called logical partitions.

(Q5)- How do I get partitions to start on ...??...borders...???...cylinders...???

You do that with your partitioning program. The easiest way is to just tell the partitioning program the partition size and let it figure out the start and end points. Otherwise most partitioning programs will allow you to specify all of the details if you want.

(Q6)- Is the "shared" partition (WinXP-Linux) the only one that needs to be FAT32?

Yes.

(Q7)- So SWAP being on the first partition, it is the ONLY PRIMARY partition among all the partitions, is that right? You can only have ONE primary partition on the drive, right? So Linux doesn't need to be on a primary partition?

You can have 4 primary partitions on a drive or 3 primary partitions and an extended partition which describes one or more logical partitions. swap and / can be located on any partition, primary or logical.

(Q8)- When I asked about the drive/partition designations, I meant would Windows still see them as C:, D, and E - I kinda figured that Linux wouldn't. My XP disk manager is not working properly so I can't change (fix) the drive letters if they get messed up. I was afraid it would get further confused if I changed a partition using GParted and sdb1, but it won't matter now that I'll be using a different drive altogether.

Windows will see its own partitions as C:, D:, etc. Windows will not be able to make heads or tails of the Linux partitions and will describe them as blank space (I think. It has been 13 years since I had a Windows partition.) Linux sees and displays the entire filesystem across all drives as one huge drive.

(Q9)- The Backup Partition will have two primary directories/folders: one for maintaining an exact copy of my data files partition (so I need one directory as large as my data partition, plus a very large directory to keep compressed system image files - I like to keep images from my initial install and key images up to today (I keep a diary on the QuickLaunch to add notes when I do anything that changes the system between images, so I can restore and then quickly bring the system back up to date, minus whatever I don't want). I now use SecondCopy for data files and AcronisTrueImage for system images. Are there apps for Linux for doing this?

Yes. I suggest that you simplify your backup scheme when you move to Linux. There are commands which will copy only the files that have changed since the last backup. It is far easier to simply copy / in its entirety to a backup partition where the only files copied are the files which have changed since the last time / was copied to that partition. I use three backup partitions on a 3 day rotation. Not compressing anything makes restores far easier.

You can mount and umount partitions. So you would normally run with your backup partitions not part of the file system. When you wanted to do a backup you would mount the backup partition some where on your file system (say /daily.backup.1) and copy the entire / file system, excluding /daily.backup.1, to /daily.backup.1. Then umount /daily.backup.1 Restoring some files is a matter of mountinf the restore partition on /daily.backup.1, copying the files, and then umount /daily.backup.1

If your Linux system is so broken that it won't run at all then you can boot a Linux system installed on a rescue CD. You mount / and /daily.backup.1 on the rescue CD filesystem and then copy whatever is necessary to restore from /daily.backup.1 to the broken / partition.

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Steve Stites

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I built this machine in 2006. I do have two physical hard drives, each with two partitions.

I'm not sure how to use the quotes in this forum, I hope I did it right.

(1) In this case, then how does one indicate to BIOS that the partition (logical drive) that Linux is on is a bootable drive?

(2) So, if I understood what you said correctly, sda is the 1st (primary) partition on the first drive and sda1 is the 2nd partition (1st extended partition) on the first drive? Then I create logical volume(s) in each partition?

(3) I want to install 64bit if I can, because my new machine will be 64bit and I hope I can install Linux now (I ordered a new sata for this purpose) and learn a bit about it, and then move the new sata drive from this machine into the new machine with Linux already installed (and put XP in a VM) - is there any reason that wouldn't work?

Thanks,
Annie

The BIOS looks to the master boot record and if you have installed Grub there, it will point to the partition on which the remaining Grub boot files are. You don't need to set anything in the BIOS other than which drive is first in boot priority.

I should have placed a comma between Drive and partition. sda is the first hard drive. sdb is the second. sda1 is the first hard drive and first partition.

No. You can have four primary partitions. You can use on of these primary partitions to create an Extended partition. Extended partitions do not hold data but you can create 15-60+ logical partitions on the Extended, depending upon the type of drive.

You can install either 32bit or 64bit software on hardware which is 64bit capable. You cannot install/run 64 bit software on 32bit

anabanana,
yancek is right but partitioning, especially over 2 HDD's is confusing; grub controls what you boot to with the Master Boot Record, this contains a record of drives (sd?) and then a record of partitions (sda?) this is simplified on the grub boot screen to identify the system you want to boot to.
When installing the last o/s, the last job is often to choose where to install grub MBR, the default is usually sda this is the first hard drive and the one to set the bios for. Make sure grub has detected all other installations, but if not it can be rectified later, with some effort!
Logical volumes tend to exist on the same drive (hard drive) and within the envolope of one extended partition, so you have hard drive (sd?) that has partitions (sda1) then an envelope (extened partition) that is sda2 and within that sda3,4,5 and so on that are logical partitions within the envelope of sda2.

hope that adds clarity!

Fred.

Windows System (C:) and Documents (D:) are the two partitions on sda (IDE drive)
Documents Backup (E:) and Image Files (F:) are the two partitions on sdb (IDE drive)

I am installing a new 1TB SATA drive (a third drive: /dev/sdc) on which to put Linux now, intending to move this drive to my new build eventually as sda on that build. Will this not work?

Annie

Your windows C will probably show as sda1 in Linux, your windows D as sda2 and your second drive partitions (E) will likely be sdb1 and F will be sdb2. If you leave these drives in and install the new drive it will probably show as sdc. You can create a partition or partitions on this drive and use one of them for your Linux system. You could either install the Grub bootloader for Linux in the master boot record of sdc and set sdc to first boot priority in the BIOS, or you could install the Linux Grub bootloader to the master boot record of sda, which is currently first boot priority.

Those are the simplest options, unless I'm not reading your post correctly and you are planning to replace the current sda?

You read correctly. The designations you listed are what I expected I would see, so that's good. /dev/sdc will be the hd for everything Linux (with a FAT partition for files shared with XP). As far as where GRUB goes, is one place better than another? Will Ubuntu installation ask me where I want it to be?

I've been reading about Grub, and I could read for weeks and not understand it all. The online GNU GRUB Manual 0.97 is HUGE and I don't know which bits I need to know about. It's confusing that Grub uses different drive/partition designations, for example: [First hard drive, second partition] = D:\ = sda2 = (hd0,1)
I'll get there eventually, there is just so much to learn.

Q. If I copy/move my data files ("My Documents" folder) from an NTFS partition to a FAT partition (using XP), then they would be equally accessible to XP and Linux, right? And whether I ran XP as a dual boot or as a VM, I could still use my Windows SecondCopy app to maintain my duplicate data files uncompressed backup, is that right? I could then, if there was a reason to, copy them from the FAT partition to an ext3 partition (using Linux). What is the advantage of having MY Linux DATA files on an ext3 partition, instead of FAT?

Annie

Linux data on ext3 means Linux ownerships and perms will be usable/enforced.
FAT cannot understand them and NTFS is different again.
Most people these days would use an NTFS partition for sharing and just make sure the ntfs-3g pkg is installed on Linux.
Incidentally, Unix doesn't use different designations for disk/partitions, it MS that does.
Unix was created in 1970, MSDOS in 1980....

Think so. Try reading the Grub2 Manual.

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html

I don't really know why grub uses a different nomenclature than used for Linux partition naming. It is pretty logical however. Where people often get tripped up is the partitions start from one (1)in Grub2 and in Grub Legacy the partitions start with zero (0). Make sure you are reading about the correct Grub.

I noticed in one of your earlier posts that you mention Ubuntu. Ubuntu and some other distributions have been using Grub2 for several years while others still use Grub Legacy and I expect will continue to do so for years to come. It's a choice or option available. If you are going to be using Ubuntu, concentrate on Grub2.

Interesting page below about booting multiple systems with Grub.

http://forums.justlinux.com/showthre...SD-and-Solaris