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Ok during the setup all it does is detect the ntfs partition (the only partition) and wants to delete it and create the reiser partition for linux and the swap partition. I don't want to do this. When I did this on my brothers computer it detected the windows xp installation and added windows to the grub setup. It also gave a suggestion to create a linux partition and a swap partition, but it doesn't do any of this for this computer. Can I still install Suse and dual boot using grub? How do I make it detect my windows installation?
Distribution: SuSE 9.0Pro-9.1-9.2, Knoppix 3.4-3.6-STD, Red Hat Linux 7.0, Solaris 9
Posts: 13
Rep:
hmm...wierd. I also installed it alongside WinXP becuz my family and I use the same comp and I'm sure they aren't ready for the awesome world of Linux yet . I guess my question is do you have a FAT 32/16 partition or is it all NTFS. If so it may be a problem with your configuration. Also when your setting up you will want to go into the partition part by either clicking the title or the down arrow for the menu. You can have custom boot options to where it won't delete WinXP as long as your have enough space for the installation and some swap. I would say even before you think about installing Linux make sure you have at least 5 GB of free hard drive space. This should be more than enough space for the installation and some extra swap for downloads, extra rpms, packages, etc etc.
The entire 30 GB drive consists of 1 NTFS partition. There is about 12 GB of free space. I was pretty sure my brother had the same setup when I did his but maybe it was a FAT32. Are you saying that if there is not a FAT32 partition it will not recognize the windows installation and will not create a new partition for linux by resizing the NTFS partition? If not, if I use partition magic to resize the NTFS partition and free up some unused space will Yast2 do what I want it to? (detect windows, create a linux partition and add windows to the grub setup) I really don't want to format my entire hard drive as I don't have any way to back it up at the moment.
Simply choose the "custom" option under the partitioning section of the suse install - yast is making a guess at what you want to do, and it likely thinks you want to start from scratch. you will be taken into an fdisk-like text based program where you can create a root partion / and a swap for linux in that existing 12 GB free space.
btw grub will "detect" the windows install LATER when you are building and installing your bootloader (after all the packages are installed.... much later in the installl)
Tom
Last edited by sirpimpsalot; 03-05-2004 at 11:54 AM.
I think so. Shrink your windows partition and leave some unused space on the drive. Let Suse format the unused space (not partition magic) Also a good idea to defrag before you shrink windows.
I would just like to clarify that the NTFS partition is the entire hard drive and that the 12 GB is free space, not unused space. It seems that in Yast2 the only way to create a partition for linux is to first delete the NTFS partition to create unused space for it, which would result in the loss of the XP OS and all my data. So I don't understand how grub would detect the windows installation later on if it had already been deleted.
so use partition magic (or the suse boot cd rom for that matter) to resize the NTFS partition so that you have about 8 GB unused/unpartitioned at the end of your drive.
Then restart the SUSE install, choose the custom partitioning option, and build two linux partions in the 8gb unused space
first one 7GB system partition for linux, formated as ext3, with the mount point of /
sencond create a 1 GB swap partion, formatted as "linux swap"
Once the install completes the installation of the software packages you choose, it will scan the drive for other OSes and ask you if you would like them to be included in the bootloader (grub) menu.
Ok so I loaded up Yast2 again and did custom partition and selected the resize function for to create unused space from the NTFS partition. It told me that I couldn't shrink the NTFS partition more than 10 Gig due to some limitation in the resizer function. It said if I wanted to shrink NTFS partition more than this I should reboot windows and run the system defrag. So I do that and load up yast2 again and voila! It detects the windows installation and adds it to grub just like I wanted. But this time it only suggests a partition for linux about 3GB big. So I go into modify the suggestion and now it says the same thing as before (load up windows and run the defrag to enable a larger resize) except it has limited me to 3GB instead of 10GB- so I have done that now several times and it won't let me make a partition larger than 3GB even though it reports 12GB free space on NTFS partition. I'm starting to get pretty frustrated. I would like my Linux partition to be larger than 3GB.
Alright just to let everyone know, I used partitionmagic to resize the NTFS partition and created 512MB unused in front of it for the linux swap and 9GB after it for the Linux install. I installed linux and everything is working fine, dual boot and all. Thanks.
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