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Old 09-15-2002, 12:56 PM   #1
Lin
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Mandrake 8.2 install problems


I went through the ez install process; when I tried to install the various program options, I was told that I had no room for any of them, not even the smallest one.

I partitioned according to the directions on the cd for using the space remaining on my hd, which was approx. 5 gig. There is now a partition of about 3 gigs somewhere on the machine, with about 2 gigs free.

I tried to fix the problem myself by going back through the install process, but I think I made it worse - the last time I tried to go through the install, if I remember correctly, it told me I was an idiot and to give up.

My computer is a pent III, 10g hd, 128 ram laptop, ME.

I may be an idiot (please answer as if you were speaking to one), but I do not want to give up. I don't know any official lingo except what you see on this note, so please be patient as I'll probably have to ask you explain what may seem to be basic stuff.
Thanks, Lin

PS~ I bought the cd's on ebay with no instruction book....
 
Old 09-15-2002, 01:51 PM   #2
jdii1215
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Ok, Linux basiclycomes with thousands of programs.

What I did, on about my 6th install, was to figure out that:

/ does not need to be more than 1\4 the free space on the HD.

/home and /usr need to be NOT in / partition

swap needs to be about 256 MB, and not much more unless you are heavily into video.

So, let's break it this way:

/ gets a GiG of space
swap gets 256 MB
/usr gets 1.5 Gig
/home gets 1.5 Gig

assign them in that order, and you might end up in Expert mode adn then be careful to only work on the linux partiitions (whihc SHOULD be red colored, the Windows ones will be blue if yuo have a Windows that uses FAT32 (thodse you should leave alone unless you see not red ones, in which case come back here first please before changing things (while you CAN load linux IN a widnows partiition, the results are strange to deal with in some systems so I DON'T).

You should be able to set up a workstation install and start from there with that space, easily. Please do not try to set up a server in this space, it is not doable for any significant server install.

I once had Mandrake talking to me in German, by telling it I wanted German language supprt and then like an idiot not selecting English support also, but it never called me utterly dumb beyond belief-- it just DID WHAT I ASKED IT TO DO and I read many German docs....

Essentially, Mandrake calculates what will fit based on the size of /usr, /home, and / (not just one of those, Mandrakde knows some of the stuff goes in each). If you give it just one partition it does NOT like it, and this is a file system thing and not just a Mandrake thing.

I actually did my first Mandrake installs on a seperate HD, and now have a Windows on about 1\3 of a HD and the other two are now parts of two Linuxes (I am *playing with* 9.0 in beta form (rc2, soon to be rc3)and it has its own HD so I can wipe it at need, but the 8.2 lives on 1-2\3 HDs).

John.
 
Old 09-15-2002, 02:25 PM   #3
Lin
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Thank you for responding. While I understand what you are saying, I don't know how to get to the place to do these changes. Also, will these changes happen within the partition that the original install process created? Should I undo that partition and if so, how do I accomplish it? BTW, I can boot from a cd if you need to know that. Lin
 
Old 09-15-2002, 03:03 PM   #4
jdii1215
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Ok, first you might WANT to reinstall, as if you try to use the same partition sizes Mandrake will happily tell you "No Room".

So, assuming you set up the HD originally and literally had half of it unused when you first tried to load Mandrake, you do indeed do a full reinstall (moving around EXT3 or reiser is a pain in the A**) until you understand things like Gnu Parted.

First, tell the instalelr you want expert mode, you will get many more choices, one of which you need this time around.

So, when it gets to "where do you want to put it," you essentially choose Custom Partiitoning, then tell it to use DiskDrake. Once in Disk Drake, you can click on a partition and THEN diskdrake will let you delte, resize, etc. I would delete every red partition, one at a time, and the green swap one that linux likes to have (it does not use a file like Windows, it likes a whole partition).

When only blue remains, you click the white space (could be grayish) and diskdrake will let you create a new one. So, make a new partition that is one Gig in size (about 1\4 of the available space will do, just a tib under that). When done, you click mount point and it should offer to make it a / partition. That's cool, let it use that and then let it do what it asks until back to the display you started at (the display showing some blue and now one red adn some white empty space to the right on a little bar).

Click the white again, this time on the thing that might say EXT3 to the right there is a down arrow-- click that. click on swap. This time you only want a small partition, maybe a 15th or so of the remaining space.

The other two are similar, except I THINK it might offer to make a /var next when you set up a 1.5 Gig (half remaining white space and half available space on slider) partition adn you need it to be /usr instead (down arrow to right of where it says /usr again).

Last one is /home, like with /var.

Then click done, and it should figure out the last four partitions on the list need to be formatted and *star* them-- if so, let it go to work and go have dinner or a cola or relax for anywhere from 15 min to an hour or so.

This is similar to Partition Magic except no drag to size directly on the partition bar, you get a little dialog(widgetted box if you *MUST* think that way) that has a size bar on top of that usually and the partiiton bar does not change until you make one. Easiest to change right away, if you make one too big, click on resize and drag the blue thing to the left toward no size. while you can go back and redo, it gets complex and it is possible to have a big mess if you don't take it slow and easy the first time-- menaing step by step, left to right always as you build toward a full HD with more and more partitions.

If questions, please ask first, and if you want you can print this, and if confused still you might find the little install walkthrough on Mandrake's sites will help you understand the whole install process, A La duck.

John.
 
Old 09-15-2002, 04:34 PM   #5
Lin
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Thanks again, John. I'm going to try again, now. And thanks for letting me know that the partitioning can take a while. I'll let you know how it works out.
 
Old 09-15-2002, 05:20 PM   #6
jdii1215
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You are welcome. The ONE thing I would wish that Linux installers would do is post status updates with big partition formats. Mandrake is better than some, in that it does tell you what partition it is formatting rather than making you wait until all are done to see it say it is finished. But with a slow box, each partition can take a while.

Good luck, and you are quite welcome.

John.
 
Old 09-16-2002, 11:38 AM   #7
Lin
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More questions:

* When you say that you assme I set up the HD originally, if you mean that I loaded the windows program, I did not, it came preloaded on the laptop.

* When you say "reinstall", do you mean to simply boot from the install disk and begin the process over, or is there an "uninstall" or "rescue" process?

* Since I assumed I was to boot from the disk and just go through the process again (assuming that this would wipe out whatever I may have done previously), I did so. When I arrived at the partitioning section, this is what I saw:

Tabs at the top of the window in the various colors.
A long bar divided into blue and white. The blue sector was labled, " /mnt/windows " and comprises 95% (8.9 GB) of the bar. The white sector is "empty" and comprises 4% (459 mgb)
A tab labled, "hda", and the accompanying window.

The Blue section window offers sizing/deleting, etc choices; the White window offers "create" - which I tried to do, labling it "/" and giving it 357 of the MB available.

Of course then I received the note, "raw_add: partition table already full". Since it said "empty", I don't know what it is full of.....

BTW - It will not recognize my mouse or scsi info. I just click on "OK" for everything.

Now what?

Last edited by Lin; 09-16-2002 at 12:40 PM.
 
Old 09-16-2002, 03:28 PM   #8
jdii1215
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Basicly, Mandrake is correctly telling you that you do not have enough HD room to install. It says that your HD is 95% taken up by Windows. The 5% that is left is NO WAY enough room. The installer knows very well that you cannot possibly install Mandrake on this HD without changing the size of your Windows partition-- the error should be coming as it decides to try to make a partition, then decides it has not enough room for the partition.

I would not proceed with this install unless you know how to use, and have, Partition Magic 8.0. you will need to free up more than 3 Gig of space to install, as you will need room for a partition table.

From what you are telling me, I think the installer hung at partition time last time, and never wrote partition tables or copied files. This, given the circumstances you are giving me now, is the BEST thing that could have happened.

SCSI in a laptop????

Since the installer could not make a partition it probbaly copied nothing at all, so no drivers existed for the mouse or the (I assume) CD Burner onto the HD, so no, it would not recognize anything until after it had copied files-- further along in the install process, in other words. Do you have TWO hard drives, physically in the laptop???

John.
 
Old 09-16-2002, 05:19 PM   #9
Lin
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Just one hd; When I looked up scsi for my computer, the search came back with Trident Cyberblade AGP. Since I don't know what an scsi is or why I would or would not have one, I don't know if I do have one......

Anyway - I have hardly anything on my computer - no games, maybe 5 cds of music, the OS (ME) and various fun stuff like a defragmenter, disk cleaner, Microsoft Office. Is this enough to take up almost 10 GB?
 
Old 09-16-2002, 06:08 PM   #10
jdii1215
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Well, what is occupying the space as far as mandrake is concerned is abuot 98. Gig set aside for a FAT32 partition. Resizing this to shrink it with DiskDrake is not the safest thing to do-- been done, not 100% successful. So, I tend to use Partition Magic for this part, adn 8.0 is the latest version of that. Partition Magic will NOT let you shrink bayond your actual free space on the FAT32 partition. I am not sure about DiskDrake, but Madnrake says their FAT32 (vfat) support is not yet in final form with 8.2 (so I do not use their tools to work on it at all).

The CDs of music, if recorded at full CD quality, are about 3.75 Gig of files themselves, less if not CD quality. So, unless you have lots of things I do not know about, yuo shuold easily be able to shrink the FAT32, but only Partition Magic is what I would use (and not a trial one) to shrink that.

SCSI is for burners, and AGP is for video-- chances are unless you have a CD burning drive or a DVD drive in your laptop, you do not have anything Mandrake would run as SCSI. HD is 90% an IDE drive, and Mandrake will treat it as such. Regular CD-Rom is usually run as IDE.

No, Mandrake will not shrink your FAT32 Me home for you, you need to do that before installing MAdnrake-- and I would not wipe Windows, either, as Linux on laptops is harder to figure out than Linux on a desktop.

BTW, when you get to the mouse choice, try to see if the PS\2 Glidepoint lets you use your pointer pad, ok???

John.
 
Old 09-16-2002, 06:25 PM   #11
Lin
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Thanks again, John. I'll look into partition magic. I do have dvd. And I can use the built in pad, just not my cordless mouse. Linda
 
Old 09-16-2002, 06:41 PM   #12
jdii1215
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Ok, with a cordless, if it has a PS\2 adapter with it, sometimes they will run as PS\2 Mice. If it does not have a PS\2 adapter or draws power from the USB port, that is something that might have to wait for the final version of Mandrake 9.0-- people are still having problems with a bunch of varieties of cordless mice, especially at install time (sometimes after install they can get them working, but not always). Also, if your cordless does work wtih widnows, this is important to know-- if not, please make sure the mouse part has new batteries in it, ok???

John.
 
Old 09-17-2002, 11:08 AM   #13
Lin
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One more question - Before I did the initial install, my defrag program said I had a little over 50% of my hd space free (5000+MB). Now it says I have 30% free (2741MB). If the white space on the install program says it has 450MB(4%), where is the rest of the space?
 
Old 09-17-2002, 04:00 PM   #14
jdii1215
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OK, your Windows, when the system builder installed it, set up a partiition for itself, and the system builder told it to use the amount the installer says it has shown as used to make a FAT32 file system. It looks like something tried to use part of the FAT32 space, but that is probably not Linux. That, if you downloaded the iso files to install from, is the iso's themselves unless you later erased them.

So, given what you tell me now, you can run PArtition MAgic and it wikll let you shrink yuor FAT32 partition by about 2.5 Gig (real gigabytes) adn then yuo will have about 2.9 Gig to use. IF you have the iso's as files and burned on CD, then you do not need the iso's as files maybe (assuming you installed from CD) on your HD and might want to erase them and then defrag the drive and then shrink the partition adn then you might get about 4-5 Gig usable by Linux (this would be better).


Essentially, the mandrake installer sees the spcae not set up as file system, and Widnows is looking only at what it can see (the part of the HD that is "used" as FAT32. While there ARE cheaper ways to go than Partition Magic for resizing your operating system file space to make room, they have this tendency to let you resize things to the point of losing part or all of Windows without knowing why if you are not very good and know exactly how to use them. Explaining that well will take a book. Partition Magic will not let you lose Windows if you only do a resize-- it will not let you shrink into the used space on a partition, only let you choose to have less for windows to the extent that space is free in the Windows file system. It comes with a book, which I would read.

John.
 
Old 09-18-2002, 06:24 PM   #15
Lin
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Thank you so much, John. This has been fun and I can't wait to try Partition Magic. It will probably be a couple of months, though, while I take care of some other business before I can focus on that. I'll let you know how I do. Lin
 
  


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