Linux Partitions
 

I'm a :newbie: to linux and want some information about linux partitions.

My first question is

How can I stop windows XP from detecting linux partitions?

Second

What is swap drive and what does it do?

Third

When ever I want to install a program where is the best location (partition) I should install the program to?

Fourth

How big (GB) the root partition "/" , swap, and /home, has to be?


I know this kind of looks like a test, but please answer any question that you can......

Re: Linux Partitions
 

I don't think WinXP can detect a Linux partition. Can you explain what you mean by this? Does your WinXP comp see your Linux partitions?

A swap drive is a physical partition created for your *nix system to use if you run out of physical ram. It should be twice the size of your physical ram.

I'm not sure how Mandrake sets up your system, having never used it before. However, most programs are installed under /var, and if you install programs you'll probably never know where they go. If you let Mandrake setup your partitions, you probably just have a swap partition, a /home partition, and a / (root) partition - in that case, all your programs are in the / partition. You'll have some basic settings in your /home partition. Always read any documentation, such as a HOW-TO, Readme, or Install file before attempting to install software to your comp.

That depends upon what you'll use your system for (i.e. workstation, server, etc.), the size of your hard drvie, etc. You can ask 100 people this question, and probably get at least 150 answers. Here's the parts on this comp, which belongs to my wife and daughter. The hard drive is 80GB, it is a dual boot with Slack 9.1 and Win98 ->

Re: Linux Partitions
 

What I mean by this is that when I go to my computer in windows XP or Windows 2000, it shows all the linux partitions. When I try to open them it says it's not formatted. Oviously because it's not a windows or a dos partition. So I want windows to ignore these partitions.

I have a Linux partition in win XP and it doesn't show up in my computer. I have yet to install Linux so this may change once its all set up but I was under the impression you couldn't detect the partition (although I wanted to so I could transfer files across from winXP to Linux and vice versa). I set my partitions up with partition magic pro 7 if that helps...

Sek612 windows can't see linux partitions. You can make a partition that is Fat 32 so both filesystems can see it and write to it... worst case scenario.

Re: Re: Linux Partitions
 

Either one of two things is true in your case.

(1) You have the very first intelligent WinXP and/or Win2000 operating system, because IMO no one else has ever been able to see either ext2, ext3, ResierFS, or xfs partitions from Windoze. NB: I'm not the most knowledgeable guy on these forums, and I could be wrong.

or

(2) You have created one or more partitions with the FAT32 file system to use in Linux, and you haven't formatted or installed a Linux distribution to that/those partitions. The linux kernel can't run in a FAT32 file system.

Please post the outputs from within Linux (your cp says you're using Mandrake) of fdisk -l (that's a lower case L) as root, and df -h as user or root, and we'll see what you've got. You would do this from command line, or in a terminal. You may use the program xterm for this.

To make them easier to read, put openbracketquoteclosebracket before each of these outputs in your post, and openbracket/quoteclosebracket after each output (the bracket symbol and not the word and no spaces). That way they will be formatted like my output in the first post to you, and we can read them easier.

Now you've got me interested :scratch:

Was any of the information in my other post helpful in answering your questions?


:cool:

If I recall correctly, it was possible to see that there were partitions from the administrative screen that showed your hard drive. (A long bar with sections representing the various partitions.) I recall that I made sure Windows would not scan or check any drive but the C:\ drive. I do not remember if there were icons in MY COMPUTER. Can you just drop them into a LINUX DRIVE folder?

Re: Re: Linux Partitions
 

You did something wrong...

My best guess is that somehow you have installed linux onto windows partitions. I have seen this before...there is no way that Windows should be seeing linux...without special programs to enable this.

I am afraid you are going to have to start all over...

Thats right. Thats the only way I was ever able to check out my Linux partitions from windows. My Computer never showed them. It was in Administrative Tools under disk management I think. It must be a FAT32 partition or something. Linux will run on FAT32, not that you'd ever want it to ;). It's too unreliable to begin with, and Linux can't write file-permissions and such to it.

If your WinXP partition is formatted NTFS you will not be able to write to it from a Linux distribution, but you can read it. You will need NTFS file system support compiled into your kernel. When I build a comp and the customer wants WinXP or Win2000, I setup the partitions using FAT32 for two reasons: first, so that we can boot to DOS easily and Ghost their Win partition; second, so that they can read/write their Win parts from Linux.

When you setup the partitions for Linux with PM7, what file system did you use? For various reasons, I found that it was better to format my partitions for my Linux distro using fdisk under Linux during the install. Just my opinion, though. I've done it both ways.

What Linux distribution are you considering? And what will you use this operating system to do?

I still don't think Windoze can detect a Linux partition from Windoze Explorer. He may be seeing it as 2damncommon suggested, though. However, since that's not really something he would use on a regular basis, I can't see how it would be a bother. Just my :twocents: It's worth exactly what you paid for it ;)

I set the second partition up as a NTFS partition. In PM7 it indicated that the FAT32 filesystem is for earlier versions of windows (win 2000, 98, 95 etc) and stated the NTFS filesystem was specifically for Win XP so I used that. If I used a FAT32 filesystem I could read and write to and from it in both OS's (Win XP and Mandrake Version 9.2)? - the partition will hold media such as music and videos.

Also there is an option to use just the FAT filesystem (it says this is suitable for most P.C OS's) - is this better filesystem to use to make a partition accessible by both Linux and Windows (as opposed to FAT32)?

Heres what my HD distribution looks like in PM7 at the moment (I'm still not entirely sure I set it up right though - there are only 2 partitions with the second NTFS partition and the Linux one being sub divisions of the second partition...):

http://www.sek612.netfirms.com/HDDist.jpg

If you only use Windoze, the NTFS filesystem is the best one for Win2000 and WinXP. However, the linux kernel does not yet have support to write to a NTFS filesystem, but it can write to a FAT32 filesystem. So, yes, if you set that partition up as FAT32 you can read and write to and from it in both WinXP and Mandrake 9.2. That is what you want to do for a partition to share music and videos.

FAT32 is better for this than plain FAT - FAT32 is a 32 bit filesystem. With the FAT filesystem, the files can only have a name of 8 bytes maximum plus an extension of 3 bytes maximum. This is the type of file system of your Windoze floppy disks, but not what you want for a modern hard drive - especially for music and videos.


I've looked at your PM7 screenshot. So, let me ask you some questions.

(1) Do you have one hard drive that is 120GB?

(2) Have you already installed Mandrake 9.2 in that 38GB space labeled Linux Ext2?

(3) What other drives are in your computer? What is drive D: and drive E:?

(4) What do you now use your computer for, and what do you intend to use the Mandrake installation for?

If you don't mind answering those questions, we'll go from there. If you've already installed Mandrake, please post the output of fdisk -l (lower case L) as root, and df -h as either root or a regular user.

To throw in my 2 cents, FAT32 is an extremely weak filesystem compared to native linux filesystems such as ext2/3 or reiserfs, and is also weak when compared to m$'s NTFS. NTFS was a massive improvement over fat32. So while it's no big deal to use fat32 to store data to share between os's, I wouldn't store an OS on it (other than win 98> since they won't use ntfs) ;-)

Ok.. thanks everyone who tried to help.. But I found the answer myself. I realised the effects that pot has on you when I realised that I'm running short in disk space in Windows.

This is what I had done.

I devided some of windows unused disk space to 3 partitions. Then I reformatted them for Linux. One was swap, one was root (formatted for Linux ext3). The other partition was home (which I thought it is) which I forgot to format (left behind unformatted - no file system). Then somehow I had taken another part of windows unused disk space and turned that in to Linux ext3 and used as home.

Oviously I ran out of windows disk space.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nu-Bee, thanks for the tip.....

Now comon, everyone is talking about different linux and windows partitions.

I'm confuced... what are the diffrences of these file systems. Ex, "linux native" vs "linux ext2" and "linux ext3".....

Wich one is better? All I know is that Fat dosen't support larger disks so you have to use Fat32. And ntfs is mainly used for windows NT. But now also WinXP and Win2K. What are these really?? how you know what is better over what....

Nukem, my advise is to just NUKE Windoze (:

Just kidding, NTFS was created under win NT as the microsoft answer to the short comings of FAT and FAT32, since win 2k and XP are dirvitives of NT they talk NTFS and microsoft recommends NTFS as the file system to use. One thing to note about NTFS is that micorsoft puts the swap space in the middle of the partition, so if you are wanting to take space from windows and give it to linux you should first disable windows swap and defrag your drive. then resize the partition. Mandrake partitioning tool works great and will resize NTFS partitions. After you are done resizing then go back into windows and turn swap back on.

As for linux native, ext2, ext3, rieser, jfs, and several other linux/unix files systems I would suggest Google search, I found this article you should be able to find more. Every expert will have thier own opinion on what to use. Here is a long thread on what file system to choose. good luck, what ever you choose will work fine for a desktop.

As others have stated if you want a shared patition for data such as MP3s or documents use FAT32, both windows and Linux will be able to read it, but make it a "documents" only partition to share data between OS's.

now I've added :twocents: you should have some real $ soon.