SuSE 8.2 installation from hard disk

The current situation is as follows:

hdba containing only W2K with NTFS

hdb1 containing Win98 with FAT32
hdb2 containing extended patition for Mandrake 9.1 with:
- hdb5 for root
- hdb6 for swap
- hdb7for /home
+ 10 Gb unallocated space

Earlier I had up & running suse 8.1 system, which I wanted to upgrade to 8.2. Since suse 8.2's boot CD doesn't support pppoe, I couldn't upgrade from 8.1 to 8.2 via ftp, but instead downloaded the whole installation folder (6.4 GB) from ftp server.

The installation from hard disk starts fine, until I face a couple of problems: OpenOffice can't be installed because of missing jre1.3.x (dependancy error), and right after the installation program sais that it cannot mount /dev/hdb1 to /mnt/windows/D.

First, I decided to risk it and started installing the upgrade despite of the warnings, and ended up with a totally corrupted suse & GRUB. I had no choice but to do the ever so handy fdisk/mbr, boot up to W2K and erase the linux partition.

This time I first installed Mandrake 9.1 (which btw fit into the system quite painlessly) and now I want to install the suse 8.2 beside the Mandrake. And so I face again the mount problem with hdb1 i.e. the very same partition that has the installation folder.

OpenOffice installation problem is also quite interesting: so far I havn't been able to locate any jre1.3.x -files on any suse ftp-mirrors. I wonder why SuSE wouldn't include this file in the ftp distro, since (according to some other forums) the installation CD's include jre1.4.x ...

Help, anyone???

I have done the 8.2 HD install a few times now without major problems. The two issues you mention were exctly the same here ( assuming the suse files are on /windows/D ). This is, as far as I can tell a bug in the install routine.( possibly intentional to deter the casual leach ) you can safely ignore this. Just remember to change the software installation source from with in Yast after you have a running system or you will not be able to add other software from the installation files. I delete the source offered by yast and add another by browsing to the directory containing all of the suse files.
As for the jre-1.3 SuSE don't include it in the FTP install 'coz it's not GPL'ed. Personally I just copy it over from an older SuSE DVD but you can get it fron Sun's website.
Finally when you get to the partioning stage be shure to select 'base on current settings' this will give you a head start by not having to redo all of the existing partions and yet sill allow you to easily partition your remaining 10G.