I have Debian 7.0 on a single partition and my computer boots through grub right into Debian on that partition.
openSUSE seems to ignore Debian on it's suggested partitions when I use the iso disk.
How do I set up a dual boot Debian (already on a 350 G partition) with openSUSE (on a 250 G partition from 1 TB unallocated) [this leaves me 750 G unallocated for other projects]

note: let me know if you think I should move this to the newbie thread

You don't have to accept the suggested partitions - you can partition manually when installing OpenSUSE. Click 'Edit Partition Setup' on the partitioning screen and set it up as you want.

If Debian isn't added automatically to the boot menu, run update-grub (as root) in OpenSUSE. It should detect Debian and add it to the boot menu.

You will need to update grub in OpenSUSE every time the Debian kernel changes. You can avoid this by chain booting - post back if you want more info.

Here, I messed up my Debian install playing with the openSUSE settings to manually install ...I started over with a fresh Debian install here is my hard drive:
Disk /dev/sda: 1500.3 GB, 1500301910016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 182401 cylinders, total 2930277168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000f1f36

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 2889455615 1444726784 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 2889457662 2930276351 20409345 5 Extended
Partition 2 does not start on physical sector boundary.
/dev/sda5 2889457664 2930276351 20409344 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Why Debian suggested a 20 GB swap !? but I went along with it.
How do I learn to put OpenSUSE on here with Debian the "right" way?

How much RAM have you got? Advice used to be to have swap of twice your RAM, which is probably too much with the memory sizes these days (but with a 1.5TB disc, 20GB isn't very much to lose).

You seem to have a primary partition (sda1) and an extended partition (sda2), which contains just your swap as a logical partition (sda5). Do you understand the difference between primary, extended and logical partitions and how they relate (apologies if you do)? If not post back and I will suggest a partitioning plan.

Please post the output from
To be honest, I'd be inclined to plan your partitioning in advance, back up any data to be on the safe side then use the OpenSUSE partition editor manual option to delete everything except your Debian partition (sda1), and start again.

I only know a little. I am currently reading http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Multiple_OS_Installation because it looks like I need to do what you called chain booting and the ubuntuguide I think calls chain loading. I think there is some kind of limit of 4 and my eventual goal is space for 7 or 8 operating systems (I know I could use virtual box) for the sake of learning. Linux From Scratch and Gentoo will eventually be on this drive as 2 of those ... and to learn about security Back Track will be on another etc.
For now I merely want to successfully dual boot Debian and openSUSE.
dF -hT :

A disc can have up to four primary partitions, numbered sda1 to sda4 for the first disc in a PC (you might see hda on old machines). If you need more partitions, one of the four can be an extended partition, which does not hold data directly, but contains logical partitions. These are numbered from sda5 upwards, regardless of the number of primary partitions. It does not matter whether an operating system is in a primary or a logical partition.

On your PC, sda1 is a primary partition, sda2 extended and sda5 logical. It looks as if Debian has used the whole of the drive - the only ext4 partition is 1.4TB.

You have two options. One is to start again and reinstall everything, the other is to use the OpenSUSE partitioner to resize sda1. Debian is probably not a good choice for a first installation - OpenSUSE's installer is likely to be much more user friendly. If you do decide to start again, I would suggest installing OpenSUSE first. When you later install Debian, put Grub into the Debian root partition rather than the Master Boot record, then run update-grub as root in OpenSUSE.

To install OpenSUSE and keep the existing Debian installation:

Back up your data (just in case something goes wrong - you are going to resize the partition).
Boot from the OpenSUSE disc.
If the Suggested Partitioning screen appears, click Custom Partitioning.

You should now have a screen headed Expert Partitioner.

Right click on /dev/sda1 and select resize.
Click Custom Size and change the size to 350 GB or whatever you want.
Click OK. The resize will now be done - it might take a while.

Right click on /dev/sda5 and select delete. Click Yes.
Right click on /dev/sda2 and select delete. Click Yes.

Right click on /dev/sda and select Add Partition.
Click on Extended Partion.
Click Next.
Select Maximum Size (it should already be selected).
Click Finish.

Right click /dev/sda and select Add Partion.
Change the size to 250 GB or whatever you want.
Leave the file type as Ext4 and the mount point as /
Click Finish.

Right click /dev/sda and select Add Partition.
Change the size to whatever you want swap to be.
Click Next
Change Ext4 to Swap (drop down list).
Click Finish.

You should now have the following:
sda1 - Primary partition 350 GB.
sda2 - Extended partiton containing:
sda5 - Logical partition 250 GB
sda6 - Swap
a lot of free space.

Click Accept.
The partitioning plan you have just created will now be displayed - check it is what you want, especially the ones in red.
Click Next.

Continue with the install.

Any partitions you create in future will have to be logical.

Good luck

1 members found this post helpful.

I am going to put openSUSE first because you suggested it. I will mark this thread solved and work on a better drive organization ... I printed your second option suggestion though. When I am done, if I run into an issue switching things around then I'll start a new thread and mark this solved. Thank you!

Glad to help. The partitioner's suggested scheme will probably want to use the whole disc, so you may need to use custom partitioning. Post back if you need more information on chain booting.

First tried openSUSE straight and got errors followed by a "no operating system" on reload. Then used Parted Magic and wrote 0's on the hard drive in case the hard disk setup was messing up SUSE. Tried openSUSE again and decided that the iso may be corrupted. So, Mint is supposed to be user friendly ... went to another computer, downloaded Mint, burned the iso, attempted an install ... ran into problems. Fed up, reloaded Debian from my iso disk ...voila! No problem ... installed the way it should. Went to Parted Magic, resized Debians partition decisions, extended the extended ... left about 200 GB raw for another primary, and finished with:
and for disk usage:
openSUSE wasn't clear to me but GPARTED in Parted Magic was soooo easy to set up the partition scheme. Next is to download an iso and VERIFY that I have a good iso before anything else. Is this partition scheme adequate?

Looks OK except that there seems to be a gap between sda1 and sda2. Is this for future use? You can put up to two more primary partitions in there. In case you don't already know, you don't need any more swap partitions - all distros can use the same one.
You mentioned VirtualBox - it can be useful to use it to try out partitioning without the risk of messing anything important up.

The gap is either for an operating system that I later become interested in or for a future LFS build if the logical ends up being a problem for a linux from scratch project ... there's still a lot I don't know so I want to keep my options open.

CHAIN BOOTING: More information would be nice. Do I need to plan space at the beginning of the logical partition if I used chain booting for operating systems on the logical partition?

note:
There is a discussion on chainloading on the Newbie Forum ... someone needs to write a good article on this, I think.

There is a tutorial on this (see Tutorials link at the top) but it refers to legacy Grub, which few distros use now (the only one I know of is Mageia). I might write one when I get time, but briefly when you install a distro you get the option to install the boot loader either to the master boot record (the default) or the root partition of the distro. If you put it in the root partition it can be chain booted by another boot loader - usually the one in the master boot record.

To do this, boot into the distro whose boot loader is in the master boot record, and as root add the following lines to /etc/grub.d/40_custom. Change it as appropriate for your distro, disc and partition - (hd0,5) is the disc and partition number. Discs are numbered from 0, partitions from 1, so (hd0,5) refers to the first disc, partition 5. This must be the same in both lines. Whatever is between the double quotes will appear on the boot menu screen.

You can add as many chain loader entries as you want.

After editing the file, run the following as root
The new entries will be at the bottom of your boot menu. On some distros you may need to scroll down to see them.