I've an HDD with a dual boot of XP and Mint Linux. It works well. I'd now like to add OpenSUSE 11.2 but if I accept auto partition it seems to want to overwrite the Mint partitions which I assume are sda5 and sda8. So how should I proceed with manual install as I have the following large number of existing partitions:

sda is 75 GB

sda1 37.5 GB C/Windows NTFS
sda2 3.6 GB IBM Diagnostic FAT
sda3 33.6 GB Extended
sda4 doesn't show any entry
sda5 8.3 Native Linux Ext4 / (Root) F
sda6 1.0 GB Swap
sda7 6.7 GB Linux Native Ext3
sda8 16.75 GB Linux Native /Home F
sda9 0.7 GB Swap


Should I resize sda3? can I use sda8 as /Home for both Mint and OpenSUSE?

Any advice would be welcome

First you should know the partitioning.

You had 75Gb Hard disk ..

The total disk is only one physical volume.
whenever you partitioning it, It is logically devided as 2 partitions.
"primary partition, extented partition".
so the extented partition is the logical group of all remaining drives , except your sda1.

Now you might understand that "extented partition is not exist"
sda3= sda5+ sda6 ..+sda9

sda6 & sda9 are labeled as swap. You don't require 2 swap partitions. I suggest you to use sda6 as swap for both Mint and opensuse. That can be used as cross swapping.

You can't use same root, home directories for MINT & openSuSE.

If you tell me freespace in each of volume, i can suggest you where you can install openSuSE.

Thanks for your prompt reply. I understand your tutorial on partitioning!

The free space appears to be:

sda1 37.5 GB C/Windows NTFS has Free Space of 25 GB
sda5 8.3 Native Linux Ext4 / (Root) F has Free Space of 4.9 GB
sda7 6.7 GB Linux Native Ext3 has Free Space of 6.0 GB
sda8 16.75 GB Linux Native /Home F has Free Space of 12.7 GB

How should I organise these?

Seems to be enough space in Windows C drive and Mint home drive.

since there is a large space in windows you can resize windows or you can resize mint home drive.

when you trying to install "it will prompt for overwriting existing linux partitions". don't accept. Go to Expert partitioning.

* If you want to install openSuSE in windows C drive 25 Gb free space, then select sda1, click on resize.
* You will get a slider to resize, keep 10GB or more.
* Click on create, put that 10Gb size to the "mount point /"
* click on sd6, select & edit it's mount point as swap. So that MINT & SuSE use same swap drive. which saves your harddisk space.( If are taken some care at the installation of windows, you can cross swap between windows also. Now in this situation may not possible.)
*Install

Very clearly explained. I will try that and see how it goes. If I have any problems I will post again.

I followed your instructions and resized sda1 to 20 GB then made a new partition of the 17 GB freed (formatted to ext4) however when I came to Mount as the root / (for OpenSuse) the request was refused because a / partition (for Mint Linux) already existed. I tried this again but used the excess space is sda8 (Mint /home) but again I was refused permission to mount the partition as / root. How do I proceed?

If So, do not mount Mint root.

SuSE saying that, It will mount Windows C, Windows D... etc etc.... It Will also mount /home of mint, But when coming to the Mint root drive, it is facing problem. Click on Mint root drive, do not mount it. If two root drives come, it may get conflicted so don't mount root drive.

I'll try again!

OpenSUSE is now booting from Grub along with XP. Is it possible to make Mint available from the same Grub menu (I know it uses grub2) now that it no longer has a / partition?

Yes it's possible, You can make grub even better.
first login into openSuSE.
open YAST -> system -> bootloader
click on Add -> chainloader section -> name it as Mint -> below you can add booting path as /dev/sda5 ( since mint root is on sda5 ).

save that configuration.

see this penguin theme available on openSUSE.

If you have problem to add manually, click on other & select "reread configuration from disk".