LinuxQuestions.org
Welcome to the most active Linux Forum on the web.
Go Back   LinuxQuestions.org > Forums > Linux Forums > Linux - Distributions > Mandriva > Conectiva
User Name
Password
Conectiva This forum is for the discussion of Conectiva Linux.

Notices


Reply
  Search this Thread
Old 03-07-2004, 03:30 AM   #1
Cintra
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: Feb 2004
Location: Norway
Distribution: SuSE 9.1, Knoppix/Debian, Gentoo 2.6.10-rc2
Posts: 11

Rep: Reputation: 0
Pre-install partition needs


Hei

I have a two disk system. The first (60GB) has XP installed and 12GB free space, which I thought would be OK for trying Conectiva 10 beta1. The other (120GB) has a couple of versions of Knoppix installed, and lots of free space.

The 10 beta1 interactive installation starts OK, I select English, Norwegian keyboard, etc, and eventually reach the partition section.. Conectiva will not accept/use my 12GB free space!

My question is, should I partition the 12GB first, or should Conectiva handle it? If I must partition first, is it enough to make one ext3 partition and a linux swap partition?

Help appreciated..

Regards
 
Old 03-07-2004, 06:53 AM   #2
motub
Senior Member
 
Registered: Sep 2003
Location: The Netherlands
Distribution: Gentoo (main); SuSE 9.3 (fallback)
Posts: 1,607

Rep: Reputation: 46
When you say, "12GB free space", do you mean that the 60GB drive consists of a 48GB partition and has either 12GB unpartitioned space, or an "extra" 12GB partition that you intend to reformat to a Linux filesystem (which is what you want), or that the drive has one 60 GB partition of which only 48GB is actually used (which is not helpful in this situation)?

I doubt that Connectiva can resize an NTFS partition (the native filesystem of Windows XP) for you (very few Linux distributions can do this). So you need to make the so-called "free space" into real free space yourself. This is best anyway, if you intend to resize a Windows partition, as that way you can defrag it first.

Ultimately what you want to do is resize the 60GB partition that I suspect you have, into a 48GB partition and leave the 12GB of unpartitioned space after it. You may be able to do this via Windows itself (Administrative Tools=>Computer Management=>Disk Management), and can definitely do it via third party tools such as Partition Magic or any other partitioning program you may have.

Then when you restart the Connectiva install, it will recognize that free space and do its thing.

Hope this helps.
 
Old 03-07-2004, 07:13 AM   #3
Cintra
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: Feb 2004
Location: Norway
Distribution: SuSE 9.1, Knoppix/Debian, Gentoo 2.6.10-rc2
Posts: 11

Original Poster
Rep: Reputation: 0
Quote:
Originally posted by motub
When you say, "12GB free space", do you mean that the 60GB drive consists of a 48GB partition and has either 12GB unpartitioned space, or an "extra" 12GB partition that you intend to reformat to a Linux filesystem (which is what you want), or that the drive has one 60 GB partition of which only 48GB is actually used (which is not helpful in this situation)?

I doubt that Connectiva can resize an NTFS partition (the native filesystem of Windows XP) for you (very few Linux distributions can do this). So you need to make the so-called "free space" into real free space yourself. This is best anyway, if you intend to resize a Windows partition, as that way you can defrag it first.

Ultimately what you want to do is resize the 60GB partition that I suspect you have, into a 48GB partition and leave the 12GB of unpartitioned space after it. You may be able to do this via Windows itself (Administrative Tools=>Computer Management=>Disk Management), and can definitely do it via third party tools such as Partition Magic or any other partitioning program you may have.

Then when you restart the Connectiva install, it will recognize that free space and do its thing.

Hope this helps.
Thanks for your reply.. I tried the 12GB as pure free space, and as ext3 partitioned, both without luck. Once I got to the partitioning section of the install process, pointed at hda7 as the partition to use, I got a message "you must create a boot partition first". After some head scratching and looking at the various options in front of me I tried the Edit button, selected / and away it went.

I was able to complete a most impressive installation process. Made my boot floppy (luckily, as my XP boot manager - OS Selector - didn't find Conectiva), and in a very optimistic mood rebooted...

I wish I could say I was sitting here enjoying what I know is going to be a great experience, but reboot took me quickly to "Kernel panic: VFS: unable to mount root fs on hda7".

Should I have chosen /boot instead of / in the partition Edit section above? If you have any ideas I will happily try them..

regards
 
Old 03-07-2004, 08:17 AM   #4
motub
Senior Member
 
Registered: Sep 2003
Location: The Netherlands
Distribution: Gentoo (main); SuSE 9.3 (fallback)
Posts: 1,607

Rep: Reputation: 46
It would seem that Connectiva's installer does not have the facility to automatically make the necessary partitions for you like some others. Normally, saying "use this space" would enable the installer to repartition the space as necessary-- otherwise you are taken to a partition tool such as fdisk or cfdisk to do the partitioning yourself. In that case, it's possible that you have not used that tool correctly, or at all.

What I also find odd is that the distro seems to require a separate boot partition-- most cases I've seen, if you don't make one the /boot folder will be put in the / (root) tree and that is not a problem.

So annoying as this is, I'm going to suggest that you repartition the 12GB into 3 partitions, by whatever means:

10 or 15MB partition to use for /boot (formatted as linux (ext2), filetype 83)

512MB partition to use for /swap (formatted as linux swap, filetype 82)

the rest for the / partition (formatted as linux (ext2), filetype 83)

Then run the install again, selecting each of the partitions to be mounted and initialized for the appropriate function/mount point.

It is also possible that your bootloader is improperly configured, but fixing that is even more complex than just reformatting and starting over, since you haven't got anything on the Connectiva system anyway.

It it would help, here are a couple of links discussing partitioning issues under Linux:

Linux: Partitioning with fdisk - Linux Partition

Linux+Win9x+Grub HOWTO.

Hope this helps.
 
Old 03-07-2004, 10:06 AM   #5
Cintra
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: Feb 2004
Location: Norway
Distribution: SuSE 9.1, Knoppix/Debian, Gentoo 2.6.10-rc2
Posts: 11

Original Poster
Rep: Reputation: 0
Thanks again motub for your reply..

Unfortunately, after three apparently successful installations using your partition suggestions, the end result is the same.

After reboot it gets as far as noticing my mobo has an (unused) Raid controller and gives the Kernel panic error, mentioned above.

Think I'll give it a rest today, but will probably free up some space on the 2nd (knoppix) disk and try Conectiva there.

btw, the ext2 partitions I'm using are at the end of the 60GB 1st disk. Perhaps that is relevant..?

Regards
 
Old 03-07-2004, 11:34 AM   #6
Cintra
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: Feb 2004
Location: Norway
Distribution: SuSE 9.1, Knoppix/Debian, Gentoo 2.6.10-rc2
Posts: 11

Original Poster
Rep: Reputation: 0
Further to my last post, results were exactly the same on my 2nd disk..

Guess I'll have to try a future release.

Bye until then
 
Old 03-07-2004, 12:16 PM   #7
motub
Senior Member
 
Registered: Sep 2003
Location: The Netherlands
Distribution: Gentoo (main); SuSE 9.3 (fallback)
Posts: 1,607

Rep: Reputation: 46
If you're not using the RAID controller, perhaps you could disable it in the BIOS. No point in making the kernel search for modules for unused hardware, and RAID support may not be compiled into your kernel in the first place, which would be one explanation of why it hangs.
 
Old 03-07-2004, 01:04 PM   #8
Cintra
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: Feb 2004
Location: Norway
Distribution: SuSE 9.1, Knoppix/Debian, Gentoo 2.6.10-rc2
Posts: 11

Original Poster
Rep: Reputation: 0
Quote:
Originally posted by motub
If you're not using the RAID controller, perhaps you could disable it in the BIOS. No point in making the kernel search for modules for unused hardware, and RAID support may not be compiled into your kernel in the first place, which would be one explanation of why it hangs.
I wish I could do more, but RAID on my Asus P4PE board IS disabled in the BIOS - Linux installers all seem to check for RAID devices regardless.

btw I do have a syslog from the above troubles, which I found in the MI folder, in case anyone at Conectiva is interested in looking at it?

I believe its early days yet ref sorting out new kernel problems. Another 2.6 distro I tried today, loaded OK, but had numerous errors when trying to use various apps.

Hopefully Knoppix 3.4 will have sorted most of them out when its released in the near future :-)
 
Old 03-26-2004, 01:47 PM   #9
Outabux
Member
 
Registered: Apr 2003
Location: Greenwood Mississippi
Distribution: Debian.
Posts: 241

Rep: Reputation: 30
keep me in touch, knoppix 3.4 doing same thing...gotta be ludicrous that this is to blame, the /boot and root thing...nahh

installer basically same for 3.3 which ive installed over and over. Are you using 2.6 kernel; if you are, then indeed we have the same issue. Even tried overclockix 3.4...same thing...something not there for 2.6

then tried to boot into old kernel, linuxOLD...same thing...that's 2.4.X kernel...anyway keep me in touch for i need to understand why me from scratch debian system at 2.6 gives both my ethernets the same irq...screws up networking and gives me that spurious 8259 irq message

my 2.4.18 doesnt do that nor knoppix 3.3 or 3.4 in live cd...mmmm.

oh well
thanx again
 
Old 04-07-2004, 06:16 AM   #10
Cintra
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: Feb 2004
Location: Norway
Distribution: SuSE 9.1, Knoppix/Debian, Gentoo 2.6.10-rc2
Posts: 11

Original Poster
Rep: Reputation: 0
Conectiva 10 beta2 loaded OK

Well, this time I did manage to install Beta2 OK, a couple of snags though..

First, although my isdn (HFC-PCI) card is seen OK ref /proc/pci - isdn is not loaded when booting.

Could this be because I selected 'No Network' during installation, thinking this referred to local network rather than Internet?

Would I need to do a complete new install to add Network or is it possible to do it more simply?

Another thing I have never seen before - when I looked at /proc/pci my isdn card has a 3-digit IRQ, rather than the usual IRQ9... is this normal with the 2.6 kernel??

Otherwise, I blew the MRB, and am writing this with the aid of Knoppix, so its back to solving that this Easter! :-)

Hopefully someone can give me an answer to the above..

Have a nice Easter
 
Old 04-07-2004, 06:47 AM   #11
Outabux
Member
 
Registered: Apr 2003
Location: Greenwood Mississippi
Distribution: Debian.
Posts: 241

Rep: Reputation: 30
My irq mistake was not configuring isa and simply checking the isa pnp in my kernel configuration. Stuff works now without dropping ethernet and other stuff. Tried lspci -v and noticed there was and isa bridge on board...believe to control or allow interrupt assignment. Whew!

Still no luck with knoppix3.4 or overclockix 3.4, dont care...debian's up w/ apt-get. A lil buggy with Sid here and there but have been able to track all problems down with exception of kde3.2 not adding debian menu items, and update-menus has no effect.

What's an MRB? Not familiar with Conn...
Anyway if you mean the mbr, use knoppix (havent myself) to replace the loader. I use straight debian woody r1 to do it when i replace partitions with ghosted images. All my OS's including multiple windows xp are added to their own partitions with their respective nt loader or lilo in the /root partition. It much easier to fix. Also bootmagic handles the grand loading though not necessary once you get the loader down.

At this point doing more than experimenting and have progressed to get rid of it, but as long as windows around, much easier to make changes too. Only use the lilo stuff and grub for boot splashing and letting me select different kernels (have a dockable laptop whose station has scsi). Anyway I know this doesnt help, but it lets me keep seeing this thread if something neat or informative comes around.
 
Old 04-07-2004, 08:15 AM   #12
Cintra
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: Feb 2004
Location: Norway
Distribution: SuSE 9.1, Knoppix/Debian, Gentoo 2.6.10-rc2
Posts: 11

Original Poster
Rep: Reputation: 0
Hei Outabux

Right, I meant mbr.. have just this instant used mbrwiz to restore mbr.dat from 14th March on my XP disk. That found a hidden copy of OS Selector and got XP back on the air, phew!! Booting SuSE on the same disk is next on the list.

Grub gives error 17 but the info looks right to me. I do want SuSE back on the air, I spent 4 hours or more upgrading to KDE 3.2 yesterday evening, and it handles ISDN very well. Will probably make it my #1 Linux distro when 9.1 comes out...

In the mean time I hope to get an answer on installing network/isdn on Conectiva from someone, and hear if anyone knows the answer to the 3-digit IRQ question.

Happy Easter then
 
  


Reply


Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off



Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Pre install/partition questions Gibsnag Linux - Newbie 1 10-16-2005 07:05 PM
Recognizing Pre-Install Partition eightysixme Linux - Newbie 1 11-30-2003 08:08 PM
pre-install advice lachlan Linux - Software 2 07-19-2002 07:51 AM
Some more pre-install questions sluggo Linux - Newbie 2 01-19-2002 04:41 AM
pre-install jitters braincandy99 Linux - Newbie 9 12-16-2001 09:07 PM

LinuxQuestions.org > Forums > Linux Forums > Linux - Distributions > Mandriva > Conectiva

All times are GMT -5. The time now is 06:47 AM.

Main Menu
Advertisement
My LQ
Write for LQ
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute content, let us know.
Main Menu
Syndicate
RSS1  Latest Threads
RSS1  LQ News
Twitter: @linuxquestions
Open Source Consulting | Domain Registration