Choosing the mount points
 

I am trying to install Mandriva on my second IDE drive keeping Windows on the main c drive. A previous attempt with Fedora was unsuccessful though is probably still there. The dual boot setup never appeared!

When trying to install Mandriva the screen requesting mount points requests two responses. The first is hdb1(101MB,ext3) and the second is VolGroup00/Logvol00(14GB,/,ext3). The options offered are very similar, along thelines /, /boot, /homt, /mnt/windows, ..... In order to move forward I need to know, and later to understand, what selections to make.

Help would be appreciated.

Haven't done Mandriva but from what you wrote it appears its giving you an option to do standard hard drive partitioning OR Logical volumes.

Standard hard drive paritions are limited in number and your filesystems (/, /home, etc...) will reside on a single disk. hdb1 is your hard drive.

Logical Volume Manager(LVM) allows you to add multiple disks to a single volume group (VG) then split it into many logical volumes (LVs). VolGroup00 would be your VG and Logvol00 would be your LV.

Basically its the difference between a physical view and a virtual view with the latter having more functionality and expandibility.

If it gave me the option at install I'd probably opt for VG/LV because that's what I'm used to from HP-UX. However most Linux folks don't seem to use LVM so you may want to use the hard drive option instead just so your future questions can be addressed by a wider auidience. If you never intend to add another drive and the limited number of partitions is OK with you doing the hard drive is the simpler option.

Thank you Nero, that is a good start towards my understanding of the options and how I might continue.

KT

lol - My name isn't Nero - he's the person (fictional character actually) that I'm quoting. He and his assistant Archie Goodwin appear in the dozens of books by author, Rex Stout. A couple of years ago A&T TV Network produced a series from the books.

Anyway glad I could help.

hi,

I did quite a lot of mandriva installations lately but I do not really understand your question I am afraid.. as I understand it, you have two drives: one C drive with windows and one other drive you want to install mandriva on? in that case I think I can help you... I just will anyway to possibly help a future reader :)

I assume you know how the file system works ( / being root and the other drives or partitions being mounted under it like in /home and /usr on a different drive for example) ?

when installing mandriva I always use the custom disk partitioning option (dont trust the other ones).

I get a window with as much tabs as I have drives, and then information about those drives.

so in your case, you should switch to the second tab, there being a lot of red (since you installed fedore and probably used a ext3 which diskdrake displays as red) contrary to the first tab where you will find your windows all in blue (color of ntfs)

in case you want to delete your whole drive (hope so) you just click all those different sections on that second tab and click delete delete delete. then you have an all empty section. then its up to you; how do you want your drive? it is generally a good idea to mount at least /home differently (I never did and payed the price). so lets assume you are going to do a nice installation, a lot of rpms and useless desktop environments like GNOME (no just kidding) you would probably want around 5 GB to be safe (after a clean install I came down to 3, but I rarely install new apps for more than 1 GB worth all together... never did actually). then you make a swap partition, twice your ram is a good idea (and a practical minimum too). and then you create your third parition which takes up all the remaining space (I assume?) and you mount it under /home. and then ye be happy. I always use ext3 as the filesystem thinggy because it's the default, but others might tell you that is a bad idea or something. I really do not know.

you might want to switch to advanced view if you cannot do something I described; I always forget what you can and cant do in normal mode. then its the 'next' button, write the partition table to disk and voila. he'll want to format some partitions, which he will do without a progress bar (shame shame!!!) so even if your computer appears to be stuck, he is still working. I had to wait several hours for two 200 drives to be done. (and no progress bar... *snif* so frustrating :( ). I dont know what 'check bad blocks' means, but I guess it means he will check for bad blocks... whatever he might do with them once he finds them is not known to me o.o .

hope this helps
(really do, or I will have been doing all of this for nothing :P )

-b^4

ps: if you can it is generally also a good idea to put the swap partition on a different drive (really a different logical drive)... guess thats pretty self explanatory ?

Mount points
 

Thank you Nero, I shall look for a book!

Also thanks to -b^4 (presumably b <=0!) which provides further insight and understanding. I will give it another go.

KT