Installing slack on an extended partition

Cotobear · 05-30-2009, 04:08 PM

Hi everyone,

Just looking for some advice about installing slackware on an extended partition. I'll be installing on a Lenovo Thinkpad T400 and dual booting with Vista.

The following is my current partition table with Vista/Lenovo on the first three partitions (NTFS).

Code:

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1         401     3030536    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2             402       10159    73770480    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3           15796       20673    36877680    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4           10160       15795    42608160    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5           10160       12262    15898648+  83  Linux
/dev/sda6           12263       15657    25666168+  83  Linux
/dev/sda7           15658       15795     1073428+  82  Linux Swap

As it is now, I'm limited to having just one other partition spot so I chose to make it an extended partition with sda5 holding "/" and sda6 holding "/home". I haven't read anything that said "/" had to lie on a primary partition so I hoped for good things with the installation.

After the installation completed, the usual choice for installing LILO popped up. I chose to install to the MBR for convenience. The installation seemed to take quite awhile longer than what I recall, however the process did complete without any noticeable complaints.

After restarting, it appears LILO did not write to the MBR since Windows booted up as normal without LILO presenting boot options. I'm assuming that this hiccup has been completely caused by my decision to have "/" on an extended partition.

I've already tried switching the boot flag from sda1 to sda5 and reinstalling the system, both with no luck.

Any ideas or advice would be greatly appreciated,
Coto

PS. That "Click here to find similar threads" is a nice new little tool. Well new to me anyway.

BobNutfield · 05-30-2009, 05:53 PM

I'm afraid I can't help you with any possible LILO problems because I have grub installed on the MBR to boot three distros, but I CAN tell you that Slack can be installed just fine to an extended partition. I have it installed on /sda7 (/) and /sda8 (home). But as I mentioned, I boot with GRUB and not LILO. I am guessing that LILO did not install properly to the MBR.

Cotobear · 05-30-2009, 06:47 PM

Thanks Bob.

This is good to know. I'll give LILO another try and if I can't get it, I'll give GRUB a try.

vonbiber · 05-31-2009, 06:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cotobear

Hi everyone,

Just looking for some advice about installing slackware on an extended partition. I'll be installing on a Lenovo Thinkpad T400 and dual booting with Vista.

The following is my current partition table with Vista/Lenovo on the first three partitions (NTFS).

Code:

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1         401     3030536    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2             402       10159    73770480    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3           15796       20673    36877680    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4           10160       15795    42608160    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5           10160       12262    15898648+  83  Linux
/dev/sda6           12263       15657    25666168+  83  Linux
/dev/sda7           15658       15795     1073428+  82  Linux Swap

As it is now, I'm limited to having just one other partition spot so I chose to make it an extended partition with sda5 holding "/" and sda6 holding "/home". I haven't read anything that said "/" had to lie on a primary partition so I hoped for good things with the installation.

After the installation completed, the usual choice for installing LILO popped up. I chose to install to the MBR for convenience. The installation seemed to take quite awhile longer than what I recall, however the process did complete without any noticeable complaints.

After restarting, it appears LILO did not write to the MBR since Windows booted up as normal without LILO presenting boot options. I'm assuming that this hiccup has been completely caused by my decision to have "/" on an extended partition.

I've already tried switching the boot flag from sda1 to sda5 and reinstalling the system, both with no luck.

Any ideas or advice would be greatly appreciated,
Coto

PS. That "Click here to find similar threads" is a nice new little tool. Well new to me anyway.

after installing linux in a new partition (you need to be root)
in the partition where you've installed lilo
1. edit the default lilo config file (usually /etc/lilo.conf) to
create an entry for that new system
then
2. run the command:
lilo

with grub it's much more simpler,
That's what I use. I installed it the first time
I installed slackware on my 3rd partition (/dev/sda3)
then I installed other linux systems in a couple other extended
partitions (/dev/sda7 and /dev/sda9)
I didn't install boot loaders there, as I had already one in /dev/sda3
All I needed to do is edit (on /dev/sda3) /boot/grub/menu.lst
to add a new entry
here's my grub entry for booting slackware on /dev/sda9:

title slackware 12.2 (/dev/sda9)
root (hd0,8)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda9 ro vga=791

you'll notice that grub's scheme for naming the devices
hd0,8
hd0 is for the first hard drive found (it can be ide, scsi, sata
but it's still named hd0)
8 is the 9th partition on that disk (grub start counting from 0,
the first partition would be hd0,0)

pixellany · 05-31-2009, 08:08 AM

This is probably what you meant, but.......

You cannot install anything on a extended partition. An extended partition is only the beginning of a linked list that leads to the logical partitions. It is thought of as a container, but does not physically behave as such.

Woodsman · 05-31-2009, 10:46 AM

Quote:

I haven't read anything that said "/" had to lie on a primary partition so I hoped for good things with the installation.

That's correct. As long as the boot loader can find the root partition, you can install a Linux-based OS in any primary or logical partition.

Quote:

I'll give GRUB a try.

Do know that GRUB is found in the extra tree.

I never have used LILO as my primary boot loader. I've been using GRUB for many years. To me, much easier to maintain. I also like the simple fact that GRUB is not limited to 15 characters for a boot description. If you have an older computer, you can still use a GRUB floppy disk as an emergency boot media.

AGer · 05-31-2009, 12:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cotobear

I've already tried switching the boot flag from sda1 to sda5 and reinstalling the system, both with no luck.

This sounds suspicious. The right place for LILO is neither sda5 nor asd1, it is just /dev/sda.

Cotobear · 05-31-2009, 01:33 PM

Thanks for the advice everyone.

I booted onto a live CD and reinstalled LILO. It seems to have worked.

AGer:
After doing some more reading, I guess the "boot flag/active partition" is more specific to Windows and GRUB/LILO don't necessarily require the partition to be active. I think what you were referring to is that LILO is installed to the MBR which isn't specific to any partition?

Pixellany:
Sorry for the slip up. Yes, I did mean a logical partition.

I think I may just try and get GRUB up and started. I do prefer it over LILO...

Thanks again,
Coto

AGer · 06-01-2009, 04:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cotobear

I think what you were referring to is that LILO is installed to the MBR which isn't specific to any partition?

MBR is disk specific - there is exactly one MBR per hard disk and it resides in the first sector. If you install LILO to any partition, like sda1 or sda5, the MBR is not modified. Since originally the Windows boot loader sits there, you will not see any changes on boot. The MBR is referenced as /dev/sda.

imciberrana43 · 06-01-2009, 05:24 AM

The answer to the question asked - "Where do you want to install lilo - mbr or root partition?" should have been install on root partition. All steps to complete lilo setup should have been followed to the letter. The last step prior to rebooting the system is running Linux's fdisk and moving the active boot flag from the windows partition to the Linux root partition writing that infomation in fdisk upon closure.

bgeddy · 06-01-2009, 06:08 AM

Quote:

The answer to the question asked - "Where do you want to install lilo - mbr or root partition?" should have been install on root partition.

I'm afraid I have to disagree with this advice. I have always found it far easier to install the bootloader (lilo/grub) to the MBR with suitable entries to multiboot my OS's. This saves messing around with boot flags and has always worked fine for me.

The other option is toggling boot flags to select which OS to reboot to which is a bit of a pain and obviously more work than just selecting which OS to boot to at boot time from the menu.

I have read that my solution can give problems with NT's boot loader, (although I haven't tried multi booting to NT,) but it definitely works with a multi Linux/XP/Vista/BSD multiboot system.

Cotobear · 06-02-2009, 12:46 AM

I agree with bgeddy. I find it an easy way out to install LILO to the MBR and add an entry for Vista in LILO. This is what I've done with this current installation and it seems rather easier to work with.

If for whatever reason I require a Vista only computer again, the Vista recovery disk allows you to reinstall its boot loader to the MBR.

I suppose however that if I wanted to continue using the windows boot loader that I would take a different root, but it sounds like too much fuss to me.

chexmix · 06-02-2009, 09:48 AM

Glad this worked out ...

I too always install LILO to the MBR rather than to the root partition ... but I too am using GRUB these days, since LILO seems to have issues with more than one Linux (e.g. two Linuxes on logical partitions within an extended partition).

Something to think about if you decided to go with more than one distro (I hop around a lot myself).