Linux Installation Nearing, but

paddler · #1 May 12th, 2004, 02:16 AM

I presently have 3 partitions on my HDD. C: is 20 gig and houses my Winxppro. E: drive is 15 gig and is formatted and empty. F: drive is 5 gig and is formatted and empty.
When I get to the point in the installation for the "Disk Partioning Set-up", will the Automatic Partition choice mess up my C: drive or will it know, or ask, to use my E: drive for the Linux installation. The other choice under "Disk Partitioning" is the Disk Druid. Would the Disk Druid be the way to do the drive partitioning so I don't affect my C: drive.
I bought RH Linux 9 and it came with a book for it. I've read thru the whole installation chapter and this seems to be the only point I don't understand.
Thanks for your help, Tony

twistedcranium · #2 May 12th, 2004, 03:00 AM

Hey there paddler!

Here is a thread where the installation is broken down in different terminology:
http://www.cybertechhelp.com/forums/...t=17969&page=2
and specifically there is a long detailed post by PostCode.

If we can assume that your 20Gig is the primary master drive, the 15Gig is the primary slave drive, and the 5 Gig is either the secondary master or secondary slave (depending on where the CDROM drive is), then you will want to think of your drives as

hda -> 20Gig (primary master)
hdb -> 15Gig (primary slave)
hdc -> CDROM Drive
hdd -> 5 Gig (secondary slave)

this is how linux will refer to your drives in order. Then when you go into the linux formatting stage during the install, you want to ensure that NOTHING is installed to hda as hda holds Windows XP. If you want, you can go through the install to the point just before you format anything, write down the drive structure that you see including the drive sizes and then post it all back here and we'll take a look at it for ya.

There are a couple of other threads in the linux forum where dual booting with Windows XP is discussed, you might want to check those out too.

twistedcranium · #3 May 12th, 2004, 03:01 AM

ah, one thing that I just thought of that would help tell what drives are what is to go into your system's bios setup and write down the details of the drives there, and I believe that it even goes as far as to tell you which is primary master and so on.

paddler · #4 May 13th, 2004, 01:36 AM

Thanks Twisted Cranium: I read the thread you linked me to. Very informative. I'll probably use the Disk Druid for the disk partitioning set-up.
I have one 40 gig hdd. And it is partitioned 20 gig, 15 gig, and 5 gig, roughly speaking. The CD-rom stayed as my D: drive for some reason. My next target date for MSIOL ( my successful installation of linux) is this weekend. Thanks again, paddler

twistedcranium · #5 May 13th, 2004, 04:40 AM

whoa! I just realized that you have one drive and three partitions. The naming convention that linux will use is the same but in this case will look like:

hda
---hda1 20gig
---hda2 15gig
---hda3 5gig

so be aware of that as you use Disk Druid to load linux. Ensure that it doesn't touch hda1

**Be very careful on this, you get the wrong one and your Windows partition is gone!**

twistedcranium · #6 May 13th, 2004, 04:44 AM

The key thing to keep in mind here is that you have ONE hard drive split into pieces. So linux will see one hard drive as HDA, and its pieces as HDA1, HDA2, HDA3, etc.
Originally I misinterpreted your setup to mean that you had three physical hard drives (hence hda, hdb, and hdd)

So Windows will likely show up in Disk Druid reported as hda1 and should match the size of 20GB

paddler · #7 May 15th, 2004, 11:12 PM

My Successful Installation Of Linux is done. It may not seem like a major accomplishment to some, but I am several playing fields below most you folks. I used the Custom Installation and Manually partioned with the Disk Druid. On the portion after " /boot " is typed in I ran into a problem and after a few tries realized that Disk Druid wasn't recognizing my 15 gig E: drive. So I highlighted the E: drive and deleted it. After that D/D recognized the free space and the rest was clear sailing. I'm just playing with it right now and am trying to set-up my e-mail account. My ISP doesn't know anything about setting up Linux so I'll have to go it alone. Except for you folks, none of my friends know anything about Linux.
I really want to thank Twisted Cranium for all your help and for the links to help portions. Thanks again, Paddler

twistedcranium · #8 May 17th, 2004, 03:22 AM

Glad to hear that you're now a fellow Penguin! Viva le Linux!