Fedora installation assist


Recommended Posts

Preface: total newbie an wanna learn!!!

I get thru the installation ok til the partitioning comes along.........

wanna dual boot XP and fedora

C has xp and data about 47gb (25 free) NTFS primary

H is 29gb fat32 and clean logical

when i go for auto partiton it says i dont have any free space

and when i diskdruid it wont do anything but format the partition i wanna use(H)as the root and then gives me a warning i need a swap partition.but wont let me put it on that drive....

dont say go back to windows.......i just dont wanna wipe everything out.

thanx for the help!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Delete your 29GB partition, and in it's place create 3 partitions. The first partition should be no bigger than 30MB, and should be mounted at /boot. The second partition should be about 500MB, and set to type 82 (Linux Swap). The third partition should take up the rest of the available space, and will be your root partition.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thank You Tek!!!

I'm d/l updates as I type......

the only prob is since I decided to install on the wifes' machine, when i chose DOS for Grub it chose the HP backup partition.........and not the XP pro install is there a way to fix this?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Delete your 29GB partition, and in it's place create 3 partitions. The first partition should be no bigger than 30MB, and should be mounted at /boot. The second partition should be about 500MB, and set to type 82 (Linux Swap). The third partition should take up the rest of the available space, and will be your root partition.

Does it matter which is first and last?

I have my /boot as the first 50Mb partition,

my /root partition is second and my Linux swap is last.

It seems to work OK but maybe I just got lucky.

After the /boot partition, is the sequence of the remaining partitions critical?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

no. you can place them however you like. even on seperate disks.

source: delete the fat32 some way, and choose to auto partition.

I already have it installed,but have no acces to XP.....how do i change the GRUB?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sorry to be slightly off topic here, but I'm just wondering what the advantage of having a seperate /boot partition is? I've always just used a partition for / and one for swap.

Thanks

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sorry to be slightly off topic here, but I'm just wondering what the advantage of having a seperate /boot partition is? I've always just used a partition for / and one for swap.

Thanks

Well, a) it's tradition, and b) the stuff in /boot is usually stuff that you don't mess with often, if at all, so having it on a separate partition that is not automatically mounted helps to keep that stuff safe from accidents.

As for using GRUB to boot windows, edit the /boot/grub/grub.conf or /boot/grub/menu.lst file and add an entry like so:

title=Windows XP
root=/dev/hdX
chainloader +1

Link to comment
Share on other sites

where x is the corresponding drive number...ok.......one other q and I'll get outta peeps hair......

if this doesnt work..can I reinstall Xp and still keep Fedora...or am i going to have to just start over from the beginning?

doesnt XP have to be installed first and then any Linux distro?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sorry to be slightly off topic here, but I'm just wondering what the advantage of having a seperate /boot partition is? I've always just used a partition for / and one for swap.

Thanks

The biggest advantage of having a separate /boot, is that you have a controlled amount of free space specifically for kernel boot images. This allows you to be unconcerned about how many files you put into /home or other directories. You can fill up your drive to capacity, and still ensure /boot is good and has room and remains available to boot from.

Not sure how often there are/can be problems with this, but back when drive space was small, it was more important to manage the minimum/maximum sizes of paritions in a sort of 'quota' system.

Some people also like to separate /home into a separate partition, as any disastrous problems requiring reinstalling can be done while leaving your /home alone. (I think Mandrake used to/still does this by default).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

,Apr 23 2004, 08:28] ok.......one other q and I'll get outta peeps hair......

if this doesnt work..can I reinstall Xp and still keep Fedora...or am i going to have to just start over from the beginning?

doesnt XP have to be installed first and then any Linux distro?

It doesn't have to be, but it is usually less of a problem.

If you have Fedora installed, and need to reinstall XP, make sure you can recover your GRUB (or you can try adding your Linux boot to your Windows boot manager at C:\boot.ini if you prefer).

When XP installs, don't have it format and reinstall, because I think it takes the whole drive over by default. There *may* be advanced options to just reformat your Windows parition(s) and leave the "unknown" Linux partitions untouched...

Also, when it installs XP, it will overwrite the MBR of your drive, completely hiding Linux, but not damaging it (other than removing the pointer to GRUB). Use your Fedora CD and redo GRUB (though I have never had to do this, it should be possible from the first CD).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well............

I found XP.....but it wiped out GRUB....fortunately i paid heed to the advice during startup and produced a bootdisk.....

and actually its easier this way....until i learn more tricks playing with this ...

again thank you all very much for all your help!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

BORKED!!

finally finished d/l my updates last nite......for Fedora that is, and went to turn on the box this am and what do ya know....."'x' is loading too fast wait five minutes"....15 minutes later i'm still waiting......

OK fine go into windows and see whats happening on Neowin and try later.......but just in case lemme see if i can just delete or format the linux partiton {worst case},however,.............my Partiton magic just reads the disc as BAD..doesnt show my C or D drives OR my Linux part????WTF.....is now a good time to panic???

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think I have seen this X problem before when I was loading multiple versions of Linux (different kernels and different distros) and had some mis-matches in my configs. If you edit your grub boot command (by cursoring on it and pressing "e"), you can add an "init 3" at the end, and it will force you into text mode on boot. Then you can poke around and see what is going on better.

And you can do an /sbin/fdisk -l (as root) to see what your hard drive is reporting for your partition table listing. Might be able to see some problems with that....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nothin doin....it wont even find GRUB..............figgered the next best thing was to reinstall........but when i attempt that i get boot magic error,reboot now

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.