Installing SuSE Pro 9.1 along side XP

[moo113]

At the moment I have a 160GB HD and am running XP. I've partitioned (10GB and 150GB) it with Partition Magic 8.0 and I'm wanting to install Pro 9.1 onto that partition.

I have the dvd-rom and have booted off of it but when it comes to the installation I'm stuck. As it looks to me it's trying to install it over my XP install on my first parition. Being the complete newbie that I am I'm not sure what to do.

How do I install it onto my partition and are there any other steps I need to take to get this to work?

[stevewabc]

After booting into suse9.1 you will come to the Installation Settings it is here were you need to click on Partitioning then in Suggested Partitioning pick Create custom partition setup next screen pick Custom Partition -- for Experts then click next(Partitioner) it is in here were you will setup you partitons to mount your other partitions high lite the partion then click Expert.. at the bottom right corner then click Reread partition table..

Now for setup loading you need to high light the one you wish to load suse on to the set it up as /boot 100 - / 6g thats me no less then 4g - /home = the rest of partition other then /swap= double your ram size(if ram is 1g swap can = 512)

:D hope that helps

[nko]

Welcome to the community!

First, how certain are you that XP is still on the first partition? You probably know this, but in XP, if you go Control Panel > Administrative Tasks (or whatever it's called... it's got a screw driver and a hammer). In there, you can use a disk management utility to determine the exact layout of the disk partitions.

In Linux, the first partition of the primary disk is /dev/hda1. The second partition is /dev/hda2, and so on. After making sure XP is on the first partition (/dev/hda1, according to SUSE, and I don't see any reason why it wouldn't, but you can never be too careful), you can safely install SUSE.

With Linux, partitioning works a little differently. All of your stuff can be on one big partition, and that's perfectly fine for most uses. Note, though, that most advanced users make several partitions across which to spread their files. I'm just mentioning this in case you read some documentation somewhere that talks about having a bunch of different partitions, so it isn't utterly confusing.

You'll need to format the SUSE partition before using it. I'm pretty sure SUSE can do this for you. Just dole out some space for Linux, and YaST (SUSE installer) will do the rest.

Not sure how much this helps... but if it helps define a more specific question, we're half way there!

[frimann]

Another way is to deleate the partition with partition magic you want to use for suse and leave it that way.
Start the install and when it comes to partition suse offers to use "unallocated/unused" space to install to, and use that and let suse do the default partition scheme.

[moo113]

Am I hearing right that YaST can partition and format your drive for you? Because I've gotten rid of that partition and just have my standard drive set-up and only one partition.

[moo113]

Am I hearing right that YaST can partition and format your drive for you? Because I've gotten rid of that partition and just have my standard drive set-up and only one partition.

What would be the step-by-step procedure of setting this up?

[nko]

What file system does your XP install use?

You'd be best off freeing up some space using partition magic, especially if XP is on an NTFS filesystem. Once there's free space, YaST can indeed take care of the rest.

[frimann]

The suse 9.1 install is very user friendly. It will pick up unformatted/unused space on the hd and leave windows alone.
I allways try to remember the sise of the windows partition to be sure averything is as it should.
but the process is pretty failsave.
The windows partition usually "hda1" will be added to the bootloader for you so you can chouse suse or windows when the computer boots up.

But it is always vise to take backups.

[moo113]

Okay so I'm supposed to make a partition for SuSE but in what file system type?

How big should I make it? Should I make more than one? And after I get through the install, will my wireless card work on suse (Linksys WMP54G PCI)?

[nko]

SUSE will probably be able to just set good defaults for you. However, if you were to set things up manually, I'd go with a 10GB (at least) ext3 partition.

[moo113]

SuSE will do it for me? And you're sure it won't run over my XP install?

[nko]

If you elect to use free space, it wont overwrite anything.

Make sure beforehand that there's freespace, though!

[saikee]

I run XP and have Suse 9.1 pro too, among a few others Linux.

Yes you have to allow Suse's bootloader, usually Grub, to take over the MBR or the boot sector of XP. This is because you need to do more work if you let XP to manage Linux whereas every Linux I know will boot XP by default when it is installed, usually without you raising a finger.

A Linux doesn't run over XP. None of my 16 distro does and they are all in the same hard drive with XP. The important thing is you can always revert back to XP only environment using either XP installation disk or just a bootable DOS floppy with fdisk.exe inside.

If you are nervous you can always choose to boot Suse by a floppy initially. When you gain more confidence we can tell you how to put Grub into the MBR. It is just one line of command in Suse.

The standard file type Suse is Riserf. My installed Suse 9.1 pro is only 2.43Gb. It is contained in one single partition of 10Gb.

I endose nko and frimann advices too. Personally I use one partition for one Linux and one swap common for them all.

[moo113]

I'm pretty sure that 125gigs is enough free space.

But how large would you think that YaST would make the partiton for? I don't want to use more than 20 gigs.

And I think I would prefer to for XP to have the MBR, I want XP to load everytime I boot.

[nko]

GRUB, the bootloader software that comes with SUSE Linux, allows you to boot both Windows & Linux. Normally, it'll bring up a menu when you boot, and after a certain amount of time, it'll boot the first OS on its list (which you can make XP if you like). For now, as long as you've got a floppy drive, it's perfectly fine to boot SUSE only off floppy, but if you lack a floppy drive, or you'd like to simply choose which OS to load, I'm sure SUSE lets you configure boot loader options during the install (corret me if I'm wrong, SUSE users!).

It's worth noting, as trivia, that if you were dual booting with DOS, you could actually load Linux from DOS itself by running a command in DOS. This is the only time I can think of where you can launch an OS from inside an OS unless it's emulation (except Mac-On-Linux, or an expensive IBM server!).

[saikee]

moo113,

The size of the partition is dictated by you. Yast just carries out your instruction. I repeat my installed Suse 9.1 is only 2.43 Gb large and you won't be able to make it much bigger unless you stuff it with non-Linux data. You can let Yast to format 120Gb but it is much harder to get it back because resizing a Linux partition is not as easy as in Windows.

I always keep my data separated from any operating system. My Linux distros typically reside in either 5 or 10 Gb partitions. I chopped up my 200Gb hard drive in 28 partitions.

Linux's bootloaders, Grub and Lilo, are designed to be multi-boot from the start. During installation a Linux bootloader will serach each partition's first track, which is reserved and not used by any operating system, and include that partition for booting if a bootloader is detected.

Most new users of Linux think they would lose Window bootloader if they allow a Linux bootlaoder to manage booting. This is just igorance because NTbootloader is so inferior that a Window user never has the experience of what a good bootloader can be.

Basically people lose an operating system because it becomes unbootable. The system is never lost or damaged. People just don't know where its bootloader is and how to restore it.

Every Linux bootloader can include Xp as a booting choice and allow it as the default system to be booted automatically within the specified seconds when the user doesn't intervene. I have a Grub menu that boots 16 Linux plus 3 XPs. You don't know what you are missing by sticking with XP's NTbootloader.

[moo113]

Alright, I think I understand it now. But do you want me to make my own partitions or just let YaST do it for me? And how many partitions should I make and what sizes exactly?

[nko]

It really doesn't matter, as long as they're not tiny. Again, I'd go with a 10 gig partition. Hey, you might as well use up the whole rest of your drive. Just one big partition.

Here's something else to consider, though; unless you've got a lot of RAM, you'll want a swap partition. In Windows, you have a page file, which is a big file that acts like RAM, except it's on your hard disk. It's used instead of RAM if you run out of RAM. It's a lot slower, but hey, it's better than having your system crash due to low memory.

In Linux, this "page file" is actually its own partition, called the "swap" partition. It is of type "Linux Swap." The reason you'd want it on its own partition is simple; speed. In Windows, the page file is slowed down because, since it's one big file, it often gets fragmented. You've probably seen how defragmenting your disk can speed things up. The page file is often one of the culprits for making Windows need to be defragged. This isn't the time or place to go in to detail as to why, but suffice it to say that it causes fragmentation.

In Linux, an entire partition, with its own partition type, is dedicated to this function. It's a good deal faster and cleaner than the Windows Way of doing things.

That said, if you don't have at the VERY least half a gig of RAM, I'd make two new partitions; a 10 gig ext3 (or Reiser, just as good) partition (/dev/hda2), and a 1 gig (to be generous) partition of type Linux Swap (/dev/hda3).

This way, you'll still have lots of disk space available, and you can turn /dev/hda4 in to an extended partition, so you can have unlimited partitions living in the rest of your hard drive.

Thanks for being so patient with all this new stuff you have to learn. Rest assured, it gets a LOT easier with practice!

[moo113]

Okay, so I want a 10gig partition for SuSE and another 1 gig swap partition, I understand this. But would it be better/easyier to do it with Partition Magic or let YaST do it?

And I should be the one thanking all of you for being so helpful, thanks so much.

[nko]

I would attempt it first in YaST. Actually, I'd just let YaST do whatever it wants, failing your ability to find the options you want :-) I've installed SUSE a couple times, and I must say, it's one of the most XP friendly installs available. Don't sweat too much about being able to boot XP- this isn't CRUX Linux we're talking about!

[saikee]

Always let Linux format the partition.

Partition Magic does not support all the file types Linux can do so it is just a waste of time. Also some Linux distros insist on own formatting too and may even want to check for bad blocks in the drive too.

Unless the XP has been installed with a 3rd party bootloader the standard method of getting Window's MBR back is just either

(1) Boot the computer up with XP installation CD, at first prompt choose R for repair and go into Recovery console, in command prompt just type "fixmbr". Type exit and reboot the system

or

(2) Get a bootable DOS or Win9x floppy that has the program fdisk.exe inside and boot the system up in DOS command mode, follow by typing "fdisk .mbr". Type exit and reboot.

I have many responses confirming the above successful. I used the first method initially but got lazy and stick with the second method now.

[moo113]

Alright, thanks a lot, I'll try the install later tonight.

Hey, would anyone happen to know if my wireless-g pci card works with SuSE? I have the Linksys WMP54G PCI-Adapter.

[nko]

I don't know for certain, but you can certainly look it up on Google. Wireless devices and their compatability are governed by their chipset, so the first step (failing that Google outright tells you whether that specific model works or not) is to look up what chipset your card uses. If it's a Broadcom, you're out of luck. Else: Good luck!

[soulestream]

what everybody is trying to say, i think, is if you only want 20 gig for suse, then...

1. partition your drive with all of the drive allocated to xp except 20 gig. with Partition magic.

2. remove the partition on the 20 gig space you set up for suse(although thats not nec.)

3. when suse installer loads it will ask fo custom install. say yes and let it used the unallocated space(should be 20 gigs)

4. YAST will then automatically set up swap size,root partitions for you.

5. when the boot loader installer comes up select grub(lilo if you like) and it has an option to set first boot OS, set that as XP (it will probaly just say DOS) this will make XP boot if you dont select Linux on startup

6. then follow the rest of the prompts.

i havent done a suse install in a couple of months so im going from memory, but that should do all you need it to do. you can set swap size yourself, but until you get used to it then let YAST, soon you'll be able to set up /home, /root, /whatever ,but for now use the defaults


soule

[moo113]

Okay, so I finally understood what everyone so generously told me and I booted off the SuSE install disc and went to partitioning. But a problem arose once I got there.

I went to custom partitioning and there were partitions set up for linux, swap and windows. I resized the linux one to 20.1GB and kept the swap at 1GB but my Windows partition (hda1) was stuck at 66.1GB. So I went to resize it so it would have more space and take up the rest of the hard drive (because I can always partition is again if I want more OS's) and it said I couldn't resize it because it was mounted. I looked around trying to figure out how to unmount it and I couldn't.

I want my linux partition to be 20GB, swap 1GB and windows to take up the rest of my hard drive. What am I doing wrong?

[nko]

First, I'd be extemely careful using Linux tools to resize an NTFS partition. The tools work, but aren't entirely dependable 100% of the time. I'd use partition magic to make Windows take up all but 21 GB. Then just use SUSE to install the Linux partitions automatically.

File Systems are kind of a freaky thing to dink with. If you *have* to do it, I'd only do it with Partition Magic (unless you're not dealing with any NTFS partitions- then feel free to use GNU Parted or QtParted, but still only when you *have* to).

[moo113]

Just use partition magic? Alright, sounds easy enough. Should I format the new partition to a certain file system?

[nko]

Just make XP whatever size you want and leave the rest blank. GNU tools are excellent; the only problem is support for stuff like NTFS, where they're pretty much stabbing in the dark to develop proper drivers for Linux.

We can safely read NTFS in Linux; it's writing that we can't safely do, and that's a big part of partition formatting / resizing.

[moo113]

Okay, but that doesn't answer my question. Should I make my new partition a certain file system type? Partition Magic lets me choose from a few.

[nko]

I'd just leave the Linux space blank. SUSE will fill up the blank space.

[soulestream]

you dont have to format it with any file system. leave it blank YAST will format with ext2,ext3 whatever its recommended file system is. you CAN make it whatever you want, but your shooting yourself in the foot. until youve installed linux a few times(probaly even a few more than me) you should stick with the defaults

[moo113]

I have to choose a filesystem in partiton magic. Here are my choices:
FAT
FAT32
NTFS
LinuxExt2
LinuxExt3
Linux Swap
Which do I choose?

[moo113]

Okay, I'm going with a 21gb linuxext2 and a 1gb linux swap. I figure that YaST can reformat them if needed.

[nko]

Sorry, it probably should've been mentioned; ext2 doesn't support journalling. Journalling is where the FS keeps track of exactly what it's doing so that, in case of a power outage or something, you don't have to run scandisk-like utilities (in the case of Linux, the "fsck" program. Don't ask). Don't worry, though; it's easy to add journalling to ext2. Of course, this makes it ext3 (which is ext2+journalling, for all intents and purposes). Does someone know the command to do that?

I can't believe Partition Magic wont let you make empty partitions! That's just weird. Even the Windows Disk Utility can do that.

In any event, it seems like you've probably installed SUSE by now... how is it so far? Any problems?

[saikee]

I think Suse uses Reiserf file type which may not be supported by PM. However I believe one can force Suse to take Ext2 or Ext3 partition.

In any case Suse will re-format it during the installation so whatever one creates with PM will not matter at the end.

I would leave only 5Gb for Suse and leave the rest for later use. PM doesn't work well in resizing Linux partitions. Playing with PM in Linux will eventually lead to serious corruption of the partition table (my own experience). One has to remember even the fundamental programs like fdisk, cfdisk and sfdisk are not all compatible within Linux, let alone with a software written for Windows.

[moo113]

It doesn't matter, YaST just formatted it to its liking anyway which is what I expected.

And yes actually, a few problems.

When I booted into SuSE my entire screen had poor visibility. Apparently it was set at 800x600 but according to my monitor's settings I only had about 760x584 viewable. My monitor is bad, it's a Samsung SyncMaster 710v LCD-TFT 17" and my video card is a Radeon 9550 256MB. How do I fix this?

Also, I can't seem to figure out how to get my wireless-g card to work. I know there's ndiswrapper and all of these other things but I'm not too sure on how to use them.

Oh, and one more thing, when I boot up my computer I don't get the grub bootloader anymore, it just autmatically boots into Windows. Now, that's not a big problem for me because I can just go to the boot menu and choose SuSE but it's a little odd seeing as it was working before. I set Windows as my default and gave me 10 seconds to choose something (Windows, Linux, Rescue etc.) before it auto-booted XP.

[nko]

While you *can* fix the grub thing, it might be a little above your head at this point. It basically involves booting off the SUSE disk and passing it "boot=/dev/hdaX" where X is the partition /boot is on. Might just be better off reinstalling SUSE. Wont hurt anything.

Can anyone help moo113 with ndiswrapper?

The resolution can be set in grub.conf, I believe. I use lilo, so I don't know for certain. One thing you should be warned about: DO NOT be afraid to change settings using a text editor and some configuration text files! It may look hard, but it's actually extremely easy. It's just the concept of doing things in a relatively unfriendly way that's daunting. If you can't find a way to do it in YaST, try just editing configuration files.

[moo113]

The boot problem doesn't bother me much, I set Windows as my default for a reason and this way the boot is a little bit faster.

I do have another question though. How come in SuSE I can access my Windows Partition but I can't access my Linux partition in Windows?

[nko]

It's in the best interest of Linux developers to be compatible with as many other OS's as possible. It's not in the best interest for Microsoft to be compatible with any other operating systems, outside of allowing Mac users to purchase MS Office and allowing Windows users to use the Internet (of course, since they embrace the Internet, they try to extend it... maybe you've heard about that, but this isn't the place to troll against "M$").

In any event, while Windows doesn't ship with any support for Linux partitions, it does ship with support for FAT / FAT32 partition types, which Linux can write to, so if you want, you can have an intermediary partition of type FAT32 which both OS's can read from / write to.

Also, there's supposedly a project somewhere that, at one point, was working on adding ext3 support for windows. I don't know how mature or easy to use this software is, or even if it's stable, but you might look in to it.

[moo113]

Ah, I understand, that's quite logical.

So I can mess around with grub.conf to change my settings, okay, I get that. But where would grub.conf be located? And I've also been told that I might just need a new driver or a few boots to have it set right. And apparently YaST's control centre is very easy to work with.

[nko]

I've only used YaST a little bit. I got to see every nook and cranny, but only once, for a lot of the littler things (I used SUSE for about 2 weeks a couple months ago). YAST is simply wonderful. If you can accomplish something in YaST, even if you're a power user, by all means, do it in YaST!

I don't know if you'll need any sort of new driver. Basically, as long as you've got framebuffer support (which I know SUSE does by default), you can just change the VGA mode in grub. grub.conf can be located in a number of different places, depending on the distro. SUSE likely puts it in either /etc/ or /etc/grub/ or /etc/grub.conf/ or something like that (configuration files for Linux go in /etc. Per-user preferences / settings go in the user's home directory, usually in a hidden file. A "hidden file" in Linux is any file whose name starts with a period).

[riekon]

Funny story about SuSE. This last friday, i was bored and decided to try it out 'cause a few of the guys at work talk highly of it.

I have installed many distros in the past, everything from mandrake, rh, to gentoo, debian, and slack. When i saw the highly graphical gui i didnt think much and just skimmed through the install not paying much attention.

Big mistake on my part.

SuSE loaded fine. looked great, but i couldnt get my wireless working right away so i tried booting back into XP to check out some settings on my router. then, Grub gave me some error about not being able to ID my file system type even though it gave me 0x7 for ntfs and then had some chainloader +1 error.

I panicked and stuck in my recovery console for windows and tried fixmbr and fixboot and finally bootcfg to no avail.

I ended up destroying my partition table and had to format the entire drive using cfdisk because fdisk off my xp cd wouldnt erase the drive completely.

A very big hassle that could have been avoided if only i didnt think i knew everything. ha.

back to work...

[moo113]

The moral of the story is?

[nko]

Be careful with any type of software, especially when its purpose is to dink with your hardware!

[riekon]

The moral in this case would be:

"pay attention in life. Even when it gets redundant. Otherwise, you may lose everything youve worked to get."

How was that? It came straight from my heartfelt butt.

[nko]

Wow... that was enlightening, but also a little anal. Maybe next time the moral can come from a factory or something, cool? Now, lets get back on topic before the mods have us towed!

[saikee]

I have 9 distros that use Grub. The menu file I edit is always /boot/grub/menu.lst and nothing else. The direct equivalent in Lilo is /etc/lilo.conf. These are the two files that control the booting process.

[nko]

Now, in lilo, lilo.conf has both menu items *and* config options. In it, you can set things like whether to prompt the user for which OS they want to boot or just to boot the default without asking, boot message, and, relevant to this thread, vga mode. This is usually a 3-digit number (I believe mine's 773, for 1024x768@256color... not sure ATM). How would you configure this in grub? Does it have to be entered as a kernel parameter? My only experience with grub was installing Gentoo. I had a great experience with grub... it's just not the default on Slackware, so I don't know much about it.

[saikee]

I know Grub doesn't bother with the VGA screen at all.

Lilo has one serious drawback and that is it doesn't seem to have more than 16 booting entries, whereas the Grub in Debian Sarge has managed to build up 34 choices for me ( by seeking out every kernel available in the PC).

Also the description of the distro is severely limited in Lilo's "label" statement but you can write as long as you like in Grub's "title" statement.

I found the two bootloaders are very similar in performance and can be mixed (one chainloading the other).

The funny bit of it is Lilo needs to run in terminal mode (by typing "lilo") every time its /etc/lilo.conf is altered. In so doing it checks each line and refuses the alteration if there is an error. Thus you can't fool Lilo into booting a system that isn't bootable or hasn't got a valid a bootloader.

Grub on the other hand is quite happy to be fooled into booting an empty partition.

[nko]

I've never tried to boot as many as 16 OS's on any one machine, but I can vouche for lilo's description limitations, which are a little annoying. I guess in grub the vga setting must be a kernel param, and lilo's just been sugar-coating things for me.

[infiniphunk]

Here is a nice easy way of doing it; I don't think its been mentioned yet. Use a liveCD (SimplyMEPIS or knoppix) that has QTparted on it(the open-source version of partition magic). Use this tool to completely erase your hda. (you may have to boot several times and do this through the live CD until you have your whole disc wiped with nothing on it. Now make a swap-partition.(should be about 1.5-2Xyour RAM). Then create your partition for SUSE(use ext3 or reiserfs). In the remaining space make an NTFS partition for windows.
Now do an XP setup and XP will find the NTFS partition and it should label it C. Go through your XP setup as you normally would. Once that's done install SUSE; it will also install to the correct partittion(should be hda2 in your case). SUSE should install the GRUB bootloader to the MBR and then you'll be good to go.

Partition like this:
|..swap..|...SUSE...|...WindowsXP...|
hda1 hda2 hda3

Nice and simple to start.

[saikee]

nko,

Most of us do not bother to find out the limitation of a distro. I have an easy run with adding distros to my hard drive and so I tried to stretch Linux to what I thought within the declared limit. I think Linux can accept up to 63 partitions in an IDE disk and 15 for a SCSI disk, but the distros may not have been written to reach such limits.

After partitioning my 200Gb hard drive into 28 partitions I started to experience the reluctance by some distros to be installed at the high end of the disk (partition number in excess of 20 say). Even big gun like Fedora installed but could not list more than 16 partitions with fdisk.

I also experimented with another 200Gb hard drive and divided it into 41 partitions, by taking out Xp to create more room, but haven't found a Linux will to go there yet.

It appears to me Linux's bootloaders can multiboot a large number of operating systems but other bits and pieces have not been written to match the same expectation.

I didn't do anything special. Just partitioned the hard disk as it supposed to be possible, add a new distro whenever I find one, place each Linux's bootloader in root partition (inside its own partition) and the new Linux, if detecting a bootloader in a partition will automatically include it in the boot menu, will look after everything.

infiniphunk,

Is there any particular reason to arrange the partition the way you described?

As far as I am aware Window needs to be in a primary partition so any one of the first 4 (hda1, hda2, hda3 and hda4) will do. Linux on the other hand can be placed anywhere. I have Slackware 10 residing in hda27 but failed to persuade it to go to hda41.

For more than 4 partitions in a hard disk we have to turn one of the 4 primary partitions into an extended partition which could hold a large number of logical partitions. The first logical partition is always hda5 and I found it a logical choice for the swap partition. The advantage of this is that I can potentially put 3 versions of Windows in the hda1, hda2 and hda3, make them inactive (or unbootable), make hda4 bootable, install my Linux in the logical partitions above hda5 and place my Linux bootloader in hda4 to control all the OSs. Any Window partition can be made active by a Linux bootloader to become bootable later (unbootable Window partitions may need to be hidden too). The extended partition hda4 in this case is just a perimeter for the logical partitions and itself does not have any usable space inside but it first track, reserved for bootloader use, is still available.

I can see in your scheme the MBR is associated with swap partition and so it gives an impression that there is no risk of the Windows XP being damaged by people messing around with the MBR.

[infiniphunk]

No particular reason, just for simplicity's sake I guess. It seems to work quite well for me. Looks like you really have Grub mastered, saikee.

[saikee]

infiniphunk

I am in the minority believing a standard bootloader, from either Window or Linux, could not damage the operating systems. People blame the bootloader after finding their system unbootable and do the real damage themselves. In fact they simply donot know where is the bootloader, how to restore it and how to make it boot other systems.

To me the NTbootloader, Lilo and Grub are the same. They just overwrite each other on the same area in the MBR. Every one of them can be restored by simple commands ( for Windows it is "fdish /mbr", for Lilo it is "lilo -b /dev/hda" for Grub it is "grub-install /dev/hda") and we can switch them around to suit our needs.

I think people tend to dismiss a bootloader as unimportant and not bother to find out how it works. If they do they could be laughing to find out how simple each one is.

[EnigmaOne]

In that vein, I would love to see anyone justify the belief that a bootloader can hose a particular OS installation.

A trashed bootloader will limit your access to the bootable OSses contained in various partitions, but it certainly won't modify the system files themselves.

[epsos]

is it possiuble to install jus linux as i have w/xpon my desktop and dnt wna touch it but my laptoo has windos 200 pro and xpo runnin on a 10g hardrive will sue linux wipe both of them hope so

[nko]

First rule of forums: speak clearly! Properly convey your message! Hard to help people we can't understand. It'd be one thing if someone didn't speak English well, but...

That said, I'm not sure what your question was. Otherwise, you'd have an answer by now. I don't imagine you're used to it, but when you're at the computer, try to have both hands free, no matter WHERE the other hand subconciously travels to. ;-)

EDIT: Sorry, wasn't sure if I made it clear, that was a joke ;-)

[saikee]

epsos,

I think you mean Suse Linux.

No Linux would wipe your operating systems unless you instruct it to do so, normally giving it a hard disk without any unallocated space and instruct it to do an automatic installation.

Suse needs aboy 5Gb and may be another 1 or 2 Gb for a swap partition. It is better to have the space ready and instruct a Linux to use it.

[moo113]

A couple of weeks ago I installed it fine and I'm already past 6.5 gigs. Five just wouldn't cut it.

[saikee]

If you keep the temporary files for the package installation then the size can swell above 5Gb. That ia what happen to my Fedora Core 2, the only one larger than 5Gb in a company of 20.

My Suse 9.1 Professional is only 2.43 Gb large.

[epsos]

first off sorry about typing im bit rubbish at it.

second i have jsu finished downloadin the suse linux 9.1 even though the 9.2 has just arrived and was wondering how to install suse linux onto my laptop by it self will linux wipe the hardrive or if it doesnt how do i do that cus i want to run straight linux as i have my desktop on windows toi help me along if i get stuck

3rd thankyou

[saikee]

epsos

I have answered your questions already.

Make room in your laptop hard disk for one 5Gb ( or 7 if you want to be safe as moo113) for Suse and say 1 or 2 Gb for the swap partition.

Basically you need to resize your hard disk first. Suse will format them for you.

If you don't how to resize the hard disk (need 3rd party software like Partition Magic) and can afford to lose the content of the laptop hard disk then just let Suse to wpie it for you.

[epsos]

sorry im still half asleep there is nothink on the laptop i want to keep so i want to put jus the suse 9.1 lunus on by itself to learn as im complete newbie thankyou ill av a go later ive burned it to disc now n it dnt load in windows but wen i reboot it does so i can do it through type of dos way if u get me


anyways thankyou let u know how it goes lol

[saikee]

epsos,

You are doing just fine.

I was in your shoes 4 months before and I didn't know how to ask question causing my first 2 posts locked.

[epsos]

thankyou very mnuch i have it working on my laptop and ony problem is sound i have none but for a old laptop on a new system is very good im starting to love linux jus wana learn linux commands now anyone know where

[nko]

The use of punctuation is the first step to good forum posts. Even if you don't have a good feel for where to use a comma or a period, that's okay, as long as they're in generally the right area.

Learning how to ask questions in a way that gets good answers is a skill that comes with practice.

[epsos]

kk, thankyou, i, will, try, my, best.

[EnigmaOne]

Originally posted by epsos
wana learn linux commands now anyone know where
Originally posted by epsos
kk, thankyou, i, will, try, my, best.

HeeHee...

Try looking at http://www.tldp.org where you will find more material about Linux than you could possibly want.

[epsos]

thankyou wil this get all codes gt a prob with me x and y cscreen nwo everytime i load up

[moo113]

Okay, I'm going to reinstall SuSE (ndiswrapper problems and other such things) and I was wondering how I would go about doing.

I want to uninstall SuSE, shrink my partition (I don't need 20 gigs for it) and then reinstall on the partition. How do I uninstall SuSE? And ow do I shrink my parition in PMagic and then merge the other half back into Windows?

Thanks.

[moo113]

Okay, so I've run accross a little problem when trying to boot into SuSE.

I installed everything fine after my reformat and such and then I booted into SuSE and YaST started for configuration. I followed through everything as it told me, finished the config settings and such and then went to actually boot into the OS. This is where I had a problem.

After I went into the boot process I watched its progress running through all the steps (although it wasn't in its pretty SuSE format, just black with text). It was all working fine and then went to boot and I got nothing. So I pressed my power button to terminate whatever was running to see what was going on and it showed that SuSE 9.1 2.6.4-54smp has executed.

But I didn't boot into SuSE, what's going on?