installing an OS on a partioned drive

[longgone]

Bruno,,,,Thanks, I was hoping you would say that.... onward then with the upgrade to current ....

[Bruno]

DaleWait a few hours with updating . . they are uploading the mirrors . . Bruno

[longgone]

Bruno ...I can do that .. am d/l XP updates on a new machine anyway for now ....probably tomorrow ..

[Bruno]

Good plan . . .I got all kind of download failures and stopped the process . . . . :DB) Bruno

[Bruno]

Hi DaleAll packages are uploaded ! . . . It is a major download . . and lots of dependencies are resolved after it installs the first batch of packages . . so it has to get a few more after that. But then at the very end you will have Gnome 2.6 and a buch of other updated packages Bruno

[longgone]

Bruno......Well back at the Slack attempt again ... so far did the redo for the 9.1, excluded alsa, went back to current, have d/l'd and installed the red lizard (mozilla), kde, gimp, and gnome as per your suggestion a long time ago. Did a reboot since I wanted to see what effects or mistakes I had caused, the boot process gets as far as the "loading X11 sessions manager (think that what it say) and then it stops, will not go any further at all. Cursor just blinks and I cannot get into I guess X or GUI or anything. What did i miss on this and please don't say start from square one, I have been d/lin' for hours and hours.

[Bruno]

Hi DaleYou could see if you can re-configure X with:

# xfree86setup

This should work if all the libs and files you need are there . . . so you could do a "swaret --upgrade" or/and "swaret --dep" to make sure all is there before you start Bruno

[longgone]

Bruno,,,,How can I do that when it stops at the X11 session manager line and goes no further .... I can't type anything at all, best I can is is ctrl-alt-del to reboot and I tried the alt + f2 to see if I could get into a consol that way but that did not work either

[Bruno]

Sorry Dale . . missed your post . . . ( was marked as read )Alt+F2 is no good . . it should be Ctrl+Alt+F2 ( or F1 or F3 etc. )Or try "linux rescue" as described in the first section here: http://forums.scotsnewsletter.com/index.ph...14&t=503&st=119 Bruno

[longgone]

Bruno,,,,,Well ,,, back to square one for the umteenth time .... neither one of those two can help me .... all I get is the same response as the last time .... that there are a lot of errors on the hard drive. Well guess I will try again .. but just for my own info ... when I change from 9.1 to current is current going to be the most up to date version (seems like it should) or am I also going to be looking at more d/l's to get after I get done (if I get done)

[Bruno]

Hi DaleWhat a pain ! . . . . . . You know Dale, perhaps you better stay with the stable version ( 9.1 ) and not do the upgrades to "current".The "current" is a kind of permanent BETA . . . . with test released of packages and bugfixes . . . . for people on broadband this is no real problem, but since you are on dial up I think restrickting yourself to stabe releases might be the best advice I can give. Let others sqwash out the bugs . . . . and Slack 9.2 should not be far away now, there you will have a stable version where all the packages are balanced out so it will work on your hardware too. ( I think your problems are a combination of hardware and beta packages . . . this should be sorted out with the "stable" ) Bruno

[longgone]

Bruno,,,That is a possibility but then I am not one to give up real easy. I have gone over all that I did (the 3 broken web connections probably did not help) and after going back over this thread a few times you mentioned that "shutdown -h" should be used instead of "shutdown -r now" which I did not do. I did the latter not the former, that might could have caused my problem. Practice makes perfect, experience is the best teacher (no offense meant to teacher), and knowledge is power. Onward into the valley of Linux I shall proceed. (Maybe I should be a politician instead).

[teacher]

Practice makes perfect, experience is the best teacher (no offense meant to teacher), and knowledge is power.

How on earth could I take offense at that? If anyone gets lots of practice in Linux I would be the one! We won't mention how many installs I have done in the last 12 months. I do get my practice in!Julia

[Bruno]

Onward into the valley of Linux I shall proceed. (Maybe I should be a politician instead).

Brilliant . . . I will remember that one Dale !! :w00t: Bruno

[longgone]

Bruno,,,In Slack 9.1 on machine #1 .. seems to be working okay ... used dmesg to see what happened as the "boot" screens zoomed past .. the following two items came to my attention ... are these to be concerned with or ignored or just minor inconviences ....kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k scsi_hostadapter, errno=2 (3 entries)hdb: dma_intr: status = 0x51(DriveReady SeekComplete Error) (4 entries)hdb: dma_intr: error=0x84(DriveStatusError BadCRC) (4 entries)also noted that on hda the dma is disabled, hda is the residence of both XP and Mndrk 9.2. if the dma should be disabled on hdb which at present is the Slack house of frustration (he will get future neighbors) how do I disable the dma on hdb???and lastly (this really has nothing to do with Slack but Linux as a whole) ... I have read several times where you can only have 4 primary partitions. Does this mean that you can have only 4 partitions per OS (Linux), or per hard drive.If it is per hard drive I am going to need a bit of advice on logical/extended partitions and how I can make it work. This Slack hard drive (hdb) is 76.1gb and I used 2gb for root, 4gb for user and 8gb for home and they were all done as primaries. Don't want to go to much further before I find out the answer to that .....thanks way in advance

[linuxdude32]

and lastly (this really has nothing to do with Slack but Linux as a whole) ... I have read several times where you can only have 4 primary partitions. Does this mean that you can have only 4 partitions per OS (Linux), or per hard drive.If it is per hard drive I am going to need a bit of  advice on logical/extended partitions and how I can make it work. This Slack hard drive (hdb) is 76.1gb and I used 2gb for root, 4gb for user and 8gb for home and they were all done as primaries. Don't want to go to much further before I find out the answer to that .....

Yes, you can only have four primary partitions per drive. What you do is use a partitioning program (qtparted, or just bootup the Mandrake install disc and use it's partitioner, it's the best one) and make your last partition extended. Then inside of the extended partition you can make logical partitions, lots of them. (psssst... a little known secret is that an extended partition is really just a "container" for the partitions inside of it).Do you have a SCSI card in that computer? The kmod error is from trying to load a module to deal with a SCSI host adapter. If you don't have anything SCSI, you can ignore it. Usually you turn DMA on for modern drives (otherwise they're much slower) so that should be okay, unless the first drive can't handle it.

[longgone]

linuxdude32......Darn the bad luck, just darn it, darn it, darn it, .... that tells me I should stop now and start again. I have it as hdb1 is root, hdb2 is usr (will learn how to use the usr), and hdb3 is home. That would tell me that I only have one more to go (hdb4) and it would be a huge one. Fudge, so I take it I should start again (using cfdisk, getting real familiar with it)), make hdb1 /(root) and then make hdb2 an extended or should I just make hdb1 an extended and build within it. Would that work .....???? No I do not have an SCSI card in this machine, so far I have not found a need for one. I guess the hda drive can handle it, I cannot recall any thing that has told me that something is wrong with it. It is in its current state by default, nothing that I have done. Well before I start back into "The valley of LInux" aaggaaaiiinnnn !!!!!!, I will wait for some more info/advice/HELP .....

[Bruno]

DaleHope I miss nothing because it gets complicated:Partitions: Usually you have one primary ( hda1 ) and one extended partition that is devided in as many logicals as you want ( hda5, hda6, hda7, hda8 etc. etc. )Turning off mda . . have a look here: [urll=http://forums.scotsnewsletter.com/index.php?act=ST&f=14&t=503&st=187]Hdparm ( Harddisk performance ) [/url] but read the warnings in that tip too before you get carried away ;) Bruno

[longgone]

Bruno,,,,Okay, so, in theory I would have hdb1 (root) and hdb2 (extended at a size TBD). I have a how-to from Bit Benders that I d/l'd when I first started with Slack I might should dig it out. This would have hdb1 and hdb2 used up, leaving me with only 2 partitions for the rest of this drive. It is 76.1gb so you can see my concern about maybe a lot of unaccessable space. New question:::: somehow, I lost the URL bar (the www.whatever) address bar on Konqueror, how do I get it back..????Ebrke,,,,,I don't know what I did to your post but somehow, I deleted it. Can you repost it to me , thanks....

[Bruno]

DaleFirst the toolbar . . . . . "settings"--> "toolbars" --> "location toolbar" ;)Now the partitions . . . you can have about 59 partitions . . . . . 1 primary . . . and 1 extended that is cut into 58 logical partitions . . . . . ( don´t pin me on the exact numbers, but it is about 59 or 60 ) Bruno

[longgone]

Bruno,,,Okay, if I understand this correctly, hdb1 will be a primary, hdb2 will be an extended and therefore I will still have 3 primary numbers to use for neighbors for Slack on the hdb drive ... yes, no ,, maybe

[Bruno]

Nope . . once you make an extended . . . you can not make additional primaries . . . . Also the extended is theoretically called hdb2 . . but you will not "see" it that way . . you will only see the logical partitions you made from it : hdb5 to hdb58B) Bruno

[longgone]

Bruno,,,According to BItbender Forums (Installing Slackware Linux) guide he makes mention that in the event you do not allocate the entire remainder of the disk to the extended partition and leave some behind, it could be used in the future as another primary partition. In there example they use XP on hda1, and Slack uses up hda2 and 3. In my case Slack is on hdb but Mndrk 9.2 is on hda so I already have a swap partition on hda6. I guess I should start over on this project. Glad I did not get really carried away. Good experience though, now to learn about extensions and logicals .... and duh cornfusion ....

[Bruno]

I wish I could explain it better to you . . .the thing about extended and logical partitions . . . Jason ( Linuxdude ) can do a good job on it though . . . maybe send him a PM and ask him to post a good explanation about it here in the thread ( so everybody can learn )In the mean time look at how your hda is divided by Mandrake . . . it does the partitioning in primary and extended by default ( because you say you have hda1, hda5 and hda6 . . hda1 is primary . .the other two are logical partitions . . ) BrunoPS: I will send a PM to Jason . .PS2: there is a difference between IDE and SCSI drives . . . IDE can have more partitions then SCSI . . . the last one can only have about 26 if I remember correctly.

Edited May 19, 2004 by Bruno

[linuxdude32]

Let's see if I can explain this so it makes sense. An extended partition is the only kind of partition that can have multiple partitions inside. Think of it like a box that contains other boxes, the logical partitions. The extended partition can't store anything, it's just a holder for logical partitions. I wouldn't start from scratch; that'd be too much work. Just make the space you have left into an extended partition and then make one or several logical partitions inside. The extended partitions is a way to get around the fact you can only have four primary partitions on a drive. You can put lots of logical partitions inside it. In fact, when you have Linux partitions inside of that extended partition, you'll actually see something like this when you boot up: sda: sda1 sda2 sda3 sda4 < sda5 sda6 >(Note: I use a SCSI drive, but it looks very similar for ide drives, they just use hda instead of sda)sda is the whole drivesda1 is a primary partitionsda2 is a primary partitionsda3 is a primary partitionsda4 is an extended partitionNote how sda5 and sda6 are between angle brackets? That's because they are logical partitions inside sda4. You will never see sda4 mounted, just sda5 and sda6, in this case. Note that Linux numbers primary partitions 1-4, logical partitions start at 5 and up, even if there are less than 4 primary partitions.The post in bitender forums is correct. If you allocate a smaller space to the extended partition, you can later create other primary partitions, if and only if, you have less than 4 primary partitions - note that the extended partition takes up a primary partition slot. Hopefully this makes sense, if not, post here or private message or email me

[longgone]

linuxdude32,,,,Okay I understand completely ( ), hdb1 is a primary, hdb2 is a primary, although it is also an extended and then within that extension I can have lots of logicals (????) up until the extended partition is full. That being the case I would then have two more primary partitions left on the hard drive to use. Now here is a question regarding the logicals within the extended. The hdb itself is 76.1gb, if I use hdb1 as say 2gb for root and hdb3 extended is a total of 12gb this leaves roughly just at 62gb for another OS (this kind of shoots the theory out the window of a bunch of OS's on one hard drive), now, for the biggie question, can another OS be contained with the extended partition of a different OS. Example the main OS being Slack and an embedded OS say Gentoo, contained within the Slack extended partition.I hope that I am saying this in a way that is not causing confusion, but to me this is an interesting subject. ...... Knowledge ......

[Bruno]

Great Job Jason ! . . I might borrow a few lines there . . for a future Tip :DB) Bruno

[Bruno]

UPDATE:I have to correct my information in this thread . . the exact numbers are:15 partitions Max for SCSI. 63 partitions for IDE. Bruno

[linuxdude32]

Okay I understand completely (   ), hdb1 is a primary, hdb2 is a primary, although it is also an extended and then within that extension I can have lots of logicals (????) up until the extended partition is full. That being the case I would then have two more primary partitions left on the hard drive to use.

You got it! Give yourself a pat on the back! It's not an easy concept. And you noted something that people don't always catch on to, an extended partition is actually a special kind of primary partition. The only different between it and a normal primary partition is that it has information inside it (the boot record) which tells the OS how to access the logical partitions inside it. It's a way of tricking the drive to access more than four partitions.

Now here is a question regarding the logicals within the extended. The hdb itself is 76.1gb, if I use hdb1 as say 2gb for root and hdb3 extended is a total of 12gb this leaves roughly just at 62gb for another OS (this kind of shoots the theory out the window of a bunch of OS's on one hard drive), now, for the biggie question, can another OS be contained with the extended partition of a different OS. Example the main OS being Slack and an embedded OS say Gentoo,  contained within the Slack extended partition.I hope that I am saying this in a way that is not causing confusion, but to me this is an interesting subject.    ...... Knowledge ......

You explain yourself very well. The only thing is that you misunderstand something I should've explained more clearly. Linux can exist inside a logical partition, in fact it can exist across several logical partitions (one for /, one for /home, one for /var, etc). You can also have parts of Linux on primary partitions, and parts of Linux across logical partitions.Note my own setup below. See how my /home partition is on a logical partition even though the root Linux filesystem is on a primary?

jason@linux:/mnt/downloads> dfFilesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on/dev/sda3              3148636   2406204    742432  77% /tmpfs                    63308        12     63296   1% /dev/shm/dev/sda5              6819344   1466760   5352584  22% /mnt/downloads/dev/sda6              5162796   2762608   2137932  57% /home/dev/sda1              2156476   1598948    557528  75% /windows/C

An extended partition isn't specific to any one OS. Linux can boot from a primary OS but Windows won't. So using logical partitions is exactly how you can experiment with lots and lots of Linux distributions. Just make sure you note where everything is; it can get very confusing!This might bring up and interesting question. Is there any advantage to using a primary partition over an logical partition for data (inside an extended partition, of course)? Yes, there is, but it only matters if you want to restore boot records or partitions by hand. Every drive has a MBR (master boot record) and every primary or extendedpartition a regular boot record. Logical partitions have no boot records; they depend on the extended partition's boot record for themselves to be found. If you're having to restore data, I've read somewhere that it's easier to do so when the data is on a primary partition. I don't know this for sure though, so don't be too concerned.

[longgone]

linuxdude32,,,Okay, from your setup I deduce that sda2 is the primary that became an extended and it contains sda3, sda5 and sda6 (don't know where sda4 went or even if there is one), and resideing on sda1 is the windows install.Now, in theory here lets say that I split hdb in half or close to it 38mb each or not (depends on what works). I make hdb1 the / or root partition for Slack 9.1 and then hdb2 is the extended partition for the remainder of the Slack install. The root / is probably 2gb and after that going by Brunos guidelines, say that I have a 4gb /usr partition which would show up as hdb3 and a 10gb partition which would be /home (later on I will figure out what the usr is for and how to use it), this totals up to 16gb and leaves open 32gb of unused space in the extended partition. Can I (not sure how I would do it, but I am sure there is enough experience here to guide me) now install an completely different Linux OS in that unused space left on the extended partition, still have the Slack install there unharmed. Then if the first part is possible, could I boot to it using LILO making a change/modification to it like I did in order to boot to Slack from the selection screen. Wheewww !!!! that's enough for the moment, depending on the answer, I will probably have more or less or not....