bevanger
asked on
Linux n00b wanting to setup a laptop for dual-boot between SuSE 9.3 and WinXP or Vista
ok, so i have decided to make a concerted effort to make the switch to Linux as a full-time OS. I have a SuSE 9.3 pro distro, an IBM R51 with a 40GB drive, 256MB RAM, and am installing from DVD. After doing some research, i decided to install Linux first and use GRUB as the loader. So, i started the install, and customized my partitions as so:
3 x Primary partitions
/boot = 32MB FAT32
/ = 7.5GB Reiser
/usr = 7.5GB Reiser
1 x 10.5GB Extended partition with the following Logicals
/var = 3GB Reiser
/tmp = 2GB Reiser
/home = 5.5GB Reiser
swap = 512MB
i then selected a fairly moderate set of packages that basically included KDE and Gnome (want to try both out), and some net analysis tools, (ethereal, bing, etc). I had the system autocheck dependencies and proceeded to try to install. It got about 10% (est) into the install and then announced that 'Installation of package grub-0.95-16.i586 failed'. I figured i might have some leftover partition wackiness on the drive, so i booted with a BartPE cd i keep with some utils on it, ran an FDISK /MBR to completely nuke partitions on the system, and reattempted the install, same as above. I got the same result. I know i could reattempt using LiLO, but that seems like a bandaid rather than a real solution.
So, after all that, i'm left wondering a few things:
1. If i'm going to dual-boot, i was assuming that i needed some amount of space at the beginning of the drive to allow Win-whatever to do it's thing, install-wise. Am i incorrect in this thinking?
2. Is there something really spacey about my partitioning schema that's causing this?
3. Should i be doing something different?
BTW - i have setup a dual-boot system with RH 6 and Win2kpro before, but that was back when i was a real engineer and before i drank the management kool-aid. I know these questions are probably otherwise trivial to you all, but since i've been out of the game for a while (almost 6 years since i did any real engineering), it's really plexing me.
Thanks in advance for any assistance with this issue, and feel free to blast any of my thoughts and confgurations as well.
3 x Primary partitions
/boot = 32MB FAT32
/ = 7.5GB Reiser
/usr = 7.5GB Reiser
1 x 10.5GB Extended partition with the following Logicals
/var = 3GB Reiser
/tmp = 2GB Reiser
/home = 5.5GB Reiser
swap = 512MB
i then selected a fairly moderate set of packages that basically included KDE and Gnome (want to try both out), and some net analysis tools, (ethereal, bing, etc). I had the system autocheck dependencies and proceeded to try to install. It got about 10% (est) into the install and then announced that 'Installation of package grub-0.95-16.i586 failed'. I figured i might have some leftover partition wackiness on the drive, so i booted with a BartPE cd i keep with some utils on it, ran an FDISK /MBR to completely nuke partitions on the system, and reattempted the install, same as above. I got the same result. I know i could reattempt using LiLO, but that seems like a bandaid rather than a real solution.
So, after all that, i'm left wondering a few things:
1. If i'm going to dual-boot, i was assuming that i needed some amount of space at the beginning of the drive to allow Win-whatever to do it's thing, install-wise. Am i incorrect in this thinking?
2. Is there something really spacey about my partitioning schema that's causing this?
3. Should i be doing something different?
BTW - i have setup a dual-boot system with RH 6 and Win2kpro before, but that was back when i was a real engineer and before i drank the management kool-aid. I know these questions are probably otherwise trivial to you all, but since i've been out of the game for a while (almost 6 years since i did any real engineering), it's really plexing me.
Thanks in advance for any assistance with this issue, and feel free to blast any of my thoughts and confgurations as well.
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