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On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 10:06 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com> wrote: |
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> On Friday 02 May 2008, Mark Knecht wrote: |
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> > My Windows Vista laptop ate the big one from M$ and died under the |
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> > weight of Windows Update. The hardware seems to check out fine |
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> > overnight so I'm going to finally do dual boot on this machine like I |
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> > wanted to when I bought it. |
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> > |
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> > Data: |
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> > |
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> > 80GB hard drive |
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> > 2GB DRAM |
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> > |
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> > Questions: |
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> > |
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> > 1) What's the recommended order to install dual boot today. I prefer |
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> > to go Gentoo first, XP second. Any issues? |
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> |
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> All of this is mostly my own viewpoint from experience. There may be |
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> other ways: |
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> |
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> |
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> Other way round. Windows operating systems have a nasty habit of |
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> assuming they are the only system on the machine and merrily trash |
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> everything in sight for their own nefarious purposes. Then they |
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> overwrite any existing bootloader. I do this: |
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> |
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> Install XP. If you can get it to limit the partition size it uses, so |
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> much the better |
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> Resize windows partition downwards with Linux LiveCD. Most recent ones |
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> support this. |
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> Install Linux and set up a chainloader as normal in grub to boot windows |
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> Finally boot Windows and let it do what it wants with the partitions |
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> that need checking. This is expected behaviour caused by the downward |
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> resize |
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> |
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> |
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> > 2) What recommendations do folks have about splitting an 80GB drive |
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> > up. I'm thinking of maybe 50-60GB for Gentoo, followed by Win XP |
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> > using 20-30GB at the end of the drive. Partitions? I'm considering: |
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> > |
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> > sda1 -> /boot = 50MB |
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> > sda2 -> swap (unsure whether I should dedicate 4GB to this. That's 5% |
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> > of my drive and I won't likely ever use all of 2GB or RAM.) |
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> > sda3 -> /var = 2GB |
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> > sda4 ==extended |
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> > sda5 -> / balance of Linux side, say 55GB |
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> > sda6 == Windows drive C: |
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> |
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> Again, you have to take account of windows brain-deadedness and the even |
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> greater braindeadedness of windows "administrators". They don't expect |
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> boot partitions.... |
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> |
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> I would allocate as little as possible for windows itself. Say 10G, |
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> which allows for the OS plus it's virtual memory file plus other cache |
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> stuff |
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> |
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> From sda2 onwards, lay out your partitions as for a regular Linux |
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> installation. Use your own preferences for swap, lvm, filesystems etc. |
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> Being able to share data between both OSes is useful, so leave the most |
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> space possible for data: You have two options: |
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> |
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> FAT32. This is gross and gives you no security. It's also the easiest as |
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> both OSes support it out the box. |
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> Ext3/ReiserFS: Better solution security-wise but requires some setup. |
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> You have to download and install windows drivers from sourceforge. |
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> |
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> There's a third option - use the ntfs-ng driver in Linux. It seems just |
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> silly to use this for your main data storage though. |
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> |
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|
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First, thanks to everyone for the quick answers. |
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|
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1) I'll go with Windows first. That's relatively fast and if I run |
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into hardware problems it will show up more quickly which is good. |
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Saves me the time of doing the Gentoo install and then finding issues. |
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|
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2) If I do Windows first then /dev/sda1 will be NTFS. Does this change |
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how I install grub? I'm a little fuzzy as to where the MBR is. Is it |
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in the first partition or in a special area by itself? The commands |
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from the install guide is this: |
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|
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livecd conf.d # grub |
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grub> root (hd0,0) |
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grub> setup (hd0) |
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quit |
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|
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I presume I'll use |
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|
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grub> root(hd0,4) |
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|
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to point at my root and still use |
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|
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grub> setup (hd0) to get grub installed into the MBR? |
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|
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Thanks, |
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Mark |
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-- |
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gentoo-user@l.g.o mailing list |