using dsl over suse

Forum: HD Install
Topic: using dsl over suse
started by: brettdale

Posted by brettdale on Mar. 05 2006,12:37

basically my home pc is a dual boot system running xp and suse 10, after trying the latest dsl im finiding it better and easyer than suse which is way bigger (1 double layer dvd) what id like to do is to replace suse with dsl,,, it currently uses the suse grub booter,

how to go on, i was thinking to use the suse dvd to remove the multiple partitions suse builds creating one clean partition for dsl n leaving my xp well alone, but how do i set the dual boot,

sorry its the same questions again but im new to linux and just learning dual boots, suse sets up automatically so it was easy enough, but i want to swap over to linux n need to keep xp as im learning for if i get problems.

Posted by brettdale on Mar. 05 2006,13:32

ok so i made the start n deleated the suse n swap partition n made them into one,,, big mistake, now when i reboot i just get the grub

( if i install dsl frugal with grub will this fix it? nxt question how do i tell where my free space is at, hda1 or hda2,, lookin to the mounting tool i only have a hda 1 there n thats windows, does this mean my linux partition is hda2?

Posted by brettdale on Mar. 05 2006,13:49

or how can i remove the grub just leaving me with windows boot n a linux partion to start fresh on,,,, pls help

Thank god for dsl at least i can boot from cd n try fix this :P

Posted by brettdale on Mar. 05 2006,13:52

ok using the suse partioner it shows i have hda 76.6
hda1 39 NTFS
hda2 37.6 Extended

Posted by mikshaw on Mar. 05 2006,14:43

Personally I wouldn't delete the partitions, depending on how many there are. You WILL want a swap partition, so I'd keep that. You may want to have two linux partitions, one ext2 for DSL and one ext3 or reiser for your data. You can go with a single partition, of course, but DSL needs to be on ext2 and this filesystem can be troublesome when you compare it with the newer journalling filesystems.
...just my own preference.

Posted by brettdale on Mar. 05 2006,14:56

fixed the grub boot issue with fixmbr, thanx for the advice milkshaw ill remake the partition, i have 37.6 spare, what sizes would u recomend for the swap, dsl ext2 and ext3 for reiser.

what is reiser

Posted by mikshaw on Mar. 05 2006,15:20

reiserfs is another filesystem, which has been coming into more common use over the last few years. On my system I have DSL on ext2, and /home/dsl is on reiserfs. If you go with multiple partitions, the ext2 partition needs to be large enough only for DSL, but you might want it larger just in case you want to add anything to that partition, such as a backup or mydsl extensions. Basically make it whatever you want, over 50mb.
The size of swap doesn't really matter. If you have a lot of ram you don't really need it, but it's always best to have it just in case it's needed. Typically swap partitions are 1-2x the mount of physical ram. I have a 1024mb swap with 256mb ram...this is huge overkill (256mb swap in DSL would probably have been plenty). I had planned on adding a lot more ram when i made the partitions, but that never happened.
If you go with a second linux partition for data, that's where most of the space will be needed. As I said, I used reiserfs for this partition, but it is up to you...ext3 should work fine too. The reason I tend to stay away from ext2 these days is just because i don't want to have to do maintenance on it. If you write to it a lot, you may frequently need to fsck it to keep data (particularly large files) from becoming corrupted.

Posted by brettdale on Mar. 05 2006,15:47

and how do i create this reiserfs?
i made a swap thats over kill but i have the space :P
i made an ext2 of 300 mb for dsl (overkill again but its ok)
and the remaining i made to ext3 for reiserfs

Cheers for all the help on this

so far i just love dsl apart from the install part it all seems easyer n faster

Posted by mikshaw on Mar. 05 2006,15:54

reiserfs is an alternative to ext3....you've apparently formatted as ext3 already, so that should be fine.

I'm afraid I can't help with the actual installation...I installed a frugal DSL manually using my existing suse system and i'm using suse's grub to boot. There are scripts in DSL that should do this work for you, though.

Posted by brettdale on Mar. 05 2006,16:33

ok heres where were at, i installed with frugal grub to hda6 (ext2) directed the grub to the windows hd and i have a dual boot system

.
now i used fdisk -l to show my partitions n i get cannot open /dev/hda i wanted to find my swap space to guide dsl to use it with the command swapon: /dev/hda?? unless frugal does this automatically on the install?
then finally how do i manage to get the /home/dsl onto the hda7 ext3?

Posted by mikshaw on Mar. 05 2006,16:52

using the swapon command without parameters, as far as i know, should use whatever swap partition it finds. It's been a while, so i'm not sure.

If you edit grub's menu.lst (should be in the boot directory on the 300mb partition), adding "home=hda7" to the kernel line, it should create a dsl directory automatically the first time you boot with that parameter. You can test this out without editing menu.lst by editing the line displayed while grub is on the screen during boot. Select the system you want to boot, press "e" to edit, select the kernel line (probably the first line) and press "e" again to edit that line. Add "home=hda7" somewhere after "dsl", press Enter, and then press "b" to boot with your modified kernel line. Pressing Enter might not be necessary...i don't rememeber at the moment.
If this is successful, you should be able to access your home through both /ramdisk/home/dsl and /mnt/hda7/home/dsl
Afterward, if you want to keep this persistent home, you will need to edit menu.lst to make it permanent.
If you want to use backup/restore as well as a persistent home, it would probably be useful to remove "home/dsl" from .filetool.lst to prevent backing up unnecessary files.

Posted by brettdale on Mar. 05 2006,17:14

cheers for all this milkshaw

just 2 more questions for the day

all works like u said now how to edit the kernel line? its read only?

n i remove home/dsl from the filetool.lst in the /ramdisk/home/dsl or in /mnt/hda7/home/dsl

Posted by mikshaw on Mar. 05 2006,21:01

if you are using a persistent home on hda7, /ramdisk/home/dsl and /mnt/hda7/home/dsl are the same thing. hda7 is first mounted as usual, then /mnt/hda7/home/dsl is bound to /ramdisk/home/dsl, I assume for the sake of consistency.

I've never used DSL's grub, so I can't say for sure. I do know that you need to be root in order to edit menu.lst.
You may also need to boot with the frugal option in order for your DSL partition to be mounted read-write, but that's what I'm not sure about.
If it becomes a complex task, you could boot a LiveCD, mount your 300mb partition, and edit menu.lst from the liveCD system.