Partitioning with cfdisk

Forum: Laptops
Topic: Partitioning with cfdisk
started by: Paul54

Posted by Paul54 on Mar. 27 2006,18:53

I have an old Toshiba laptop (233 Mhz, 64 Mb ram, 3,8 Gb HD)
and I want to do a frugal install.

In the instruction it says to make a 50 Mb Linux partition with cfdisk. I have launched cfdisk as root and I see 1 partition. Name: hda1 Flags: boot Part Type: Primary FS type: Win95 FAT32 (LBA) Size (MB): 4099.87

I don't know very well, how to continue. I gess I have to make hda1 smaller to create free space in order to make hda2. I don't know what steps I have to take to get any further. Can somebody help me?

Posted by Bentu on Mar. 27 2006,19:24

That means that you only have one partition on it, and it is a windows partition. Watch out if you have anything on it that you don't want to lose, you have to delete all the partitions on it to make free space and then set up the partitions you want. If you do that on your's the way it is whatever is on there will be history. If you want to dual boot you will have to use fips (or qparted) to split it without losing what is already there.

Posted by doobit on Mar. 27 2006,19:30

If you don't want to keep Windows, then the easy thing is to delete that partition, then write, then create some new partitions. When you create new partitions you will be presented with size, and type variables. I would make the first linux partition a primary partition so it will be hda1, and bootable. I would also make it bigger than 50MB. That is the minimum for a Frugal install. Make it 250MB, since you have the space. That will leave you a little room to put a few applications in the top directory so they will autoload at bootup with mydsl.
The other two partitions can be extended linux partitions which will make them hda5 and hda6. Make hda5 twice as large as your RAM, and a swap partition, and hda6 with the rest of the free space, as a standard linux partition. Then write the partition table with the write command in cfdisk. Then you will need to format the two extended partitions (DSL will format the first one when you install). There are formatting instructions you can find here in the forum using Search. Basically you will open a terminal in DSL and use

Code Sample

mkswap /dev/hda5

and

Code Sample

mke2fs -J /dev/hda6

to make a journaling linux file system on hda6. You may also need to do

Code Sample

swapon -a /dev/hda5

but DSL usually turns on the swap at the first boot after install. I hope this helps and anyone here can correct my errors.

If you want to make a dual boot system with Windows, then you need to use qparted or something like it to shrink your Windows partition enough to put DSL on the hard drive. Then you should use a Frugal grub or lilo install.

Posted by Paul54 on Mar. 27 2006,20:47

Thank you both for your quick reply. It is late for me here. I will continue tomorrow.

Posted by Paul54 on Mar. 28 2006,16:28

Won't deleting this partition totally, errase the drivers for the floppy drive and CDrom drive?

If no, than can I do the following???

1) Go to 'delete' and press 'enter'
This would delete the partition.

2) press 'n' to create a new partition and probably I will have the choice to set the size (250 MB) there and the type 83 Linux. Then I go to 'write' and press 'enter'.

3) press 'n' again to create a new partition, size 128 MB and type 85 Linux extended. Then I go to 'write' and press 'enter'.

4) press 'n' again for the last partition, size rest of the disk and also type 85 Linux extended. Then I go to 'write' and press 'enter'.

5) I format the partitions in a konsole as root with the command mkswap /dev/hda5; mke2fs -J /dev/hda6; swapon -a /dev/hda6

6) reboot and on the desktop rightclick and go to Apps -> Tools -> Frugal install -> Frugal Grub install.

Is this the procedure or is there something wrong?

Posted by Paul54 on Mar. 29 2006,18:05

Can somebody please look at the procedure I have written above and tell me if it is correct?

Thanks!