SuSE 10.1 and XP installed on same harddrive but different partitions

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sudevan

18 posts

Geek

#11146 5-Jan-2007 12:22

Hi guys,

As per the subject header, I am planning to install SuSE 10.1 and XP on the same hard drive but on different partitions.

I have a 150GB SATA disk which has been partitioned with 20GB(NTFS) reserved for XP and 15GB(FAT32) for SuSE. The rest are reserved for storage purposes.

My question, is this kind of setup possible? Most, if not all of the guides I've come acrossed on Linux forums only have material on setting up Windows and Linux on 2 SEPARATE hard disks.

I hope someone can shed some light on this.

juha

1317 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#57006 5-Jan-2007 16:22

Yes, it's possible but is there any particular reason you want to use FAT32 for SuSE instead of Ext3fs or XFS?

Juha

barf

643 posts

Ultimate Geek

#57009 5-Jan-2007 16:47

don't make a Linux partition in the XP installer, leave "unpartitioned space" there instead
install XP before Linux!
use the SuSE partitioner to create your Linux partitions in the free/unpartitioned space

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sudevan

18 posts

Geek

#57013 5-Jan-2007 17:25

Well, from what I've read in most forums, they recommend installing SuSE on a FAT32 partition. I have installed SuSE only on one machine but not together with XP so this is quite new for me. This is one of the links I referred to.

http://susefaq.sourceforge.net/faq/inst_winxp1.html

Barf:
Ouch

, I have already made a Linux partition in the XP installer and there is no unpartitioned space now. Any way I can undo this? Formatting the disk and wiping windows isnt quite a big deal. I purposely didnt get much on the computer yet for the fear of something like this happening

barf

643 posts

Ultimate Geek

#57014 5-Jan-2007 17:45

theres no need to wipe everything!
in the SuSE installer delete that FAT32 partition and put a Linux one there instead.
that document advises the FAT32 partition is only created to share files between Windows and Linux - you could however use the NTFS partition to do this. I would ignore this step but it's up to you.

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sudevan

18 posts

Geek

#57017 5-Jan-2007 17:57

Gosh that what quick of you. I do take your word on the disk file system. Ill give that a go and see what happens

Another question, which may be a silly one, Im currently downloading disks 1 to 5 of the SuSE installation. Would it be ok if i burnt all of it onto one DVD instead of 5 CD-Rs and run the installation? Will the Linux installer be able to detect each disk on the DVD or will it still prompt to enter the 2nd, 3rd...disk and so on? (im quite a novice, i admit

By the way I really appreciate you helping out. Most of the people I got assistance from here have been fantastic

barf

643 posts

Ultimate Geek

#57022 5-Jan-2007 18:47

sudevan: Would it be ok if i burnt all of it onto one DVD instead of 5 CD-Rs and run the installation?

that probably won't work - unless you can find a DVD image (~4GB .iso) to burn to dvd

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Methesda

11 posts

Geek

#57083 6-Jan-2007 11:19

I have had great results running a Suse 10.1 OSS version on my XP drive, and also I did not repartition the drives, but let the suse installer do it for me.

As has been mention, do install XP first, as it will happily overwrite the bootloader for Suse, making the Suse partitions inaccessible.

Use of a 'journaling' filesystem, such as ext, or xfs is definetly preferable to fatXX. It is true that a fat partition would allow for easy file sharing between the two systems, However...

Did you know that the Suse linux kernel, is by default setup with the modules need to read from an NTFS, or FAT filesystem. In other words, if you DON'T make another partition, you will still be able to read from your windows partition, via a very helpful network icon on the desktops of Suse.

I found this to be a perfect solution saving me space, as I sometimes wanted to get files from windows, but rarely do I want to get anything I produce on Suse (which is to say mostly program code) onto windows.

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sudevan

18 posts

Geek

#57217 8-Jan-2007 11:32

Methesda: I have had great results running a Suse 10.1 OSS version on my XP drive, and also I did not repartition the drives, but let the suse installer do it for me.

As has been mention, do install XP first, as it will happily overwrite the bootloader for Suse, making the Suse partitions inaccessible.

Use of a 'journaling' filesystem, such as ext, or xfs is definetly preferable to fatXX. It is true that a fat partition would allow for easy file sharing between the two systems, However...

Did you know that the Suse linux kernel, is by default setup with the modules need to read from an NTFS, or FAT filesystem. In other words, if you DON'T make another partition, you will still be able to read from your windows partition, via a very helpful network icon on the desktops of Suse.

I found this to be a perfect solution saving me space, as I sometimes wanted to get files from windows, but rarely do I want to get anything I produce on Suse (which is to say mostly program code) onto windows.

Thats some good info, im trying to do pretty much almost the exact same thing u did. This is my primary source of information, or a guide id say, which im using as my reference

http://www.tweakhound.com/linux/suse/101/installing_1.htm

Gonna work on the setup tonight. Hope it works out fine

sudevan

18 posts

Geek

#57900 14-Jan-2007 23:27

I've got both Xp and Linux running beautifully. THanks a lot for the advice. I got the Linux partition formatted with reiser and am using KDE as my default desktop.

I've tried removing upgrading to firefox 2.0. A friend recommended I uninstall firefox from the package and download firefox 2.0 and install that. Which is just what i did.

And that led to another problem. After decompressing the tar.gz file, I could not bring myself to find any of those typical 'installation wizard' that you would typically find on windows machines. Plus i dont have firefox at all since it was removed.

Right now im running firefox 2.0 by executing it through Konsole. Anyone can tell me how do I get a nice Firefox icon on my desktop so that i dont have to type codes to launch it each time?

sudevan

18 posts

Geek

#57902 14-Jan-2007 23:48

sudevan: I've got both Xp and Linux running beautifully. THanks a lot for the advice. I got the Linux partition formatted with reiser and am using KDE as my default desktop.

I've tried removing upgrading to firefox 2.0. A friend recommended I uninstall firefox from the package and download firefox 2.0 and install that. Which is just what i did.

And that led to another problem. After decompressing the tar.gz file, I could not bring myself to find any of those typical 'installation wizard' that you would typically find on windows machines. Plus i dont have firefox at all since it was removed.

Right now im running firefox 2.0 by executing it through Konsole. Anyone can tell me how do I get a nice Firefox icon on my desktop so that i dont have to type codes to launch it each time?

Oh and I forgot to add...i did create a Link to Application on my desktop to launch firefox without typing codes in Konsole. Although it doesnt look as nice as the original icon and takes a little more longer to launch the browser I guess its better than nothing at all?