Partitioning my second HDD for Linux.

Factual Questions
1

First, thanks for the help in getting this HDD formatted and recognized so I can use it. :slight_smile:

Recap:

I have the stock 40GB HDD that boots up XP. The 200GB HDD is basically used as storage for games, video, etc.

I’ve asked about Linux before and can now (I think) finally get into it. I’ll probably start another thread in the near future on which distro to use, but for now I just need some help on setting up the system for it.

What I would like to do is get the second HDD to run it when I feel like using it. In other words, I want the system to boot into XP, then run on Linux whenever I feel like playing around. (Is this possible? Or do I need to boot into Linux?)

Here’s my ideal, it will give a better sense of what I’m hoping to do.

I can boot into XP, then go into the second HDD and run the system on Linux. (Can this be done where the system resources aren’t being shared with Windows?)

In this perfect world, I can switch to Linux, screw it up beyond repair, and just boot back to XP to restore Linux to it’s default without messing up any of my Windows settings. In other words, can I set this up so that I’d in effect be working with two seperate towers?

I work with XP and Unix everyday, but I’m not sure how to set up my own system to integrate Linux into it. (Yes, Unix and Linux are different, but for what I want to do they’re fundamentally the same.)

As always, please explain it to me like I’m 5 years old. I really don’t want the hassle of recovering my system. I have to do that for too many stores as it is while I’m at work.

And, of course, thanks for any help.

2

Good man. I see you took the setup advice from me and others and did it. You are in a sweet position now.

Unfortunatly, I am going to have to be very vague here to give others some ideas. It sounds like you don’t want a full Linux system within a system. You just want to learn and play around. I work on corporate computer systems including Unix, and Linux but setting them up for home use is not really my thing.

Here is what I do know:

  1. You could build another partition, install Linux, and use a boot commander program to use it whenever you choose. That would give you an actual Linux system that you wouldn’t be bothered with unless you rebooted a chose it. You get all the benefits and it is a system within a system.

  2. You could do some type of emulation. I am not really in my league here. There used to be some Linux shells that you could boot within Windows that would give you a Linux window to play with. It is an actual Linux operating system boot it runs in a window like an application. I haven’t seen one of those in a while but they must be out there. That would allow you to learn Linux and do Linux type things withouth committing to much.

3

Rereading, I should add. You can set up a partition as the real-deal Linux however you want and it will not affect Windows at all unless you get really creative. Many people have dual-boot systems and the universes don’t really spill over. You would just have to make a partition of 20 gb or more and install what ever flavor of Linux you want. You would then need a boot utility to pick XP or Linux at startup.

That is the way that you probably want to go based on what you wrote. You will end up with to seperate computers in one if you go that route.

4

That’s exactly what I want to do. 20GB is nothing as I’ve adapted to 40GB total for the past few years. I now have 240GB total. 20 is acceptable. And much cheaper than setting up a second box.

Yes, you do seem to know exactly what I’m trying to do. I want the full power of Linux at my command with the safety of the physical tower being able to still run normally in XP if (when) I really screw something up. I am hoping to avoid being without a computer while waiting a week to get the system fixed when I get cocky and screw everything up getting into the programming side of Linux.

I can’t afford to go back to school for four years of social awareness classes and Intro to Whatever to advance in my career. (There are no schools for programming near me and tele-courses are too expensive.) I need to learn this and my best option is to just do it on my own learning from my mistakes.

In other words, while there are differences between Linux and Unix, the two are similar enough that working with one and playing with the other will have a real life impact on my career oportunities. I have a very serious motivation to learn the language.

I just don’t want to interrupt my porn access. :smiley:

5

I’m running a dual boot linux system on the laptop I am using to type this. It runs windows 2000 and Debian. Linux is much easier to install than it was in the old days, and some of the distributions have gotten very easy to install.

For you I would recommend that you download what’s called a “live CD”, which is a complete linux system on a CD that is bootable. Knoppix is the most popular and it works well. That way you can try it out.

The right way to set up linux is to install Windows first. You have already done this. Then pick the distribution you want and install it over the top of windows. You will not be able to start linux while windows is running, you have to install a boot loader. This is generally automatic in a linux system. You essentially get a menu that lets you pick which OS to load when you boot the computer. You will be able to pick a default OS so if someone else uses the computer they won’t even notice when they turn it on.

For newbies I like fo recommend Ubuntu, Kubuntu, or Debian for the ease of installation, stability, and ease of getting software packages. They all use some form of apt to install software and it works really well. Ubuntu comes with Gnome and Kubuntu uses KDE, otherwise they are about the same. I prefer KDE and use it in Debian. I chose Debian because it has drivers for my particular laptop built in, but on a desktop PC that is not such a big deal.

6

Don’t joke about losing porn access. Let us know before you think about doing something extreme that could result in that so tha it can be prevented.

It does sound like you just need:

  1. A partition
  2. A Linux flavor
  3. And a boot commander

I am a professional but I have never done that on a home computer. I know that is the general idea. You can segregate Windows and Linux just fine. Lots of people do.

I think what you want to do from here is:

  1. Create a partition
  2. Ask for help in choosing a Linux distro (lots of past threads).
  3. And look for a commander utility to do dual booting. A more specific thread could probably get you an answer very quickly. It is a common task.
7

I have actually run a triple-boot machine. WinXP Pro, Win98, and Lindows. (Gave it a try for free. Not really into Linux, but I thought I’d try a flavor.) The BIOS took care of the boot sequence, so I’m not sure why you’d need a commander utility if you aren’t going to try to run two OSes at once.

8

asterion: Maybe I’m showing my ignorance, but how does the BIOS help you multi-boot? And how would you run two OSes at once without either emulating one of them or running an exokernel beneath both of them? (And since I doubt you’re running VM on a Windows 98 box, I don’t think exokernels are part of the picture.)

(And, IMHO, Linspire (called Lindows before a lawsuit with Microsoft) is a pretty un-Linux-like distro. Ubuntu is closer to what most Linux users are using.)

duffer: Dual-booting is so common I think all modern, mainstream distros will pretty well walk you through it. The biggest decision is deciding precisely how you’re going to arrange the new partitions for Linux. I suggest three: A root partition, mounted on /, for the OS itself to live, a swap partition, not mounted anywhere, half as big as the amount of RAM the PC has installed, and a home partition, mounted on /home, where all your data will live. Figuring out precise sizes is up to you; I think the installation process for most distros will tell you how much the OS needs to be happy and make suggestions about swap space, and the rest is yours to put into the home partition. I know Fedora Core 4 will do all of that.

Dual-booting, in case you’ve never done it, works like this: When you first turn on your machine, neither OS is booted. Instead, a bootloader is run that shows you a menu listing all of the OSes it knows about on your PC. Once you have chosen an OS from that menu, that OS boots like nothing odd was going on. From there on out, that OS owns your PC and will largely leave the other OS’s stuff alone. (Linux can allow you to read (and sometimes write) Windows partitions, but Windows remains blissfully unaware of Linux.) You can ruin one OS but, unless you do something really complex and arcane, you won’t ruin anything in the other OS, or your ability to boot into the other OS.

So mainly what you need prior to the Linux installation process is some free space on the hard drive you want to put Linux on. You can resize partitions from inside the installation process, but it might be easier (and somewhat less risky) if there was unpartitioned space to begin with.

9

Without something like VMWare (which costs), you cannot “use Windows and then switch to Linux” without rebooting. Derleth has it right regarding system startup.

It sounds to me like you want to use a LiveCD (as orangetruck recommends; I recommend Ubuntu, or Knoppix as a second) at this point. You don’t have to mess with partitions at all; when you want to play around, just reboot from the CD. You’ll need to change your BIOS boot settings if they aren’t already set that way. No boot loader necessary and no effect to your existing partitions. The only issue is that it will run much more slowly than if it were actually installed.

If you want to take it a step further, you could then put a single new ext3 (or other filesystem type, perhaps a FAT32 or somesuch that Windows can also recognize?) partition on your new HD to read/write to. I’d not recommend this, just because if you’re going to partition, you would most likely benefit from the partitioning tools available at system installation; it would stink to have gotten familiar enough with a distro and find out on installation that you need to overwrite the temporary partition you had been using. In other words, if you’re gonna muck around with it, you might as well go whole hog.

10

A question for those of you who are suggesting Knoppix or Ubuntu. Why not Redhat? I will admit I haven’t been around linux for a few years, but Redhat seemed to be the top dog at the time. Easy install, etc.

If you want to get creative with the install you might want to make a partition that is mounted in both linux, and windows so you can copy files back and forth without much problems. You could have linux just read/write your Windows partition, but you might accidently format it or something(Speaking from experiance). If you setup a seperate partition just for transfering files then if you accidently format it no big deal.

-Otanx

11

First, the GQ answer: as far as I know, there is no RedHat-based LiveCD, which is what I recommended. Now, my opinion and experience: for system and package selection and maintenance, I’ve found the apt system much better than yum; I also feel more comfortable with the stability of Debian-based systems, as Fedora tends to be more experimental. It’s not due to the install, which is damn good for most current, mainstream distros.

Yes, this is what I was suggesting with my mention of FAT32 (although I forget which filesystem is most current, as I don’t do Windows – vfat?) At any rate, my understanding is that there are still issues with writing to an NTFS partition.

12

I totally forgot about using a LiveCD. From what I know of it, I think that’s my best bet. 2 more questions with that.

First, you mentioned the boot process in BIOS. I’m guessing you mean to set the system up to boot from D:\ if a disk is detected, otherwise boot from C:. Is this correct?

Second, if I use LiveCD I can still save to F:, correct?

I really appreciate all the help in this. Thanks!

13

A live CD may or may not let you write to your hard drive. It all depends on the distro and what format your hard drive is in. If you’re running Knoppix, and your hard drive is NTFS (which it most likely is with XP) you will not be able to write to the drive, but you’ll be able to read from it. (I speak from recent experience on this matter.) That being said, many distros now have Live CDs, so you can test drive them before you “buy” as it were. (You can find some helpful pointers and links in this thread.)

One thing you need to be aware of, is that there can be potential hardware compatibility issues. If you’re on dial-up, odds are very good that getting everything set up to surf the web is going to be a royal PITA, and if you’ve got AOHell, just forget it.

Another thing to be aware of is that installing programs can be a PITA, depending upon how it’s set up. Some are as easy to install as Windows, others are not, and uninstalling programs is something that I haven’t completely figured out yet. This can be a problem, because certain programs require other programs to be installed first, and if you try to install them in the wrong order, they won’t work, and you have to uninstall everything and do it in the right order.

All that being said, the nice thing about Linux is with your machine being unburdened by anti-spyware/anti-virus apps, you’ll notice a performance boost. Also, while this site’s for Mac users, you’ll find that the games and things are in Linux as well, and require the same steps to access. :smiley:

14

First, you’re welcome. Second, if D:\ is your CD drive, yes.

As Tuckerfan points out (and I alluded to), only if the filesystem on F:\ is writable by both Windows and Linux. That is, not an NTFS partition (unless I’m not aware of recently implemented abilities in Linux, which is always possible) or a standard Linux filesystem type (e.g., ext3). However, if you’re going to partition your second hard drive (which is F:/ in this scenario), just make sure it’s FAT32 (same as vfat, according to this HOWTO on shared partitions, for which I cannot vouch myself). However, if you are going to go this extra step, you may just want to install a Linux distro so that the partitions are set up properly for a working system. All the distros I’ve tried recently (well…OK, that’s Ubuntu and Debian) have the option to not write the boot-loader; I’m not sure how easy it is (of if it’s possible) to install it at a later time, but I’d seriously consider possible consequences before making any decision.

Tuckerfan - may I ask why setting up dial-up is a PITA? Assuming the modem has drivers, it should be fairly trivial. I suspect a service like AOL might have (and require) use of a Windows-only client, in which case it’s not surprising it won’t work. Just wondering if I’m missing something (and it might be pertinent for duffer). Also, might I ask about your issues with [un]installing software? It sounds like you ran into the Linux version of .DLL hell, which is never pretty. But if you use apt or yum (for Debian-based or RedHat systems respectively), you shouldn’t have a problem. (Not that you won’t, but you shouldn’t.) Of course, if you’re installing random software off the net, well…

One thing I forgot in response to Otanx: in my experience, Ubuntu recognizes more hardware than other distros (slightly more than Knoppix, even, which is one reason I recommend Ubuntu first).

15

My experience isn’t recent, but back when I was on dialup, I couldn’t find the necessary drivers for the winmodem I had (nor any other winmodem, really), so I couldn’t get the modem to work under Linux. As for AOHell, they only support Windows and Macs (and from what I understand, the Mac software is crap).

Well, some of it wasn’t just random software. :wink: The main one was a codec pack/player needed for watching copyrighted DVDs. (Danged if I can remember what it was, now.) Anywho, when I did the install, it said I didn’t have XYZ installed, thus this stuff wouldn’t work. Checking one of the Linux forums, I found a thread which detailed all the necessary steps to correct my problem. The one post with the pertinant info was freakin’ huge and involved a lot of complicated steps needed to complete the process. Mind you, I’m still fumbling around Linux, and trying to figure out how everything works (you get much beyond an RPM install and I’m lost). One of these days I’ll get around to figuring it all out.

16

Ah. That must’ve been quite awhile ago; to my knowledge (and experience about 5 years ago), winmodems were not supported but are now.

Ah, yes. Huge PITA (thank you, DMCA). Might I suggest mplayer, if that’s not what you tried? Yes, there are a lot of dependencies. For my Debian system, I came across this set of instructions which helped immensely. Googling now, it looks as though this DVD playback HOWTO covers many distros and is accurate.

I know I’ve mentioned apt and yum before, but I don’t think I can stress this enough – if at all possible, learn to use a package repository. It will save you a lot of pain in system maintenance and software installation.

17

Also, I apologize for getting off topic, duffer. However, I assume all this related information is pertinent if you’re going to actually use Linux.

18

This was about 2 or 3 years ago. And from what I understand (I might be wrong in this) is that drivers for winmodems are hit and miss in their availability.

I got MPlayer installed and it works, but the app that it needed wouldn’t work because of the missing program, as I recall.

And what the heck is that?

19

Personally, I think winmodems are crap. In my experience, they are slower than real modems (because they have to communicate with, and burden, the CPU to do everything) and you can’t figure out what’s going wrong with them nearly as easily. Plus, drivers for specific winmodems are not always available under Linux. If you have to use a dialup connection, I suggest getting a good external modem that hooks up to a serial port.

A package repository is a website that has a bunch of packages for a specific distro. Red Hat mantains a package repository for Fedora (the new end-user-oriented Red Hat-driven distro), the Debain people around the world maintain Debian packages for all Debian-based distros (Knoppix, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, etc.), and so on. Packages are great because package managers (apt-get in the Debian-based world, yum in the Red Hat universe) will automatically seek out, download, and install everything the package you want depends upon, without you turning grey doing everything by hand. There is no Windows analogue to packages in the Linux world.

Digital Stimulus: There is experimental write support for NTFS in the Linux kernel. That means wise people don’t use it on filesystems that contain data they care about. A different option, if you have Windows installed, is Captive NTFS, which ‘captures’ the Windows NTFS drivers and fools them into working for Linux. It’s fairly easy to use if you follow instructions, but it isn’t anywhere near as convenient as being able to treat NTFS partitions the same way as ext3 or VFAT partitions. I use it and it seems very good, but it will sometimes make Windows think that it has to run filesystem checks the next time it’s booted. I haven’t lost any data so far.

And I agree that trying to install Linux onto a FAT32 partition (if that’s what you suggested) is an extremely bad idea, not least because I don’t even think it’s possible. The FAT32 filesystem doesn’t allow people to own files and doesn’t allow files to have permissions attached, two things that are essential to running Linux in any semi-sane fashion. (Plus, it doesn’t really allow long filenames. It implements a hack that makes you think it does. This probably won’t matter to Linux, which knows how to play along, but the other facts certainly will.)

20

I assume that you’re asking what a “package repository” is? (I suppose I actually used the wrong term; probably “package management software” is more apt (hah!), as a repository is simply where the software is located.)

Well, one thing that established Debian as a viable distro is it’s package management system (and the large number of packages available). To install a package, you simply type apt-get install [package] (or use a front-end like dselect or synaptic. The package manager will take care of all the dependencies for you – no muss, no fuss. RedHat systems use yum for comparable functionality. Other distros have other package managers; I know Gentoo uses portage, SuSe uses YaST, and Arch Linux uses pacman. Other distros…don’t know.

If you’re using a distro without a package manager, I’m sorry. My only advice is to switch distros or be prepared to waste a lot of time and put up with a lot of aggravation.