> On Tuesday 30 December 2008 22:18:41 John Culleton wrote: > > I just bought an HP Pavilion dv9925nr wiht Vista for my wife. Knoppix > > runs on it but I haven't sorted out the wireless LAN connection yet > > for Knoppix. > > > > I want to install Linux permanently on this box, which requres > > repartitioning. Currently there are two partitions, one for Vista and > > one for backup of Vista. I need suggestions for partitioning software > > that will allow me to reduce the size of the Vista partition to make > > room for a Debian partition. Suggestions on preparing the Vista > > partion prior to reduction in size are also welcome. Other than one > > or two emails and Firefox I have added no files to the system.
Hi, I've just been through this process. I wish I'd made better notes because it turned out to be quite involved. The computer is a Toshiba Satellite L305D-S5890 with AMD Athlon QL-62, (512KB cache per processor) AMD Radeon 3100 video, Atheros 802.11 b/g wireless. My first approach was to use the partition manager provided with Vista to shrink the partition. That managed to shrink the main Vista partition (150GB) by just 5GB, even after hours of turning off paging, turning off checkpointing and other things that inconveniently happen to interfere with partition resizing (each warning of dire consequences if disabled.) I wanted more, so I tried several live cds. However none including gparted-live succeeded: either didn't boot (typically booting the kernel but not finding the DVD/CD drive) or couldn't resize NTFS partitions. (Later I found the drive is /dev/sr0, maybe that will work if you specify it at the boot prompt.) I finally accepted what Vista offered: 5GB. The freespace should be made as an extended (not primary) partition. That gives the most flexibility, especially if you intend to use more than one partition for linux. (I made it primary at first, then later had to repartition.) I installed Debian on the 5GB partition. The Grub installation automatically setup the dual-boot part. Then: apt-get install ntfsprogs which includes Ntfsresize. That was the one that worked for me to resize the main Vista partition (150GB to 30GB). Then I could expand my Linux partition, and I lived happily ever after. More or less: it took a week or so to reconfigure what I had in my other installation. My first installation was amd64 sid. But then realized is something doesn't work in 64-bit, I'll need to check if it works in 32-bit, so I did a second installation. Now I'm using that second installation more than the first. The i686 kernel detects my Athlon QL-62 (both processors), and my notebook stays warm doing work units for fold...@home. The amd64-targeting kernel works with the i686 sid just fine, except for one tiny library that is important to me. Otherwise I'd love bragging rights. Now if I can just get a USB webcam to be recognized properly so that Skype under linux will work... (I bought two.) Good luck with your repartitioning/installation!!! Joel > > -- > > John Culleton -- Joel Roth -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org