On Mon, 2003-02-10 at 07:18, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: <Snipped original post> And I'm going to do something I don't do normally... mix postings. :)
> > > > G'day, > Thanks to those who answered. I followed the instructions from > Lanman and Adolpho above, and got this far: > * I disconnected my 80G HDD - better safe than sorry.... LOL > * I fired up Partition Magic and resized the existing NTFS partition > down to 8G, and labelled it "windoze". > * I added another 8G partition, made it FAT32 [on a guess - I figured > if Linux couldn't see files on a NTFS partition it probably couldn't > install in one either:)], labelled it "linux" > * set the remaining 22G [I wonder where the other 2G went???] as FAT32 > and labelled it "archive". OK So far sweetheart you're doing just fine. Just remember the rule: PM WILL NOT create or read any linux partition that IS NOT Ext2. If its any other partitioning scheme, PM fails. Period. It WILL corrupt data too if it doesn't agree with the leading blocks & how the partitions have been allocated. IE, fire up PM it gives you some partitioning block error. DO NOT LET IT FIX THIS! Ever! It will with prejudice toast that partition & your linux & possibly your windows partitions will be terminated. You've been warned. (Trust me I did this... three or 4 times as a matter of fact. First time unintentional. Every other time it was an experiment to see if I could reproduce the results.) > > I fired up windows and moved my data from C: to E: [the newly created > archive partition]. So far so good - windoze sees all three partitions. > > Put in Mandrake 9.0 CD1, went through the languages, kbd/mouse, security > - accepted the defaults as they seemed reasonable. > "Setup Filesystems" shows a graphical representation something like this: > +---------+------------+---------------------------------------------+ > | | | | > | /mnt/nt | /mnt/win_c | /mnt/win_d | > | | | | > +---------+------------+---------------------------------------------+ > > This **looks** right, but it's not seeing the labels, and it **seems** > to be confused: what it calls win_c is actually E and what it calls win_d > is actually F [D: is the CDROM]. To be fair, it does say "just a guess" > in the details box when I click on each partition. > But: there doesn't seem to be any way [that I can see] to be sure. > And even if I was pretty sure that the second partition is the one to > put Linux on, I don't see any way on this screen to tell it to do that. > "Auto Allocate" says: "not enough space for auto-allocating" OK lets stop here a minute. Now keep in mind, MDK is literally guessing. You'd think it would "know" but b/c of the way M$hit allocates partitions & the weird scheme it uses (tech details you'd rather not know) MDK can only guess at which partition is which. Usually MDK is right. I've yet to have it guess wrong. And I think I can safely say I've partitioned & installed MDK 8.0 - 9.0 at least 20 times now. :) Yar! Just call me Queen of Linux Installations. :) > The wizard gives three options: > - erase the entire disk > - use the free space on the windoze partition > - use the windoze partition for loopback > > I clicked on "toggle to expert mode" [with some trepidation, because > clearly I'm not - LOL] and found a button to format the partitions, > but I chickened out, because I can't be sure which partition is which. > And anyhow, the partitions are already formatted FAT32 - do they > need to be formatted again to put Linux on them? > I guess I'm looking for some button that says "install here"... > > ...asking too much? <g> > > -- > Merlin Zener Hm... well expert mode is *IMO* simpler anyway. The auto partitoioning tool gives you just three partitions after slicing them out of one of your FAT32's. It will give a / (root), swap & /home partition. These are all you need to start with. More is just confusing for now. Heh again, trust me on this one. Likely it can't autoallocate b/c the thing is a FAT32 partition *and it won't delete that partition & startover w/out being told to explicitly*. Yes you need to delete one of your FATs & re-partition/re-format it as a linux partition. If you need to choose one partitioning scheme, try Ext2 or 3. Three is better IMO. Any other kind of scheme is asking for trouble. (*giggles* Who am I to talk? I tried Reiser on my second installation! But I like to play with fire... probably explains that big burn/skin graft I have on my body). Anyway... Once you pick an partitioning scheme (Ext 2 or 3), you should be able to use autoallocate. OR vice versa... I may have it backwards. Hope this helps? :)
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