installing 5.0 on ntfs partition using qtparted?

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10-03-2006, 03:11 AM
A. Jorge Garcia

installing 5.0 on ntfs partition using qtparted?

OK, I just broke down and got myself a new linux box (Dell Dimension 310 with PIV 3Ghz, 1GB RAM, 1280x1024 flat panel and 160GB hdd). The problem is its an XP box right now and I want to install a dual boot on the hdd with the KNOPPIX 5.0.1CD.

Well, I booted the CD and ran qtparted and found the following partitions (info from df in root shell):
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/root 2471 25 2446 2% /
/ramdisk 809556 6340 803216 1% /ramdisk
/UNIONFS 2801220 1998004 803216 72% /UNIONFS
/dev/hda 712926 712926 0 100% /cdrom
/dev/cloop 1991664 1991664 0 100% /KNOPPIX
/dev/sda1 40034 7852 32182 20% /media/sda1
/dev/sda2 113860684 8084728 105775956 8% /media/sda2
/dev/sda3 38210600 67208 38143392 1% /media/sda3
/dev/sda4 4128652 3892716 235936 95% /media/sda4

Wow, now that's weird. I usually find FAT32 installed on one partition with maybe one rescue partition. Here we have a rescue partition in sda1 with FAT16 39MB, a primary partition sda2 with ntfs 108GB, some kind of backup partition sda3 with ntfs 36GB and a restore partition sda4 with FAT32 3.9GB. Also, the primary hdd is usually hda1 and the cdrom drive is usually sda, but here its reversed!

Can I just resize sda2 as I would normally (hda2 with FAT32)? In other words, can qtparted handle resizing ntfs?

TIA,
AJG
10-03-2006, 09:24 AM
ockham23

AJG, gparted is a much better choice. You can either download the gparted LiveCD or get the latest Kanotix LiveCD (Kanotix-2006-01-RC4) that includes not only gparted but also additional useful tools such ntfs-3g.

Re-partitioning your drive may be somewhat difficult because it looks like it holds four primary partitions. Please post the output of

Code:

sudo fdisk -l

so I can take a closer look at it.
10-03-2006, 09:27 AM
malaire

Re: installing 5.0 on ntfs partition using qtparted?

Quote:

Originally Posted by A. Jorge Garcia

Can I just resize sda2 as I would normally (hda2 with FAT32)? In other words, can qtparted handle resizing ntfs?

I don't know about qtparted, but GParted LiveCD (~30MB) can resize NTFS partitions.
10-03-2006, 11:38 PM
A. Jorge Garcia

Wow, guys, thanx for all the input!

OK, I'm not on that box right now so I'll send you the fdisk -l output from the root shell later.

In the meantime, I just have a question about gparted: gparted comes as its own liveCD and as a utility on the latest KANOTIX liveCD? Well, maybe I should just burn the KANOTIX liveCD and install from there? Also, gparted is safe for resizing ntfs partitions and qtparted is not?

BTW, there are 4 partitions, but only sda2 is active (ie: it boots from there).

Regards,
AJG
10-04-2006, 12:41 AM
ockham23

Kanotix includes the latest version of gparted:

Code:

einfach@D1607:~$ apt-cache policy gparted gparted: Installed: 0.3.1+cvs20060928-0+c0.kanotix.1 Candidate: 0.3.1+cvs20060928-0+c0.kanotix.1 Version table: *** 0.3.1+cvs20060928-0+c0.kanotix.1 0 500 http://kanotix.com sid/main Packages 100 /var/lib/dpkg/status 0.2.5-2 0 500 http://ftp.de.debian.org unstable/main Packages 200 http://ftp.de.debian.org testing/main Packages

You can resize NTFS partitions safely, but you first have to run a windows defragmentation tool.

By the way, Kanotix also includes kernel 2.6.18 and compiz.
10-04-2006, 01:46 AM
A. Jorge Garcia

OK, here's the sudo fdisk -l output:

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19452 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 5 40131 de Dell Utility
/dev/sda2 * 6 14180 113860687+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 14181 18937 38210602+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 18938 19452 4136737+ db CP/M / CTOS / ...

OK, so qtparted is not safe on ntfs? There's nothing like gparted on the KNOPPIX 5.0 CD I guess. BTW, this is a newly installed wimpdoze box straight out of the Dell factory, so defrag is likely unnecessary.

Regards,
AJG
10-04-2006, 08:57 AM
ockham23

AJG, gparted is the right kind of tool for this, and defragmentation is a necessary precaution.

But the current partition layout is really unfavorable as there are already four primary partitions. If you were to shrink sda2, the only way to create another partition would be to convert sda2 into an extended partition holding two logical drives sda5 and sda6. This isn't advisable, though, because Windows requires an active primary partition for its bootloader.

What about "resizing" sda3 instead? There's no bootflag, so you could convert it into an extended partition and create several logical drives within it. Even better, you could do the re-partitioning with windows disk manager:
1. Delete primary partition sda3.
2. Create new extended partition sda3 in it's place.
3. Create several logical drives within sda3 and format them with FAT32.
4. Boot computer off the Knoppix LiveCD and re-format future root partition with qtparted (ext2).
5. Run rebuildfstab and install Knoppix.
10-04-2006, 10:34 PM
A. Jorge Garcia

OK, I've used qtparted to resize the active windows partition in wierd cases similar to this.

My new computer science classroom/lab at school had 2 wimpdoze partitions on each of the 25 Dell PCs. In this case, however, hda2 was a FAT16 win95 rescue partition and hda1 was the active winXP FAT32 partiton. I simply used qtparted to resize the FAT32 partition from 40GB to 20GB. Then, from the freed up hdd space, I made hda3 an ext2 partition with about 19.5GB and and hda4 with 512MB for a linuxswap.

I thought I could something similar here, the only catch being the ntfs file format....

BTW, I haven't used any wimpdoze utilities in over 10 years now so I wouldn't know where to start with that. Like I tell my students: "I don't do windows! Its too messy, they don't pay me enough, I always leave streaks and suds...."

Anyway, personally I would do exactly as you say as I don't care one bit about the wimpdoze partition. However, my better half has to use winXP. Also, this is a brand new Dell under warranty with all these new bells and whistles for diagnosing problems remotely from the Dell online resource center, so I can't just kill what's in sda3/sda4....

If I simply resize sda2 could I create an sda5 partition for KNOPPIX or KANOTIX to boot from grub? Also, is it sda because its a SATA drive? What's special about SATA? Is there a problem with SATA and KNOPPIX I should know about?

Frustrated,
AJG
10-05-2006, 09:17 AM
ockham23

AJG, you cannot simply create another partition because there are already four primary partitions, which is the limit for IBM compatible systems. You also cannot simply "convert" sda2 into an extended partition with two logical drives because Windows needs to start from a bootable primary partition. That's why I suggested to delete sda3 instead and use the freed up space to create an extended partition that you can then populate with as many logical drives as you like.
10-06-2006, 12:57 AM
A. Jorge Garcia

OK, OK, I get it! So, I'll destroy sda3 and sda4, resize sda2 and recreate sda3 as ext2 and sda4 as swap.

I guess we'll have to live without the wimpdoze rescue junk.... I can live without that, but I can't live without linux on my PC!

Sounds like a plan?

Thanx for your help,
AJG
10-07-2006, 09:05 AM
ockham23

Keep sda4! Just delete sda3 and put an extended partition ("new sda3") in its place. If you want sda3 to have more space, shrink sda2 before creating new sda3. New sda3 is just a container for several logical disks which you can use for Linux partitions including swap.

Example:
sda1, primary partition
sda2, primary partition, bootable
sda3, extended partition ("container" for logical disks sda5 thru sda7)
-------->sda5, ext3 = Knoppix root partiton
-------->sda6, linux-swap = swap partition
-------->sda7, FAT32 = data partition to be used with Knoppix and Windows
sda4, primary partition

P.S.: "Extended partition" refers to a section of your hard drive, it has nothing to do with filesystems such as ext2 or ext3.
10-07-2006, 03:12 PM
A. Jorge Garcia

OK, I'll set it up as you recommend. I haven't even had a chance to download and burn the latest KANOTIX iso, so I'll do all that this weekend (day job gets in the way of all this fun stuff).

BTW, I'm keeping sda4 because...?

Thanx, AJG
10-07-2006, 03:54 PM
ockham23

... because you paid about 100 bucks to buy what's on it (Windows, Dell software & other stuff). And using 3.9 GB for swap would be way too much.

When you have booted off the Kanotix-LiveCD, go to http://kanotix.com and search the forum for compiz and beryl. beryl is amazing and quite stable, but it requires an Nvidia video card. Kano wrote an installer script for it, so it's easy to get it running.
10-07-2006, 06:11 PM
A. Jorge Garcia

OK, but I thought sda3 was also part of all the Dell support stuff.

BTW, what is beryl or compiz. Also, once I defrag and use gparted to resize sda2 to 50GB and create sda5 as ext2 49.5GB and sda6 as linuxswap 0.5GB, what hdd installer do I use? I don't suppose its called knoppix-installer on a kanotix liveCD, right? Or is that what you meant by compiz and beryl?

Sorry, I never used KANOTIX before. However, I have used some of Kano's nvidia graphics accelorator scripts!

Thanx,
AJG
10-07-2006, 10:19 PM
ockham23

Quote:

OK, but I thought sda3 was also part of all the Dell support stuff.

That would be bad; I thought it wasn't used.

beryl is a 3D window manager. When I first heard about it, I thought it was some stupid eye candy, trying to mimic Windows Vista. But it's much better, and I even bought an nvidia video card to be able to use it. It's easy to install, and I've already posted a how-to in the Kanotix forum, so you can test it with the LiveCD right away: http://kanotix.com/PNphpBB2-viewtopic-t-21468.html

Desktops are arranged on a cube. You can navigate the cube with Ctrl+Alt+left mouse button or Ctrl+Alt+cursor left/right/up/down.
10-08-2006, 03:09 PM
A. Jorge Garcia

OK, it looks like sda3 is just a backup partition. So, you are right, sda4 is much more important. I suppose I can kill it!

BTW, I downloaded KANOTIX-2006-01-RC4-preview on that new WIMxP box and couldn't get roxio to burn anything. I'm going to have to redownload it on one of my KNOPPIX boxes and burn it there....

Thanx for all your help,
AJG
10-09-2006, 02:27 AM
A. Jorge Garcia

You know this really is a pain that you can only have 4 primary partitions! If I could make more primary partitions, I could just resize sda2 to make room for sda5 and sda6!

I think I'm going to play it safe and not resize anything. I'll just use the 38GB sda3 for KANOTIX. I was going to use KANOTIX to get gparted to resize sda2 which has ntfs, but now I'll just use it to have a good hdd install without a broken apt-get system. I'd like to try the KNOPPIX DVD eventually anyway....

KANOTIX doesn't have a DVD version, does it?

TIA,
AJG
10-09-2006, 09:40 AM
ockham23

Quote:

KANOTIX doesn't have a DVD version, does it?

No, there's no official DVD version. It wouldn't make much sense either, as Kanotix is designed for hd install and you can apt-get any package from the Debian repositories.
10-09-2006, 11:29 PM
A. Jorge Garcia

OK, I finally broke down and resized sda2 to about 70GB and deleted sda3 to make it about 70GB formatted ext2.

I didn't have time to do it, but next I will install KANOTIX on sda3 using grub. I assume kanotix-installer is similar to knoppix-installer and that I can use grub, right?

TIA,
AJG
10-10-2006, 07:48 AM
ockham23

Yes, Kanotix will install grub as boot manager. You can launch the Kanotix installer from the Kanotix menu.
10-11-2006, 08:20 PM
A. Jorge Garcia

Wow. KANOTIX runs like a dream! No problems with the install either.

Thanx for all your help,
AJG
10-12-2006, 11:31 PM
ockham23

You're welcome!