Partitioning... of a newbie

[xaviers2002]

X mzilikazi,

Does this mean that qtparted is not able to do the partition? Because from what I saw it seems that this program does nothing but showing the partition ES. ext3 reiser etc..., does not format or mount the hardrive.
Maybe this is why You are telling me that cfdisk is the only program I need.
Thank You for Your advices.

[mzilikazi]

Well qtparted can make partitions and resize partitions and maybe it can format them too but it's rather easy to format a partition yourself like so:

mke2fs -j /dev/hda3

That puts an ext3 format on hda3 but as I said the installer will also format your partition for you.

[Cuddles]

xaviers2002,

I think the reason why mzilikazi is saying that qtparted is not needed, and all you need is cfdisk, is the following...

Qtparted does a lot of things, resize, change format, format, mount, etc... And yes, cfdisk is only a partition tool, not one as "multi-functional" as qtparted, but none the less, a very good, and always included, tool for partitioning.

Lets see if I can use an analogy on this one...

Qtparted is like a Swiss Army Knife, with tons of tools on it, whereas, cfdisk is a screwdriver, made to do one thing, and do it the best it can.

If you need a complete toolbox, at a moment notice, the Swiss Army Knife comes in quite handy, but, if all you need is a screwdriver, and you had the Swiss Army Knife and the screwdriver, you would probably use the screwdriver for the project. ( because it was made specifically for use as a screwdriver )

You can use qtparted for doing what you are asking, nothing wrong with that, just that cfdisk was made for just this purpose - partitioning - its all it does, and it does it best. It is always included in any Knoppix install ( not sure of this, so don't quote me here, I think it is included with almost all Linux distro's ) - not so with qtparted.

The Knoppix installers use cfdisk for partitioning, so if you get used to using it, you can't go wrong. I think the idea here is, if you look at a auto mechanic, they have tons of tools to use, and the reason for it is, if they need to do something, they have the right tool for the job. They could use a cresent wrench for something, but if they have a set of open-ended wrenches, they would most always use the open-ended set over the cresent, if they have them available, because thats is what they were made for specifically.

The same is true for Windows and Linux tools... You shouldn't use fdisk for Linux, and probably, not use cfdisk for Windows. You would use the right tool for the right job.

If you want to use qtparted, go for it, but during the install of Knoppix, it is still going to start up cfdisk to do your partitioning for you. If you already did your partitioning beforehand, then you would just exit/quit out of cfdisk when it starts up.

Hope this helps,
Ms. Cuddles

[xaviers2002]

ok thanks,

What do You think is the best way to go: install knoppix at boot or let the cd install itself on the ram and than run knx2hd?
thanks

[mzilikazi]

ok thanks,

What do You think is the best way to go: install knoppix at boot or let the cd install itself on the ram and than run knx2hd?
thanks

Using the toram cheat really won't affect the installation except it may be faster. Not sure on that one.....
knx2hd is just a symlink to knoppix-installer

I usually just boot into run level 2 and run the instaler from there. Why waste system resources running X and KDE when you don't even need them for the installation?

[xaviers2002]

Ok thanks,
What "run level 2" means?

[Cuddles]

ok thanks,

What do You think is the best way to go: install knoppix at boot or let the cd install itself on the ram and than run knx2hd?
thanks

Using the toram cheat really won't affect the installation except it may be faster. Not sure on that one.....
knx2hd is just a symlink to knoppix-installer

I usually just boot into run level 2 and run the instaler from there. Why waste system resources running X and KDE when you don't even need them for the installation?

As a side note mzilikazi,

I needed to run the X and KDE interface, as far as I could figure out. In v3.3 I could, for the life of me, never get alsa working, so I booted completely into Knoppix off the Live CD, with the alsa cheatcode, and then did the install, and it gave my hard drive install an "inherited" alsa install - which I could never get any of the alsa stuff to work, even when I followed all the instructions to the letter. I hope to test this inheritance thing out in v3.4 as well, since it worked for me. So, I would say that if you want to use the Live CD to inherit boot cheatcode configurations, from within X or KDE, you might need to let Knoppix's Live CD boot all the way into them, and do the install from a konsole in KDE.

Just my thoughts,
Ms. Cuddles

[mzilikazi]

run level 2 is attained by typing the number '2' at the boot prompt along w/ any other cheats you need to boot correctly.

[satyre]

Hi, I'm new here and on UNIX so I hope that you will be nice nice with me

Here's my case... I've been given a copy of knoopix by an actual stranger with whom I've talk only once of Unix in my neibourhood !

Of course, being a Window user all my life and tired of it, i've tried the CD and decided to install it ( HD ) on a old PC that I had... 4 geg, pentium 450 with a little RAM and/but my HD was already formatted by the way...

To make a long story short, I've partition the disk in 2 .. one for SWAP and the other of free space like mentionned in knoopix.. Or in Qpart if you prefer!

Everything seems to work perfectly but the problem is that all I see on my desktop is partition HDA2 giving me 382 B of space.... and i'm supposed to have and to see someting like 1.2 GB available.... I probably did someting wrong in the partition part but hey, I've seen it and installed it in a day !

It's my first week dealing with Unix so please dont laught !

Hope I will get some help here, Thanks !

PS... Sorry for my english, I'm french-Canadian !

[mzilikazi]

Hi, I'm new here and on UNIX so I hope that you will be nice nice with me

As long as you're not French-Canadian we might be nice.

Open a terminal,
get root
su
issue:
fdisk -l

and

free -m

Post the output of each please.