Hard drive install - issues

[gradnite]

Hi.

I have read as much as I can about installin Knoppix onto the hard drive, but I've yet to accomplish it.

My hard drive has a NTFS partition that Windows is on, and I have a smaller partition that I want to install Knoppix onto, which is currently in FAT32. I would like to have a dual-boot system.

How do I go about doing this? Do I first need to make the swap partition out of a slice of the FAT 32 partition I have? The partitioner in Knoppix does not seem to want to allow me to do that. Am I going to have trouble making my computer a dual-boot system?

[mzilikazi]

You'll need to shrink a partition to allow room for another partition that will be used as a swap partition. To do so open up a terminal and issue:

sudo qtparted

The usage of Qtparted seems fairly self explainatory but I'm not overly familiar w/ it myself.
*NOTE* You do not have to have a swap partition but it is highly recommended if you have less than 512M system RAM.

You do not mention the size of your partitions! I presume you'd simply shrink the FAT32 part to create a new swap partition then reformat the resized FAT32 w/ ext3 or other Linux file system.

Details please........

[gradnite]

I have 768 MB of RAM, so should I not bother with the swap partition?

What would I do with my FAT32 partition then to install Knoppix 3.4 and have a dual-boot system?

My Windows NTFS partition is something like 25 gig and my FAT32 partition is 3 gig.

[mzilikazi]

Ideal scenario:

(Remember all partition sizes are approximate and certainly adjustable)
Use qtparted to shrink the NTFS partition to 20G (or so)
delete the FAT32 partition
create 3 new partitions
1 Linux partition of 5G <------necessary (minimum 3G)
1 Linux swap of 256M <------optional (recommended you have 1G total RAM system/swap combined)
1 FAT32 partition of 2.7G to share files between M$ & Linux <---optional (nice for win users)

REBOOT!

Workable solution:

Don't change your partition table at all.
Format the FAT32 partition w/ ext3 (or your choice of fs)
mke2fs -j /dev/hda2 (for example)

Launch the installer
Choose your newly formatted Linux partition.
Put lilo into mbr.

REBOOT!

[gradnite]

Thank you very much mzilikazi!

I made a 256MB swap out of the 3 empty gigs, and I installed Knoppix on the remaining. I'm giong to get a 60 gig drive soon, and then I will give a lot more space to knoppix.

I do have a question. Is there a way to configure lilo so that WIndows is the default and after say 2-3 second it automatically boots into Windows? I would appreciate any advice on how to do that.

Thanks so much.

Best wishes!

[mzilikazi]

Sure you can. Put windows as the first OS entery in the lilo configuration file /etc/lilo.conf and set a timeout. I'd give better instrucitons but it's been a long while since I used lilo.

[gradnite]

Sure you can. Put windows as the first OS entery in the lilo configuration file /etc/lilo.conf and set a timeout. I'd give better instrucitons but it's been a long while since I used lilo.

Thanks. I figured it out. You were very helpful. Thanks again!