Installation Problems With Manual Partitions (Dual Boot)

[daytripper]

I'm a newbie when it comes to installing/using Linux. After some trouble, I've finally gotten around to booting from a removable drive and getting the LiveCD to work. However, when trying to install, I seem to be doing something wrong because of which the installer crashes without any information. I'm hoping you can help.

I'm dual booting with Windows XP. Here's what my Gparted looks like:
http://i55.tinypic.com/10nc011.png


Question: Should the mount points for the intended / and /home partitions be '/target' and '/target/home' like it currently is? Do I need to unmount it?

Here's what I'm doing while allocating disk space (I've already created the partitions, it's just a matter of allocating space)

Root:
http://i52.tinypic.com/x5wkky.png


Home:
http://i54.tinypic.com/2niuuf5.png

Question: Is it enough to assign these two mount points, or do I need to do anything else?

Also, the device for boot loader installation has already been assigned (as you can see from the images) - does that look OK?

Here's the error I'm receiving:


Any help would be appreciated. This is my third try after about 2 years to dabble in Linux again (after I heard a friend raving about the Mint distro)

[lmintnewb]

Can only speak from my ( very limited experience with installing linux and Mint ) But have about the same layout as you evidently want. ie: XP home edition and Mint 10.

Went perfectly smooth for me ( thank goodness ) Cause who doesn't love technical problems ? :C

When I was installing it alongside XP, did the choose manual partitioning thing. Set up a 600mb swap. Which it gives you that option in what it's going to be used for. Chose swap, set it to 600mb's.

Then set up another partition and told it ( the partitioning tool ) it was meant to be for / < Main partition for the operating system ... ( Mint in this case.) Set the amount of disk to use and formatted it for ext3.(< Was just my choice, cause I wasn't feeling adventurous atm. Not sure about the advantages of using ext4 etc. Sure there are some, but I went ahead an formatted for ext3.)

Think I originally followed this guys article on the subject and it worked flawlessly.
http://linuxgazette.net/136/lazar.html


(edit) ... Just saying think the partitioning scheme you're looking for is set up a swap. Then an / partition ... though having seen some old hand linux users advising people to set up a separate partition for /home and.or others too. As a better way to go about partitioning overall. But swap and / partitions should be about all you need to get up and running alongside XP.

[Aging Technogeek]

Your partitioning scheme looks all right. The partitions should be identified as /, swap, and /home. If the installer crashed with no error message, it could be a corrupted install disk.

Try a fresh download. Check the md5 sum of the iso file after downloading, burn the image to a high quality disk (CD -R or DVD -R) at the slowest speed of the burner software, check the md5 sum for the burned disk, and install it. If this doesn't work, it may at least get us some more information as to why the installer is crashing.

The Grub install point is correct for the type of installation you are doing.

EDIT

I just reread your original posts. Unmount all partitions before running the installer. I have never tried to install to a mounted partition but I do not think it is a good thing to do. Also, the installer will be looking for partitions labelled /, /home, and swap (in any order). Partitions labelled /target, and /target/home will not be recognized. Try a fresh install with unmounted partitions and no "target" in the labels. This may work.

[StanTheMan]

daytriper . you mentioned about " mounting "
Remember that NOTHING is mounted when an operating system is not started.
Mounting is a temporary condition only while the operating system is running.
Automount takes place when the system starts up and reads the /etc/fstab file
Manual mounting can take place while the system is running by the User using Commnand Line Interface. Also a partition can be Un-mounted with CLI.
It is always un-mounted when the system is shut down.