Installing Linux Mint Question...

[qfunk]

Hi!
I'm installing Linux for the first time, and need to know certain things before I attempt at installing it.

I've read the following articles before making this post:

*Read the Linux Mint 6 User Guide (2.5MB)
http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/linuxmint.com/stable/6/user-guide/english.pdf
*Step-by-Step guide on installing linux.
http://www.howtoforge.com/the-perfect-desktop-linux-mint-6-felicia
*Linux is Not Windows
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=5714&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a
(posted by Carlos)

What I need to know is how can I install Linux while keeping Windows in my C drive parttition untouched. I have 8 partitions in a total of 2 hard-disks. And since I've never installed Linux, I don't have ANY ext3 or swap partitions currently. I'm looking forward to creating a Dual-Boot System with Linux installed in my D Drive / partition, and Windows in C Drive. Also, I'm hoping the EDIT partition function during Linux format or delete any of my data on the remaining partitions (NTFS/FAT).

Please can someone explain/tell me how can I edit my D drive partition and divide it into 2 linux partitions: "swap" and "/" ??
Here's a screenshot of what Drives/Partitions I have on my currently WindowXP system.


I'm really new to linux, and so need help regarding the installation. As you see in the above image, I have 8 partitions on 2 hard disks: C,D,E on HD1... and F,G,I,J,K on HD2. I can format my D drive, but would need to create 2 partitions of it for linux.: swap and ext3"/"....

Please can someone provide help regarding this?? Hope I'm not being rude, and I dont' intend to too... just a polite request.

Regards,
-Mohit.

[Aging Technogeek]

You certainly have done your homework on installing Mint. I would recommend one more bit of reading. This thread viewtopic.php?f=90&t=11872 contains much valuable information on installation and partitioning.

The first thing you should do is make a full disk backup of your Windows installation just in case of a mistake. When you run the installer from the live CD step 4 will be disk partition and format. Choose manual partitioning and click "Forward".

Select the partition you want to use to install Mint. Be very careful that you choose the correct partition- Linux identifies disks and partitions differently than Windows. The first hard disk - HD 1 in Windows will be identified as sda in Linux. The partitions will be identified as sda1,sda2, etc. In the upper right corer of the manual partition page you will find a disk selection menu. Choose sda (you will know you have the correct disk if you see a notation above the first entry in the partition table that says "boot"- assuming you have no bootable entries on sdb.).

Choose the 19.5 GB partition (it will probably be sda6 or sda7). Click on the partition to highlight it, recheck that you have the correct partition, and select "delete partition" from the menu. The program will redraw the partition table showing the selected partition as unallocated space. Use this space to set up your extended partition and set up the logical partitions you want for your Mint installation inside the extended partition. Make sure the "format" boxes are checked off for all logical partitions other than :swap". When you are done setting your partitions click "Forward "and the partitioner will install the selected partitions.

[qfunk]

You certainly have done your homework on installing Mint. I would recommend one more bit of reading. This thread viewtopic.php?f=90&t=11872 contains much valuable information on installation and partitioning.

The first thing you should do is make a full disk backup of your Windows installation just in case of a mistake. When you run the installer from the live CD step 4 will be disk partition and format. Choose manual partitioning and click "Forward".

Select the partition you want to use to install Mint. Be very careful that you choose the correct partition- Linux identifies disks and partitions differently than Windows. The first hard disk - HD 1 in Windows will be identified as sda in Linux. The partitions will be identified as sda1,sda2, etc. In the upper right corer of the manual partition page you will find a disk selection menu. Choose sda (you will know you have the correct disk if you see a notation above the first entry in the partition table that says "boot"- assuming you have no bootable entries on sdb.).

Choose the 19.5 GB partition (it will probably be sda6 or sda7). Click on the partition to highlight it, recheck that you have the correct partition, and select "delete partition" from the menu. The program will redraw the partition table showing the selected partition as unallocated space. Use this space to set up your extended partition and set up the logical partitions you want for your Mint installation inside the extended partition. Make sure the "format" boxes are checked off for all logical partitions other than :swap". When you are done setting your partitions click "Forward "and the partitioner will install the selected partitions.

Hi! Thanks for replying. I had already read that thread you linked me to... That's how I cam to know about swap and ext3... I read that page yesterday.

Well, as for selecting sda, I've got boot entries (XP installed) on both hard disks (sda and sdb) ... I initially had only one disk at home on which I had 4 partitions, then I joined work and have installed XP on a new hard disk (160gb). Now I'm not using the home computer at all, but have brought the home pc's 160gb hard disk at work and have kept this old disk as a secondary drive. I believe it'll show as sdb... And as you say, I should be installing mint in SDA2 (Or the partition that says 19.5 gb...do correct me if I'm wrong. I'll be downloading and installing mint tomorrow, only after gathering more knowledge regarding partitions, cause I believe that once that part is finished, I can have a sigh of relief that my data didn't get deleted..!!

Thanks again for your help.

[Aging Technogeek]

The partition identifier for the 19.5 GB partition will depend on the present disk setup. There are usually several small partitions ahead of the first operating system partition that are used for boot information and disk registers. On my HDD, the first OS partition is sda5 ( this is my swap partition).

Just be sure you select the 19.5 GB partition to install to and you should be OK.

Just had a thought. I don't think it will be a problem but the bootable XP install on sdb may interfere with dual booting off of sda. The Grub boot loader should set up to boot the sda XP install and probably will not even see sdb so you should be OK. But keep it in mind if you have problems getting dual boot to work.

Welcome to Mint and good luck with your installation

[qfunk]

Hi! I just read that linux mint 6 has been released.. and I've already downloaded the "LinuxMint-6.iso" file... just wanted to know if I should install this version or an older version for getting started with mint.

Also, another thing I wanted to know is : Do I need to FORMAT my 19.5 gb drive?? OR just delete the partition and create 2 new ones out of the new unallocated space...??

Thanks again for the help.

[Aging Technogeek]

Mint 6 has been out for about 5 months. It is mostly bug free and quite stable. The only reason to choose an older version would be for long term support. Most Mint versions are only supported for 18 months so Mint 6 support will end in April of 2010. Mint 5 "Elyssa" is a long term support edition. Support will be provided until April of 2011.

If you want the latest technology, choose Mint 6. If you want the extra time before you have to upgrade, choose Mint 5.

About formatting - the installer will format the partitions you set up as part of the installation process. just be sure you check the "format" box for each partition in the partition table.

Swap does not need to be checked for formatting. When you setup a partition, you will choose how it will be formatted in a dialog box. Choosing "swap" automatically sets the format choice for that partition.

/ (root) and /home (if you choose to use a /home partition) must be formatted in ext3. These are the partitions that must be marked for formatting.

[qfunk]

Thanks for the reply !!

I just wrote the iso file on a cd.. and booted from the cd successfully!

I clicked on the computer ison on the cd-booted screen and checked if my 19.5 mb partition was visible, including browsing through other drives... Later found out that whichever drive/partition I had double-clicked got shown on the booted desktop of mint as a mounted media (I think that's what it's called??)

Anyways, after confirming that my 19.5 gb drive was visible, I closed the window and double-clicked on "install" on the mint desktop.. Went through the setup screens choosing options and clicking forward... but then got stuck at the partition screen... It showed me NO partitions at all... nothing was visible except the non-clickable options of "undo changes to partition", "delete partition" and "edit partition", along with the clickable options of "forward", "back" & "cancel"... I tried clicking back, but it returned to the same screen (not showing the partitions but a blank table...).... so finally I quit the mint and ejected the cd.



Please can you tell me where have I gone wrong in the installation?? I'll try and boot again, and this time I won't fiddle around and just click on install... Hope it works out... if it doesn't ... I'll ask for help here again...


^^ I just copied the above pic from the mint manual.... it's NOT a screenshot of my problem... but I've edited the screenshot and clearified what's not visible.

[qfunk]

Another thing I wanted to know is: Can I install MINT from within Windows?? I saw the iso contents from the cd I burnt, and found there's a autorun.inf file and some installation files for mint on the iso... Also, I read somewhere that if I install through the autorun process in windows, I can install mint easily and if something goes wrong with it, I can even uninstall it... all from windows itself....

And since I'm having trouble with the bootable version of the installation... I'm thinking if I can run the setup file from windows. eh??

[qfunk]

Sorry, I thought to go ahead and try out the mint4win.exe file with the --32bit key under windows command prompt with the iso kept in the same folder...

Mint installed successfuly until the reboot... on reboot, I booted from the new installed mint... and it went to install more things like checking for partitions etc... I don't know what all it was doing as I couldn't keep up with the installation process after the reboot... but after checking for partitions etc, it gave and error, something like: "Installation cannot continue, error logged in D drive as .zip ....

I've uploaded the .zip file to my rapidshare's collector's account... if you're having trouble downloading it, let me know I'll upload it on google pages... it's only a 259 kb file.

Code: Select all

http://rapidshare.com/files/219168968/installation-logs.zip

Also, please can someone move this to the installation forum, cause Thought I've gathered enough knowledge about the partitioning etc, I'm still stuck with the installation... so guess I just posted this thread / comment in the wrong forum.

Thanks for all the help..


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
EDIT: Just saw this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaJ6Pv0VU24 ... maybe I rebooted to linux instead of windows, that's why it's showing this error... thinking of double clicking mint4win.exe again... if it doesn't work, Will have to remove linux mint from windows and reinstall it using mint4win...

[qfunk]

Giving up on mint4win.exe .... though I rebooted to windows, and then rebooted to linux main... I still get stuck at "copying files" in the new linux mint os setup process .... tried reinstalling through mint4win.exe again.. but still the same problem.

Anyways, I'll try and boot from the bootable llinuxmint-6.iso... hope the partition table shows all the existing partitions this time.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

EDIT:

Tried installing from bootably linux mint cd, didn't get stuck this time... got the partition table list and clicked on manual. Then I deleted the "20gb" partition on sdb... created new partitions for:
"/" (as ext3), : 12000 mb
"swap" : 2000 mb
"/home" : remaining 6475 mb... or something of that size...

Then I clicked forward... filled in rest of info required.. and rebooted...

After the reboot, it DIDN'T Start the dual boot as I had read in posts/threads on this forum

During partition, I had noticed that all the remaining FAT32 and ntfs drives of my hard drive had the "not to be used" setting enabled for them... and so I didn't tamper with them much, except deleting and extending the 20gb partition.... anything wrong with that?? Linux mint is now installed on my system with the partitions, but it doesn't boot!...what should I do??

This is my last comment on this thread... would wait for any response/help you can provide.

Here's what the drives look like in my windows now:


^^ I notice that drive D is no more available, and the remaining drives have not been renumbered.

[Aging Technogeek]

I think your original problem where the partitioner couldn't see the drive partitions was caused by you mounting the drive to the CD desktop. The partitioner will not work on a mounted drive.

I've never used Mint4win so I can't be of much help there.

Your last post sounds like the Grub bootloader did not install properly. This could prevent you booting into Mint. The partition at least was formatted in ext3 - that's why Windows doesn't list it any more. This is normal in dual boots. Linux can see and read Windows files but Windows refuses to acknowledge Linux' existence.

With all the trouble you are having with this install I suspect you may have a bad CD. Even if the md5 check is good, sometimes the CD will not boot properly. Try burning another CD and reinstalling to the same partition. Burn the CD in RAW mode at the slowest speed available as this usually gives the best results.

Hope you have better luck next time. Don't give up. Mint is worth the effort.

[qfunk]

Thanks! I'll try again tomorrow!

Also.. is there any WINDOWS based software which can enable the dual boot?? Any window version of grub??

[shane]

Hi qfunk,

It is unfortunate that someone who has really done his homework is having problems. You may have read this but check this out. It may be the cause of why your system isn't booting. http://www.linuxmint.com/wiki/index.php ... annot_boot

Aging Technogeek is right... the installer will not read mounted partitions... and you mounted them. Best is to boot up the LiveCD and go straight into the installation.

As for mint4win: Mint4win does not touch your actual partitions at all. Instead it creates a virtual drive in your Windows partition or wherever you tell it to... and Mint gets installed onto this virtual drive. This is why it appears as an application in Add/Remove Programs and can be easily uninstalled.

The normal procedure for installing with mint4win goes like this: You run the mint4win.exe in Windows. This copies the files required for installation to your hard drive. Then is asks you to reboot. I have had problems if Windows does anything else during this period between running mint4win and rebooting. Even Windows automatically installing updates messed up a mint4win installation. Anyway, then you reboot and boot into Mint. This is when the real installation takes place. It uses the same installer only with mint4win, the info is entered under Windows and you will not have to do anything until the installation is complete and it tells you to reboot.

[Aging Technogeek]

As I remember, you said you had Windows XP on both hard disks. I mentioned at the time that this might cause problems with dual booting. If all else fails, try removing the second drive before installing Mint. Also, if one drive is sata and the other is pata, ide, eide, ata100 or any other ide derivative, you should definitely check the link in Shane's post. This can be real trouble

[qfunk]

Ok.. I read the page link, and yes, I have my old hard drive as non-bootable IDE, and my new hard drive as bootable winxp with linux mint SATA...
It says here on the page that: http://www.linuxmint.com/wiki/index.php ... _you_do.3F

If you can't boot, this has to be done from the live CD (where sudo has no password - be careful)

^^ Why does it say to be careful?? I don't understand what is sudo or why has it been given a password.. I'm going to confirm whether I have a mix of ide and sata, with my brother, who has more knowledge on hardware stuff... So in about 2 hours I'll try the sudo code from that page... until then would wait for a reply.

[shane]

sudo is what you use to gain access as the root user (sudo = super user do)... and on the live cd there is no password required to run commands as root. that is why it says be careful because you can potentially mess up you system.

[qfunk]

Ok... Thanks... Now I'll try and reboot to live cd... hope everything goes ok.


EDIT:
I restarted the comp and booted from the live cd.... I opened the terminal and feeded in:

Code: Select all

sudo blkid

^^ I got the UUID's for all the partitions. And remembering the linux main partition to be sdb6, I noted down the UUID for that partition on a paper.
And then I got stuck: I didn't know what command to feed in to get the grub/menu.lst file... In windows dos, I use CD for entering boot directory, and then the grub directory.. and then menu.lst.... but how do I do this in the linux live cd terminal??

I found this page regarding the instructions required: http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.p ... 53560.html
But I couldn't understand anything...please can you give a somewhat detailed explanation in simple terms of what to do? I understand, that for rights/permission to eidt any file I need to use sudo... but then if I'm wrong in feeding the required commands, I might make a mistake and possibly loose data...

[qfunk]

I just edited the above post instead of posting a new comment... So you couldn't see this as an updated thread while browsing the forum. So am writing this comment.... Not being impatient, just writing this post to say there's an update/edited post above this one..

[Aging Technogeek]

For a general explanation of how to edit Grub, see this post viewtopic.php?f=90&t=24011#p140304 . The original question was about setting default boot order but the procedure can be applied to any Grub editing you need to do.

(edit) Been thinking. In an earlier post you said

EDIT:

Tried installing from bootably linux mint cd, didn't get stuck this time... got the partition table list and clicked on manual. Then I deleted the "20gb" partition on sdb... created new partitions for:
"/" (as ext3), : 12000 mb
"swap" : 2000 mb
"/home" : remaining 6475 mb... or something of that size...

Then I clicked forward... filled in rest of info required.. and rebooted...

After the reboot, it DIDN'T Start the dual boot as I had read in posts/threads on this forum

During partition, I had noticed that all the remaining FAT32 and ntfs drives of my hard drive had the "not to be used" setting enabled for them... and so I didn't tamper with them much, except deleting and extending the 20gb partition.... anything wrong with that?? Linux mint is now installed on my system with the partitions, but it doesn't boot!...what should I do??

This is my last comment on this thread... would wait for any response/help you can provide.

Here's what the drives look like in my windows now:
Image

^^ I notice that drive D is no more available, and the remaining drives have not been renumbered.

It seems that you successfully installed Mint to your SATA drive but when you boot the computer, it boots from the IDE drive and never sees Grub on the SATA drive. This is easy to check. When you boot the computer, call up the boot sequence using whatever key is used by your system. The boot sequence will probably look like this:

HDD 1
HDD 2
CD-ROM

and maybe several more entries.

You want to change the boot order so HDD 2 is accessed first.

Once this is done return to the normal boot. If I'm right, you should get the Grub menu and be able to boot into Mint. If you succeed, just enter set up from the boot screen and permanently change the boot sequence. This will work as long as the SATA drive remains in the computer.

Alternately, you could remove the IDE drive - thus promoting the SATA drive to HDD 1. Or you could erase the XP install on the IDE drive. If the bios doesn't find any bootable files on HDD 1, it will check HDD 2 and find Grub.

Actually it doesn't matter whether Mint is on the SATA or the IDE drive. What matters is that it is on the drive the computer sees as HDD 2. If you get the computer to boot from HDD 2 your problems should be solved.

(edit again) Really, your best option is to delete XP from the drive without Mint installed. It is not best practice to have the same Operating System installed on two drives in the same computer. Just run the Mint live CD and from the desktop and call up partition manager. Select the proper drive, highlight the XP partition and delete.

[qfunk]

[quote=Aging Technogeek]Really, your best option is to delete XP from the drive without Mint installed.[/quote]

Hi! Well, I had already formatted the second winxp boot partition. There's only 1 windows boot partition and 1 linux partition. Yes, I've successfully installed Linux mint, but I've been unable to boot from it. As you suggested, I had formatted the xp partition on my second hard drive and now I have linux and windows on a single hard disk but on different partitions. (Windows on C drive and Linux on , now, ext3 formatted partition.

I'll try and edit the grub on monday, and would reply back when it's done. Thanks.