Partitioning for fresh install - SOLVED

[richyrich]

Hi,
Question first, how much RAM do you have ? Is this a desktop or laptop ?

[richyrich]

Open a terminal, and type free

EDIT : You can copy/paste the output back here.

[richyrich]

Okay . . a little low on RAM for Gloria Main or KDE, so I would suggest you try the Xfce Edition, it'll be much faster. I have it on my laptop , and just love it !

Primary - swap partition - 1024 Mb.
Primary - / partition - 12000 Mb.
Extended - /home partition - 10000 Mb. (lotsa room for apps & games)
Extended - /data partition - as much as you want up to the rest of the disk. (downloads, backups, etc.)

You have enough room that you could even leave 40 Gb. unused / free , room to try another OS/Distro for dual-boot in the future ?

Please note that this is just my opinion . . It's really up to you !
One of the joys of Linux, if you find you don't like your setup, or you , you can always start over, and be back up and running in half an hour !

good luck, Richy

[richyrich]

" / " and ext3 or 4 for the file system, it should be in the drop down list, same as " /home " , you will have to type in " /data " , when you create that one.
Make sure the " Format " checkboxes are checked (except for swap of course).

snapshot1.jpg

My GParted, (sda7 & 8 is my other Mint distro, so you can ignore them)

[richyrich]

Yup . . . no problem there . . you can always allocate it however you want after the install.

Richy

[richyrich]

Yup, mount / as /
Mount /home as /home

EDIT: When you get to Part 4 of the install (Gparted), choose Manual, then you just have to click each partition you made one at a time, and change 'Do not use this partition' to the / and /home as described above.

[richyrich]

That's perfect, once /home is made, just to be safe, click the little Format box for all of them.
Then you are ready to continue, it'll give you the normal warning, continue . . .

[richyrich]

The swap as swap . . and remember to Format all three of them . . . just about there . .

[richyrich]

Yup . . swap IS swap . . . hmmm might be a song there somewhere . .

let us know how it turns out, Richy

[richyrich]

You can compare it to Windows virtual memory or Pagefile.
It's only used if you've maxed out your RAM usage.

EDIT: Oh Yea . . . WooHoo !

[smokeymtn_ron]

Hi Richy,
I read somewhere that you can't boot from a extended partition, But you said

My GParted, (sda7 & 8 is my other Mint distro, so you can ignore them)

I want to install another Mint to play with and learn on without messing up my main one, but I've already used my 4 primary partitions. Will it run under a extended partition? If so, what partitions do I need and which ones can I forget that the original install will handle??
Thanks,
Ron

[richyrich]

Before installing the second distro I had 20 gigs of free space. When I went to install the second distro, I chose manual partition, and used the free space to create two new extended partitions, sda7 ( / ) & sda8 ( /home ). I pointed swap to my original swap from the first install, and mounted my existing /data partition ( without formatting ), then finish the install.
Grub made all the changes automatically, and when I finally performed my first reboot, I had the option to choose between distros at the initial Mint boot screen.

Richy

EDIT : See my screenshot on the previous page.

[smokeymtn_ron]

Richy,

I chose manual partition, and used the free space to create two new extended partitions, sda7 ( / ) & sda8 ( /home ).

This part I understand.

I pointed swap to my original swap from the first install, and mounted my existing /data partition ( without formatting )

But you lost me on this.
How do I 'point' swap to my original swap
I think I understand what your saying about the /data partition. I don't remember, when does the option to format show up?
Also looking at your screenshot there is no mount point for 7&8. Do I just leave that blank?
Ron

[richyrich]

Hang on Ron, I'll reboot to Xfce, and take a screenshot of GParted from the second distro then you can see the difference.

I'll just post it back to this same post . . stay tuned !

Screenshot.png

Notice that sda2 is the only partition flagged as boot. ( My " / " partition from the first install - see first screenshot )

What I meant about the swap is during the manual partitioning of the second install, I clicked on the existing swap partition, and changed "Do Not Use This Partition" to 'Swap" in the drop down list, the same with my existing /data partition, changed "Do Not Use This Partition" to '/data".
The only partitions that had the "Format" checkbox checked, was the new partitions, / (sda7) and /home (sda8).

Richy

[smokeymtn_ron]

Richy,
Thanks, that really explained it good!! One final question before I give it a try (well 2)
1. When you did that for your data partition, was that only so both installs can use the data? I have some extras like /usr /var partitions. I'm only going to use this install to play with and don't need to swap files or anything.
2. For the boot menu, how do I know which Mint is which? Won't they both have the same name?

Thanks again,
Ron

[richyrich]

1) Yes, so if you don't need or want it just ignore.

2) Nope, if they are both Mint 7, the Kernel numbers will be the same, but it will say KDE, or Xfce, or whatever.

Good luck, and have fun ! Richy

[smokeymtn_ron]

Got it! Here goes

[smokeymtn_ron]

Richy,
Just wanted to let you know it worked like a champ! But it is showing up as the same name, the only difference is 1 is showing (on /dev/sda//11) after the name. So I can still tell them apart.
Thanks,
Ron