[hollywood63]

I have tried everything under the sun trying to get mandrake installed as a dual boot with XP. I read that this is suppose to be easy to install but all I run into it seems is problems. I boot the computer with disk 1 and the disk restarts my puter. It then goes through some things and starts to do the installation all is fine till I get to the partition part. I pick used unused space and adjust my partition to the size I want (about 20g). I then select done from the menu and I get a message (I can not read ntsf please pick another option). Which leads me to shutting down from frustration. I am new at Linux distros. which could be my problem I am also a good novice at best with windows but I really want this Mandrake because it is suppose to be nice. Can anyone help me out I have tried other forums to no avail and this one seems to have people that respond to questions with some good advice.
Any thoughts would be greatly apprecaited
Art

[REL!c2K]

You have to tell linux exactly what kind of partition you are setting up. If you are giving a partition of around 20Gigs, you will need these options set;

1. /boot (HD over 12 Gigs, you have to set this slice) = 120-150 Megs, Journalized Filesystem.
2. /swap (A must) = Double the amount of RAM you have, you should set it to less if over 256 Megs of RAM.
3. /root = Remainder of Space, and again use the Journalized Filesystem.

You will only be able to mount your XP partitions as ReadOnly, if you are using NTFS.

The easiest way to dual boot is to do the following;

1. Install XP,
2. Install Mandrake, but when it prompts you to use boot diskette, say YES, and
3. When it prompts you to use a boot loader, (eg. Lilo, Grub..) say NO.

Use the boot diskette when you wish to load Linux. That was how I did it for years, until I made the switch over to Linux perminently. I got tired of farting around with boot loaders and running differ OSes. Hope this helps.

A very good forum for Mandrake is http://www.mandrakeusers.org/

Let me know what happens.

[Squeak]

rel!c2k: why is it better to use a journalised file system? isn't ext2 faster than ext3?

[hollywood63]

To be honest I have no idea what kind of partition I'm setting up I did a 20 g partition because I did not know how much linux needed. From the site you posted I now know that all I need is about 4-5g correct? When you are talking about journalized file systems you lost me big time. Is this something that I can possibly do without doing a reinstall of XP. I really don't want to do but if I have to I will. Doing all the windows updates is a pain. I quess what I'm asking can you talk me through this in Mandrake for dummies terms?
I have a laptop that I can do a complete install of mandrake for practice if you think that will help me learn the way linux works. The lap top is a older compaq 4220t and I'm not sure if it has what mandrake needs to run.
Thanks for your help
Art

[REL!c2K]

You don't have to Reinstall XP, you should only have to install linux. Why Journalised Filesystem ? Because it recovers better and faster from systems crashes. When you start your installation, just point it to the 20gig partition you gave it initially, then break it down into the the 3 partitions that I stated above. You can use the laptop if you would like, but I can't tell you honestly wether or not Mandrake will support all of the Hardware. Giving 5 gigs to Mandrake is kinda tight, the full install is about 3-4 Gigs depending on the installation type you choose.

[danleff]

Hello;

I don't post much here, but I will give it a try.

You did not mention what version of Mandrake that you are trying to install - 8 or 9?

One problem is the NTFS partition (the filesytem that XP generally tries to install with). Most Linux distros do not deal with NTFS partitions well, in terms of installing. If you are trying to use free space on the NTFS partition, this is most likely the problem.

I use PartitionMagic, a partitioning software package, to shrink the Windows partition, then format the free space as either ext2 or ext3 (which are the Linux filesystems). Then do the Mandrake install, pointing it to the new Linux partition that you created when it wants to format/initialize the partition to use.

If you are new to Linux distros, I would heed the advice given above. Mandrake will use Lilo (the Linux bootloader) to over-write the XP bootloader, so you do not want to do this, unless you know what you are doing. So, choose no to lilo over-writing the bootloader and make a floppy disk to boot from. Then, once you get comfortable with Mandrake, you can change this later on.

Again, it depends what version of Mandrake that you are trying to install and if it will play nice with XP. I would post back with more information, so that the experts here can help you better.

By the way, I find ext3 faster, more stable and less problematic.

[REL!c2K]

Yes, I forgot to add that if you have not created the partitions for Linux already, then you will have to use Partition Magic to do so. You will have to resize the XP/NTFS Partition, then set aside how much you want for Linux. Then convert the filesystem from NTFS to ext3 for now. You can change it to Journalised when you install linux. I find life so much easier using 1 Hard drive for Windows, and 1 for Linux...using removable trays. If you feel more comfortable just learning the steps of the installation on your laptop, you can do that to, until you feel you know the steps involved with the installation.

[Vermyn]

Hmmm... here's how I went about it (works for Mandrake 9.0 and Red Hat 8.0):

Install Windows XP.

Use Partition Magic to size down Windows XP partition. Don't use it to create a new Linux partition.

Boot from Mandrake disk 1, choose expert mode.

When you get to the disk partition screen, I select the dark blue area and create two partitions:

1. mount point: / <-- largest partition
2. swap (about 1 gig)

That's all I do.

Mandrake automatically loads the ntfs module to read ntfs and put it in read-only mode. If you use Red Hat 8.0, you get to handle that part by yourself. Red Hat 8.0 leaves out so much stuff it's criminal that they're doing better than Mandrake

--Alexander

[Vermyn]

Journalised file system: if you end up having to just arbitrarily reboot the system (i.e. hit the reset button), ext3 can recover from it without losing any data up to 5 seconds. That's what a journalised file system can do... it keeps track of your changes and doesn't kill itself.

ext2: eventually, if you smash your system and have to hit reset or do an unsafe shutdown, you will be sad. We just lost a linux server at the office the other day that was running ext2. It refused to shut down properly and we eventually had to hit reset, and it just never came back up.

ext2 is faster but less safe.

ext3's performance hit is negligible when you get a great feature like journalised files!

--Alexander

[Vermyn]

Gee.. I've never had a problem with grub or lilo on my MBR... works fine when loading XP (even when Red Hat couldn't read NTFS)...

--Alexander

[hollywood63]

Wow you guys are are quick I did not do a partition before the install. I was under the impression that when installing Mandrake it would do this automatically. Hence my problem I am coming to realize. When I got to the partition part of the install I was clicking on the bars above the disk graph it listed stuff like swap,ext2,ext3 and a few others but I could not figure out how to apply them to the disk bar graph. I'm at a loss on why everyone that has tried and installed this have had no major problems. Ive tried the recommended install and get stuck at the same point. What specific info would you like me to supply for more help. I'm trying version 9 to answer one gentlemans question.

[danleff]

Absolutely, you are correct, Mandrake 9 will correctly do the bootloader thing with XP, IF you are using the newer versions of Mandrake. I was being cautious, as I did not know what version Hollywood63 was using. It sounds like he is new to Mandrake and other distros in general, so he probably is not familiar with expert mode and such. Took me a while to get it right! Also, I have done so many distros in recent years, that I forget what I did for each. If you shrink the XP partition and try the install, I believe that Mandrake will use the unformatted space to set itself up. Looks like I will be installing Mandrake 9.1 this evening to see how it is currently handling the process!

[hollywood63]

Ok guys i tried again last night and BAM next thing I know Im reformatting XP 8) Not a problem because now I can set up a partition right. Well this is what happened. I went in and did a complete format and when prompted about partitions I checked out what I had. Well there were 5 different partitions and I know how they got there but let me finish on what I did with XP. I got it down to two partitons the C (10g) and D (65g). I wanted the c to be the bigger of the two but when I went to delete it a message popped up saying that there was troubleshooting and other system information on that drive and to be sure you want to delete because you might not be able to boot froma disk until a complete installion is complete. So now my XP is on D drive which I don't think makes a difference but correct me if I'm wrong. So know I have two partitons
Heres what happened when I tried to install Mandrake 9 for the fifth time. I got to the partition area again made the size I wanted ;( and hit auto allocated. I now know were the 5 partions came from :p. So being that I read from the left to the right and thinking my XP should be on the partition to my left which for what every reason is know 10g. I tried to back out and resize the partitons again and I was sent to a screen telling me about not being able to read ntsf. Now before that my drive was set up like this
10g /nt: if memory is right
5g swap remember reading about it but not sure what it is
2 really small ones like 231kb and 8 kb
60g home this I thought was for XP.
That all happened on auto allocate
I'm sorry if this sounds like jibberish but I am a rookie at linux like one guy noted :p
So now if I go to install mandrake how do I get it on the 10g area.
Am I correct that in the setup I will chose hda1 because hda2 should be the 65g partition?
I really apprecaite all of your help.
Art

One more thing there were some files put on the c drive when i was formatting there are as follows
$WIN_NT$.~BT
dell
$LDR$
txtsetup.sif
Can I just click and drag these to the D drive or do I start all over again

[Squeak]

Quote:

10g /nt: if memory is right
5g swap remember reading about it but not sure what it is
2 really small ones like 231kb and 8 kb
60g home this I thought was for XP.

What you should do is resize the swap partition, to be as big as double the size of your RAM(it doesn't have to be bigger than that). You can put the extra space back to the Mandrake partition, or the XP partition.

Then the 10gb(I'm assuming this is the Mandrake partition) partition should have the mount point / and format it using the ext3 filesystem.

Also, "60g home"(XP is on this one, right?) tells me that you mounted it as /home. You shouldn't do that. Don't mount it as anything, then Mandrake will leave the XP partition alone, but you can still access it(read-only) through /mnt/nt when you have finished installing.

I recommend you say yes to installing LILO as the bootloader, it is much easier than using a boot diskette, because LILO automatically adds XP to the menu. So when you get to LILO, you choose "linux" for Mandrake, and "windows" for XP.

[hollywood63]

I believe that my hard drive is partitioned now. I have a 10gb and a 65gb partition to make the 10gb one work with mandrake when i get to the partition set up I just click on journalized files correct? Then just click on done in the menu? Then proceed (hopefully)

[danleff]

I believe Squeak has it closer. I have not installed Mandrake again yet, but my memory is coming back.

Now that we know what version of Mandrake you have...

This is what I would do. Is Win XP still bootable? Make sure that it is. Get into XP and look to see the size that it reports that the partition is. If it says 65 gig, or close to that, you know that this is your XP partition. Don't move any files from one partition to another (I'll explain below).

If you wiped XP by accident and can't boot to XP, you will need to re-install XP. OR, if you know XP is still there (your data files are intact) you can proceed. It sounds like you still have the NTFS partition, from your description. This is an issue only if you wiped your XP partition. If you did, and XP is not there, you will need to re-install XP, so that Mandrake finds it on install and adds it to the Lilo bootloader. But let us know if this seems to be the case FIRST, or if you are unsure.

If all is fine, go ahead with the Mandrake install and allow Mandrake to take over the non-XP partition, or free space, if this is the case.

Choose the journalized filesystem. I can't remember, but you may be given a choice of ext3 or reiserfs filesystems. Choose one. Allow the install to progress.

Lilo will auto-detect the XP installation and give a choice on boot, as Squeak stated.

Make sure that you make a back-up boot disk, as suggested during the install. You may need it later if something goes wrong with Mandrake at a later time.

Now back to my comment about partitions. Some companies, like HP, Compaq and IBM (Thinkpads) reserve a small amount of space on a partition for utilities, or even as part of the bios functioning. So, do not move any files from one partition to another.

Many Distros, when using their partitioning utility, break up the partition into three seperate ones. Don't worry about this. Mandrake will do the work for you, when you allow it to auto-allocate the partitions.

Good luck on the install!

[foxpoint11]

I am new to linux but i have installed 7 linux systems,Mandrake, SuSE,
Red Hat and Debian on my and friends computers.
The easy way for me has been to find a copy of partition magic and add at
least 2 partitions to your hard drive,one of about 2gbs for the swap file
and another of at least 5 gbs.You need to format your 2 new drives.Format them in fat32 and not NTSF.Don`t use "unused space" use expert or custom function and put swape file on 2gbs drive and 2ed mount point on the 2ed new partition.You should be good to go.
I am sure someone more expert at linux could do this much better and quicker.
One newbie to another.

[hollywood63]

Danleff if i formatt my drive to fat32 what will happen to the files that I listed are they needed or just some junk. When I get to the partition part I click on the 10gb partition then pick journalized files then auto allocate and then done to finish correct. The partition part is were I keep getting messed up thats why I'm sound so nervous :x I'm going to try once more tomorrow. ok maybe twice
Thanks Art

[Yuyo]

Quote:

Danleff if i formatt my drive to fat32 what will happen to the files that I listed are they needed or just some junk. When I get to the partition part I click on the 10gb partition then pick journalized files then auto allocate and then done to finish correct. The partition part is were I keep getting messed up thats why I'm sound so nervous :x I'm going to try once more tomorrow. ok maybe twice
Thanks Art

Dude, if you send me your computer, I'll set it up for you.

[hollywood63]

Dudes getting a CELL
You must have missed my last post