On Saturday 16 June 2007 14:49, Alexey Eremenko wrote:

Hi Ken Schneider

read:

The primary advantage to this technology is no need to repartition a hard drive at all. A very welcome feature to win-noobs alike.

The partition structure is independent of the type of file system created on those partitions. I.e., it is not necessary to repartition a drive (that's already partitioned) in order to install Linux. Now, if what you want is to have both Linux and Windows installed on a given partition, that's another thing. As far as I know, there's no overlap between the directories used by Linux and those used by Windows, so if Linux could operate with a root file system that is NTFS, then this should be feasible. As far as my limited understanding goes, NTFS is sufficient to support a root file system, but I can't say for sure whether that is true. Clearly, the kernel would need to incorporate the NTFS-3G driver so the kernel and the running system could write to its NTFS root volume.

-- -Alexey Eremenko "Technologov"

Randall Schulz -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Sun, 2007-06-17 at 01:23 +0300, Alexey Eremenko wrote:

Hi Randall Schulz !

Randall wrote:

...

The partition structure is independent of the type of file system created on those partitions. I.e., it is not necessary to repartition a drive (that's already partitioned) in order to install Linux.

It may be unnecessary to repartition on Linux-ready system, than already has ext partitions.

On typical Home Windows systems, when there is one single big 200 GB hard drive and 200 GB NTFS partition on it, like 99% of all world's Home PCs those days shipped, you _can not_ install a Linux on such a typical system without repartitioning it first.

Have you worked with _typical_ Windows systems ever ?

Yes, probably before you knew what one was. There is a resize function within the install process to resize the single partition without having to reload windows and then linux. That is it's purpose, to give you a partition to install on. -- Ken Schneider UNIX since 1989, linux since 1994, SuSE since 1998 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On 6/17/07, Kenneth Schneider wrote:

There is a resize function within the install process to resize the single partition without having to reload windows and then linux. That is it's purpose, to give you a partition to install on.

Yes, but this answer brings us back to the question: Why there is "Instlux" in first place ? According to Instlux website: "Dear Windows user, find your place in the Linux world by upgrading your windows to a Linux system the easiest possible way: running an installer on your Windows. Do not worry any more about configuring your system to boot from a CDROM/DVDROM." I see my idea as an extension to Instlux concept, that can bring ease-of-use further. -- -Alexey Eremenko "Technologov" -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Sat June 16 2007 6:42 pm, Alexey Eremenko scratched these words onto a coconut shell, hoping for an answer:

On 6/17/07, Kenneth Schneider wrote:

...

There is a resize function within the install process to resize the single partition without having to reload windows and then linux. That is it's purpose, to give you a partition to install on.

Yes, but this answer brings us back to the question: Why there is "Instlux" in first place ?

According to Instlux website: "Dear Windows user, find your place in the Linux world by upgrading your windows to a Linux system the easiest possible way: running an installer on your Windows. Do not worry any more about configuring your system to boot from a CDROM/DVDROM."

I see my idea as an extension to Instlux concept, that can bring ease-of-use further.

Alexey, what could be easier than plunking the install disc into your computer, letting it resize the partitions, where all you have to do is tell it how much space it can take for linux; and then installing linux and the grub bootloader, that allows you to choose between windows and linux at boot ? Even for trying linux out, you can make a small partition w/ linux and the bootloader installed by letting linux "shrink" your partition. If they hate it you simply remove it... -- j I've lived in the real world enough, we're all here because we ain't all there. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

or write an implementation and submit it as a patch :) jordi El lun, 18-06-2007 a las 11:49 +0200, Jordi Massaguer i Pla escribió:

It looks like a good idea. Open a feature request at the instlux-sourceforge site.

thanks,

jordi

El dom, 17-06-2007 a las 01:42 +0300, Alexey Eremenko escribió:

...

On 6/17/07, Kenneth Schneider wrote:

...

There is a resize function within the install process to resize the single partition without having to reload windows and then linux. That is it's purpose, to give you a partition to install on.

Yes, but this answer brings us back to the question: Why there is "Instlux" in first place ?

According to Instlux website: "Dear Windows user, find your place in the Linux world by upgrading your windows to a Linux system the easiest possible way: running an installer on your Windows. Do not worry any more about configuring your system to boot from a CDROM/DVDROM."

I see my idea as an extension to Instlux concept, that can bring ease-of-use further.

-- -Alexey Eremenko "Technologov"

-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Randall R Schulz wrote:

On Saturday 16 June 2007 14:49, Alexey Eremenko wrote:

...

Hi Ken Schneider

read:

The primary advantage to this technology is no need to repartition a hard drive at all. A very welcome feature to win-noobs alike.

The partition structure is independent of the type of file system created on those partitions. I.e., it is not necessary to repartition a drive (that's already partitioned) in order to install Linux.

Now, if what you want is to have both Linux and Windows installed on a given partition, that's another thing. As far as I know, there's no overlap between the directories used by Linux and those used by Windows, so if Linux could operate with a root file system that is NTFS, then this should be feasible. As far as my limited understanding goes, NTFS is sufficient to support a root file system, but I can't say for sure whether that is true. Clearly, the kernel would need to incorporate the NTFS-3G driver so the kernel and the running system could write to its NTFS root volume.

...

-- -Alexey Eremenko "Technologov"

Randall Schulz

The concept of having a Linux on the same File System as Windows is not new (it used to be an option with some distros). However where you start hitting issues is with fundamental incompatibilities in how the two OSs describe files and some basic file formats. For instance in Open Office and Eclipse one needs two distinct environments to work on documents or projects and NTFS has a very different security mechanism to Linux, I think in attempting to create simplicity one well may be in fact creating much unneeded complexity. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with SUSE - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGdO0VasN0sSnLmgIRAq/gAKDtYqdD3ok7Dd02LqawEVTY9xc49ACg1eZW OaLMzR/rz2tsgISFXLf22jo= =5bRF -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

--- Mark Goldstein wrote:

On 6/17/07, G T Smith wrote:

...

The concept of having a Linux on the same File System as Windows is not new (it used to be an option with some distros). However where you start hitting issues is with fundamental incompatibilities in how the two OSs describe files and some basic file formats. For instance in Open Office and Eclipse one needs two distinct environments to work on documents or projects and NTFS has a very different security mechanism to Linux, I think in attempting to create simplicity one well may be in fact creating much unneeded complexity.

Yes, I remember it was part of Slackware distribution long ago (back in 1996). You could install Slackware in FAT partition (it was called UMSDOS FS). The issue was, you paid performance penalty. Unix principles of file system with i-nodes, pointing to actual file and directory data, is very important. Not sure how NTFS works, but I doubt it uses Unix concept. Also, currently you will normally have no write access from Windows to Linux. If you install Linux on Windows FS, Linux will probably become vulnerable to Windows SW glitches, viruses and other nice things. (Of course, if some virus uses low level access, it could harm Linux FS in separate partitions as well). -- Mark Goldstein

Corel also supported UMSDOS. That was my introduction to Linux, way back in 1998 (I believe). From there, I went on to using LoadLin -- the only way to get Linux to run in a logical partition at that time, as I recall. With UMSDOS, all of the Linux files were stored inside a single M$windles FAT file! Why couldn't we do the same thing, using a single NTFS file? According to Wikipedia, support for UMSDOS was dropped in the 2.6 kernel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMSDOS ____________________________________________________________________________________ Get the Yahoo! toolbar and be alerted to new email wherever you're surfing. http://new.toolbar.yahoo.com/toolbar/features/mail/index.php -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Randall R Schulz wrote:

On Sunday 17 June 2007 01:13, G T Smith wrote:

...

Randall R Schulz wrote:

...

... <snip>

Windows software tends to assume text files (e.g.) are in its format. Much Linux software tolerates any of the three extant formats. Binary file formats aren't likely to vary and are usually specific to one OS or the other (exectuables, e.g.) and aren't going to be used by the OS that's not active.

The NTFS security model subsume that required by Unix, does it not?

Probably depends whether one is using the native unix fs security model or the ACL extensions. NTFS file security is ACL based anyway. Synchronising SAM/SID based ACLS with unix UID/GID based mechanisms might get at a little involved. Quotas if implemented might be a headache. The current ro NTFS mount seems to ignore NT/XP security but does not display some of the NT system files that I would expect to see. However, as another poster pointed out one is leaving the Linux side fully open to Windows (in)security...

However, I took a quick look at the NTFS-3G site, and I noticed that it said FUSE was required. If it's not a kernel-mode file system implementation, then it doesn't seem likely one could use it for the root file system—there'd be a chicken-and-egg problem (also known as a bootstrapping problem...) being able to access the root file system.

That probably is a show stopper.. there probably could be a work round (e.g. a windows exe that mounts an appropriate image) but this then gets all rather involved again. Rather depends how many hoops one wants to jump through to get something to work... Briefly experimented with a fuse based mechanism for creating a rw NTFS mount... it triggered an integrity check when booting into windows after writing one small test file. Not an experiment I am going to repeat, when a NTFS volume gets too badly fouled up recovery can be damn near impossible...

Simple or complex, I don't think it would go beyond being a curiosity for me. It would still be a dual-boot solution, and I don't need that—I require concurrent access, which is why I use VMware.

Likewise on former, if I need to do stuff in Linux and Windows at the same time (which is rare), booting into Windows and using Cygwin to create an X session to another box works for me... The OP suggested this as an option for new users so that would not need to repartition their hard drive on installing. I am not too sure that this idea would be a good initial offering for a newbie ...

Randall Schulz

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with SUSE - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGdWPMasN0sSnLmgIRAlPAAKDhrb1XjXexQNOS9X8W4JMtWZnYuQCgyuKY XQpyGamCisTeuLOruzm9pVE= =ZfI4 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Sun, 2007-06-17 at 00:49 +0300, Alexey Eremenko wrote:

Hi Ken Schneider

read:

The primary advantage to this technology is no need to repartition a hard drive at all. A very welcome feature to win-noobs alike.

No need to repartition anyway, just format with ext3. Besides there might be licence issues. Of course it looks like you want both installed on the same partition/filesystem. What better way to muck up linux. This would do nothing more at the moment then turn them away from linux because the NTFS-3G is not yet stable enough. There would be so many problems it would give them more fuel to add to the FUD fire. -- Ken Schneider UNIX since 1989, linux since 1994, SuSE since 1998 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Sunday 17 June 2007 16:19, S Glasoe wrote:

On Saturday June 16 2007 4:28:00 pm Alexey Eremenko wrote:

...

hi all !

I'm thinking - would it be possible to install openSUSE on NTFS partition, to prevent repartitioning, so more Windows users will be able to try out SUSE Linux ?

#1 reason this won't happen anytime soon is because Microsoft does _not_ publish the specifications for NTFS and would only share them with companies that are willing to pay extremely large amounts of money on a continuing basis with all kinds of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) in place. These companies would most likely have to pay a royalty/license fee for every product sold that utilized this knowledge too.

That's true, but any technology that's not potted in epoxy can be reverse-engineered. Presumably that's what the NTFS-3G team (http://www.ntfs-3g.org/) did, since it apparently works well for both reading and writing NTFS volumes from Linux (and other OSes).

...

-- Stan

Randall Schulz -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org