On 2008/06/14 09:28 (GMT+1200) Volker Kuhlmann apparently typed:
In almost 10 years of using SUSE I have yet to be able to do a new installation (which I usually do to get rid of old crud) on an already partitioned hard disk, without losing most of my data to the bit bucket. I always have to go right down into expert partitioning to throw the useless yast proposals away, which always move partition boundaries thus hosing my disk. IIRC often the proposal didn't even manage to reuse the existing swap partition (which can be shared between multiple Linux installaions). There is no simple "new installation on which existing partition".
After two or three version upgrades' worth of experience, there's really no good reason to not know in advance enough about partitioning to not plan and provide in advance of starting an installation what partitioning you should want, and go ahead and create it before booting into installation. That way you avoid dependence on someone else's (the SUSE installation developers) guessing what might be best for you. There are many good partitioning tools. Pick one, and use it first, then install. Here's a fairly simplistic example: 200M primary ext2 for base level Grub and a bunch of installation kernels and initrds. 1G logical swapper 12G ext3 logical for distro 1 12G ext3 logical for distro 2 12G ext3 logical for development distro or distro 3 212G ext3 logical for /home The first time the disk gets used, you have the installer set the primary to be /boot, make the first 12G /, and the big partition /home. You use that until the next update time, when you tell that installer to use the second 12G for /, big for /home, and don't set a separate /boot, and install Grub on its /. Instead of booting your new #2 directly, you use the first distro's Grub to chainload to the new #2 distro. Once you're happy with and/or acclimated to the newer distro, you simply stop using the first, until and unless such time as you mess up #2 beyond repair, whereupon you have the original as fallback. After using #2 a while, you feel adventurous, and try a development version, such as Factory. You have its installer use the #3 12G for /, big for /home, with its Grub on its /. Whether it works OK or not or you like it or not doesn't matter, because your original Grub menu gives you a choice between the original as fallback, #2 for operation as normal, and development only as the mood strikes. When the development version goes gold, you can either convert it to the new release, and switch to using it as your primary, or just leave it be, and install over the original. But, if and when installing over the original, you don't set a separate /boot. You just keep using the original Grub as your main menu to chainload to whichever you prefer for that startup. From this point on, you just leave Grub alone on that primary partition, and only touch that partition occassionally and manually if and when menu.lst needs a tweak. Naturally the sizes I suggested above are no more than suggestions. Your HD is probably larger or smaller than 250G, and your preference for space devoted to a / partition will vary according to need, the phase of the moon, the Zodiac, or whatever. I make / partitions as small as 4G. Others think 20G or more should be the minimum. Some have small disks, others monsters or multiples or RAID. The point is after accumulating a bit of experience you can use your own brain and come up with something better than an installer's guesstimate of your need, and leave that guesstimation to be applied on behalf of nOObs. There's really no need for partitioning surprises to waste a non-nOOb's time or data. With one exception, an early Lindows that offered no partitioning choices, I have never installed any distro without partitioning in advance. -- "Where were you when I laid the earth's foudation?" Matthew 7:12 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org