[opensuse] Installing OS 11.3 - Partitioning
Greetings all, I have an existing 11.2 install with separate /boot, swap, /, /home, and /var partitions. I'd like to keep this setup, at least for now. I have room on the same disk, but am unsure how to do a new install of 11.3. What I THINK I need is: Set /boot to the existing partition Set swap to the existing partition Set /home to the existing partion Set / and /var to new partitions Is this correct? Will the new install detect and leave a menu item for booting both 11.2 and the new 11.3 install? Many thanks, Jim F -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On 2010/07/23 19:55 (GMT-0500) Jim Flanagan composed:
I have an existing 11.2 install with separate /boot, swap, /, /home, and /var partitions. I'd like to keep this setup, at least for now. I have room on the same disk, but am unsure how to do a new install of 11.3.
What I THINK I need is: Set /boot to the existing partition
Setting one partition as /boot in more than one installed OS is an invitation for pain. Each OS will assume that partition is its duty to maintain. You'll likely find mkinitrd programs building initrds for kernels that were not installed by that OS, with quite unpredictable results. I've never found good reason to try this myself.
Set swap to the existing partition
The installer will automatically assign whatever swap exists. Good luck undoing that if that's what you wish done.
Set /home to the existing partion Set / and /var to new partitions
I never use a separate partition for /var, so offer no opinion on what it requires.
Is this correct?
I don't think "correct" would be an apt description.
Will the new install detect and leave a menu item for booting both 11.2 and the new 11.3 install?
Yes, but then after next 11.2 update there's no telling exactly what to expect. Both 11.2 & 11.3 will symlink its latest installed kernel & initrd. I suggest leaving the current /boot partition exclusively to 11.2's use, and leave 11.3's /boot as a normal directory on /. After initial 11.3 installation is complete, selecting / as Grub target, run 11.2's YaST2 bootloader to add at least chainload and/or configfile entries to its menu.lst for booting 11.3. It can also add one or more entries to boot 11.3 directly using kernel & initrd from 11.3's /boot. Alternatively, right before beginning 11.3 installation, modify 11.2's fstab to eliminate mounting the /boot partition. Then umount it from /boot, remounting elsewhere (e.g. /disks/boot). Then copy its contents to /boot, modify /etc/grub.conf to match the new location on /, then install grub to /. Once confirmed to function correctly, install 11.3, assigning the old 11.2 /boot as /boot for 11.3. Once I've created a partition to function as /boot, I stop mounting it as /boot, and maintain its menu.lst manually. That way it can only ever be my own fault if it doesn't work and nothing will boot. That limits each OS installation to maintaining itself exclusively, being booted via direct real /boot/grub/menu.lst one of three ways: 1-entry to load kernel & initrd per OS 2-entry to chainload each OS 3-entry using configfile for each OS Oh, and I always use only standard MBR code, and boot from one or more primaries, depending what I've installed on them, commonly Windows and/or DOS and/or IBM BM, plus one for real /boot as master boot manager if not using IBM BM as master boot manager. I have upwards of 20 multiboot systems, some with more than 15 installed distros, mostly using only a single HD per system. Also I do _all_ partitioning prior to installing anything, and use a cross-platform partitioning program that is not freeware or open source (DFSee; has binaries for DOS, Windows, OS/2, Linux & Mac). I never have partitioning incompatibilities using this technique, and all OSes are content with the partitions DFSee provides for their use. -- "The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On 07/23/2010 07:09 PM, Felix Miata wrote:
On 2010/07/23 19:55 (GMT-0500) Jim Flanagan composed:
I have an existing 11.2 install with separate /boot, swap, /, /home, and /var partitions. I'd like to keep this setup, at least for now. I have room on the same disk, but am unsure how to do a new install of 11.3.
What I THINK I need is: Set /boot to the existing partition
Setting one partition as /boot in more than one installed OS is an invitation for pain. Each OS will assume that partition is its duty to maintain. You'll likely find mkinitrd programs building initrds for kernels that were not installed by that OS, with quite unpredictable results. I've never found good reason to try this myself.
< -snip- > I've been doing it a bit differently. I want to be able to do a full install of a new OS while maintaining the option of booting back to the old one if/when things go sour. So I create two boot partitions formatted with ext2 (because I'm used to it), one swap partition, two root partitions and a /home partition. It looks like this for a first-time install: /dev/sda1 ext2 100MB /boot /dev/sda2 ext2 100MB unmounted /dev/sda3 swap RAM size swap /dev/sda4 extended partition, rest of disk /dev/sda5 xfs 40GB / /dev/sda6 xfs 40GB unmounted /dev/sda7 xfs rest of disk /home I use the default MBR for booting. It does use a bit of disk space, but it's worth the sacrifice, IMHO. When it becomes time to install a new OS I use the custom partition creation option to use the unused /boot and / partitions, leaving the originals as unmounted. Everything works as expected without messing with grub or mkinitrd. Grub allows selection of either OS when booting. Subsequent OS installs just flip/flop back and forth, with the /home partition just trailing along for the ride. If there's some config information that needs to be moved, the non-active root can be manually mounted on /mnt to copy /etc/passwd and whatnot to the new OS. I'm sure there are other methods, but this has been working well for me since SuSE 5.3 and as recently as this afternoon when I bumped up to 11.3 from 11.2 on one system. Regards, Lew -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On 2010/07/23 19:51 (GMT-0700) Lew Wolfgang composed:
Felix Miata wrote:
Setting one partition as /boot in more than one installed OS is an invitation for pain. Each OS will assume that partition is its duty to maintain. You'll likely find mkinitrd programs building initrds for kernels that were not installed by that OS, with quite unpredictable results. I've never found good reason to try this myself.
I've been doing it a bit differently. I want to be able to do a full install of a new OS while maintaining the option of booting back to the old one if/when things go sour.
You have me confused. Did I write something that made you think I ever do a full new install without having previous ready to fall back to? Unless my HD is rather new and I've not yet had the time to do more than one install, most of my disks have a whole bunch of previous installs to fall back to. e.g.: http://fm.no-ip.com/Tmp/Dfsee/big31L04.txt (3 Linux, plus other; 2 HD, MD RAID1) http://fm.no-ip.com/Tmp/Dfsee/gx260L0c.txt (14 Linux, plus other; 1 HD) http://fm.no-ip.com/Tmp/Dfsee/m7ncdL0e.txt (13 Linux, plus other; 1 HD) http://fm.no-ip.com/Tmp/Dfsee/t2240L08.txt (9 Linux, plus other; 1 HD) http://fm.no-ip.com/Tmp/Dfsee/gx150L05.txt (13 Linux, plus other; 2 HD) No HDs above have more than one partition that is ever mounted as /boot. Most never mount any partition on /boot. All Linux are bootable.
I use the default MBR for booting.
Grub on MBR in conjuction with non-Linux OS installations is an invitation to need to perform a boot loader repair from other than HD media. c.f. http://old-en.opensuse.org/Bugs/grub#How_does_a_PC_boot_.2F_How_can_I_set_up... & http://fm.no-ip.com/PC/install-doz-after.html -- "The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On 07/23/2010 08:46 PM, Felix Miata wrote:
On 2010/07/23 19:51 (GMT-0700) Lew Wolfgang composed:
Felix Miata wrote:
Setting one partition as /boot in more than one installed OS is an invitation for pain. Each OS will assume that partition is its duty to maintain. You'll likely find mkinitrd programs building initrds for kernels that were not installed by that OS, with quite unpredictable results. I've never found good reason to try this myself.
I've been doing it a bit differently. I want to be able to do a full install of a new OS while maintaining the option of booting back to the old one if/when things go sour.
You have me confused. Did I write something that made you think I ever do a full new install without having previous ready to fall back to? Unless my HD is rather new and I've not yet had the time to do more than one install, most of my disks have a whole bunch of previous installs to fall back to.
No, you didn't, Felix. I was just offering the way I've done it for years just using the default install boot settings and having multiple physical boot partitions.
e.g.: http://fm.no-ip.com/Tmp/Dfsee/big31L04.txt (3 Linux, plus other; 2 HD, MD RAID1) http://fm.no-ip.com/Tmp/Dfsee/gx260L0c.txt (14 Linux, plus other; 1 HD) http://fm.no-ip.com/Tmp/Dfsee/m7ncdL0e.txt (13 Linux, plus other; 1 HD) http://fm.no-ip.com/Tmp/Dfsee/t2240L08.txt (9 Linux, plus other; 1 HD) http://fm.no-ip.com/Tmp/Dfsee/gx150L05.txt (13 Linux, plus other; 2 HD)
No HDs above have more than one partition that is ever mounted as /boot. Most never mount any partition on /boot. All Linux are bootable.
I use the default MBR for booting.
Grub on MBR in conjuction with non-Linux OS installations is an invitation to need to perform a boot loader repair from other than HD media. c.f. http://old-en.opensuse.org/Bugs/grub#How_does_a_PC_boot_.2F_How_can_I_set_up... & http://fm.no-ip.com/PC/install-doz-after.html
I agree, I only install Linux. Any Windows installs go on a VM in my case. Regards, Lew -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Fri, 23 Jul 2010 22:22:09 -0700
Lew Wolfgang
On 07/23/2010 08:46 PM, Felix Miata wrote:
On 2010/07/23 19:51 (GMT-0700) Lew Wolfgang composed:
Felix Miata wrote:
Setting one partition as /boot in more than one installed OS is an invitation for pain. Each OS will assume that partition is its duty to maintain. You'll likely find mkinitrd programs building initrds for kernels that were not installed by that OS, with quite unpredictable results. I've never found good reason to try this myself.
I've been doing it a bit differently. I want to be able to do a full install of a new OS while maintaining the option of booting back to the old one if/when things go sour.
You have me confused. Did I write something that made you think I ever do a full new install without having previous ready to fall back to? Unless my HD is rather new and I've not yet had the time to do more than one install, most of my disks have a whole bunch of previous installs to fall back to.
No, you didn't, Felix. I was just offering the way I've done it for years just using the default install boot settings and having multiple physical boot partitions.
e.g.: http://fm.no-ip.com/Tmp/Dfsee/big31L04.txt (3 Linux, plus other; 2 HD, MD RAID1) http://fm.no-ip.com/Tmp/Dfsee/gx260L0c.txt (14 Linux, plus other; 1 HD) http://fm.no-ip.com/Tmp/Dfsee/m7ncdL0e.txt (13 Linux, plus other; 1 HD) http://fm.no-ip.com/Tmp/Dfsee/t2240L08.txt (9 Linux, plus other; 1 HD) http://fm.no-ip.com/Tmp/Dfsee/gx150L05.txt (13 Linux, plus other; 2 HD)
No HDs above have more than one partition that is ever mounted as /boot. Most never mount any partition on /boot. All Linux are bootable.
I use the default MBR for booting.
Grub on MBR in conjuction with non-Linux OS installations is an invitation to need to perform a boot loader repair from other than HD media. c.f. http://old-en.opensuse.org/Bugs/grub#How_does_a_PC_boot_.2F_How_can_I_set_up... & http://fm.no-ip.com/PC/install-doz-after.html
I agree, I only install Linux. Any Windows installs go on a VM in my case.
Regards, Lew
And just to muddy the waters even further, here's my setup. Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda11 29G 7.7G 20G 29% /-SUSE /dev/sda10 31G 6.4G 24.6G 21% /-Fedora /dev/sda5 342M 42M 283M 13% /boot <<<<< common part. unmounted /dev/sda12 7.7G 1.1G 6.3G 15% /opt /dev/sda13 218G 1.9G 205G 1% /Common <<<<< common data part. /dev/sda2 15G 167M 15G 2% /Shared-Win /dev/sda1 40G 31G 8.6G 79% /Windoze_7 /dev/sda7 20G 8.1G 11G 43% /downloads /dev/sda8 9.9G 151M 9.2G 2% /source /dev/sda9 49G 2.1G 44G 5% /temp /dev/sda3 32G 0G 32G 0% to be BSD I keep /home directories separate to avoid user setting interactions between different program versions but share the data between all distros. Just be sure when creating user accounts to use the same UID between distros, in my case, since openSUSE was installed first and had quite a few files as 1000, users, I had to create a new user by the same name in Fedora and set the UIG & GID to 1000, users. Then created a script to create symlinks from home to the users data directories as below. #! /bin/bash ## create symlinks from /home/tom to /Common rm /home/tom/.claws-mail l ln -s /Common/.claws-mail /home/tom/.claws-mail rm /home/tom/Document ln -s /Common/Documents /home/tom/Documents rm /home/tom/bin ln -s /Common/bin /home/tom/bin rm /home/tom/Pictures ln -s /Common/Pictures /home/tom/Pictures rm /home/tom/Mail ln -s /Common/Mail /home/tom/Mail rm /home/tom/Maildir ln -s /Common/Maildir /home/tom/Maildir rm /home/tom/Music ln -s /Common/Music /home/tom/Music rm /home/tom/Podcasts ln -s /Common/Podcasts /home/tom/Podcasts rm /home/tom/Public ln -s /Common/Public /home/tom/Public rm /home/tom/Templates ln -s /Common/Templates /home/tom/Templates rm /home/tom/Videos ln -s /Common/Videos /home/tom/Videos exit 0 Of course if your starting from the first distro, change the "rm"s above into "mv". This allows me to have all my mail, documents, etc. shared between the distros. Tom -- Tom Taylor - retired penguin openSuSE 11.3 x86_64 Fedora 13 KDE 4.4.4 rel 2, FF 3.6.6 claws-mail 3.7.6 registered linux user 263467 linxt-At-comcast-DoT-net -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Felix Miata wrote:
On 2010/07/23 19:55 (GMT-0500) Jim Flanagan composed:
I have an existing 11.2 install with separate /boot, swap, /, /home, and /var partitions. I'd like to keep this setup, at least for now. I have room on the same disk, but am unsure how to do a new install of 11.3.
What I THINK I need is: Set /boot to the existing partition
Setting one partition as /boot in more than one installed OS is an invitation for pain. Each OS will assume that partition is its duty to maintain. You'll likely find mkinitrd programs building initrds for kernels that were not installed by that OS, with quite unpredictable results. I've never found good reason to try this myself.
Set swap to the existing partition
The installer will automatically assign whatever swap exists. Good luck undoing that if that's what you wish done.
Set /home to the existing partion Set / and /var to new partitions
I never use a separate partition for /var, so offer no opinion on what it requires.
Is this correct?
I don't think "correct" would be an apt description.
Will the new install detect and leave a menu item for booting both 11.2 and the new 11.3 install?
Yes, but then after next 11.2 update there's no telling exactly what to expect. Both 11.2 & 11.3 will symlink its latest installed kernel & initrd.
I suggest leaving the current /boot partition exclusively to 11.2's use, and leave 11.3's /boot as a normal directory on /. After initial 11.3 installation is complete, selecting / as Grub target, run 11.2's YaST2 bootloader to add at least chainload and/or configfile entries to its menu.lst for booting 11.3. It can also add one or more entries to boot 11.3 directly using kernel & initrd from 11.3's /boot.
Alternatively, right before beginning 11.3 installation, modify 11.2's fstab to eliminate mounting the /boot partition. Then umount it from /boot, remounting elsewhere (e.g. /disks/boot). Then copy its contents to /boot, modify /etc/grub.conf to match the new location on /, then install grub to /. Once confirmed to function correctly, install 11.3, assigning the old 11.2 /boot as /boot for 11.3.
Once I've created a partition to function as /boot, I stop mounting it as /boot, and maintain its menu.lst manually. That way it can only ever be my own fault if it doesn't work and nothing will boot. That limits each OS installation to maintaining itself exclusively, being booted via direct real /boot/grub/menu.lst one of three ways:
1-entry to load kernel & initrd per OS 2-entry to chainload each OS 3-entry using configfile for each OS
Oh, and I always use only standard MBR code, and boot from one or more primaries, depending what I've installed on them, commonly Windows and/or DOS and/or IBM BM, plus one for real /boot as master boot manager if not using IBM BM as master boot manager. I have upwards of 20 multiboot systems, some with more than 15 installed distros, mostly using only a single HD per system. Also I do _all_ partitioning prior to installing anything, and use a cross-platform partitioning program that is not freeware or open source (DFSee; has binaries for DOS, Windows, OS/2, Linux & Mac). I never have partitioning incompatibilities using this technique, and all OSes are content with the partitions DFSee provides for their use.
I guess I'm a little confused by the multiple boot setup. I seem to remember that older Suse versions would update grub, but still leave manu itmes for older Suse installs. But I have had trouble with this on the last few versions of openSuse. So you manage your yourself. I guess that's the best way to ensure no problems arise from future installs. I can't recall exactly why I set up a separate /boot partition on this computer. I thought it was a better way to go, but with a second or more installs it seems not optimal. In any case, thanks for you good info. Jim F -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
participants (4)
-
Felix Miata -
Jim Flanagan -
Lew Wolfgang -
Thomas Taylor