Jamie Griffin wrote:
Hi
Just wanted to query something with the partitioning on my disk.
I had to reinstall the OS this evening (KDE 10.3) and it looks as though the previous partitions for previous system are still present which is not what i had intended. I don't much about this, so i'm not sure if it's something i need to be concerned about or not, but i do want to make sure i haven't caused a problem.
I opened Kdiskfree which shows the following:
DEVICE TYPE SIZE MOUNT POINT
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD16.... ext3 N/A / /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD16 ext3 N/A /home /dev/fd0 auto N/A /media/floppy
/dev/sda5 ? 19.7GB / /dev/sda6 ? 105.4GB /home debugfs debugfs N/A /sys/kernel udev ? 1,002MB /dev
Does this look right?
During the install i wanted to completely remove the previous installation and repartition the new OS using the whole disk, but i'm not certain that has happened.
I'm using a SATA 160GB hard drive on a Dell XPS laptop on 64bit Architecture.
I'd be really grateful if someone could explain what has happened and if i need to be concerned at all.
I''m sorry if this seems a silly request, i just want to understand what i've done.
Thanks in advance, Jamie
Jamie, What I have found is the 10.3 install will attempt to create new partitions regardless of existing partitions, but it will number the new partitions as if the old partitions exist. Specifically if you have one disk with 2 existing partitions and one extended partition: sda1 / sda2 /boot sda5 /home When you install 10.3 either again or for the first time with the old install being 10.2 or something really recent, yast will propose: sda3 / sda6 /boot sda7 /home Which is quite annoying. When I get to the partitioning part of the install, I just click on "Partitions" choose "custom partitioning" the _delete_ all existing partitions. You can then choose "propose a new partitioning scheme" and usually yast gets it right (sda1, sda2, sda5, etc.) or you can the edit what yast "proposed" to adjust the partition sizes, etc. Note: any time you change partitions you will LOSE ALL DATA CONTAINED ON THE DISK. Also, when partitioning don't forget to create a swap file. Rule of thumb make the swap file 2 times the size of the ram installed up to about 1 Gig. (i.e. 512M or RAM, then create 1G swap) Any swap over 1-2 Gig is a waste of space. If you ever swapped that much the disk I/0 would bring your system to its knees. Don't be afraid to do your own partitioning on a new install. If you really screw it up and get lost, then just start the install over. The yast installer interface to the partitioner, while clunky, is really quite simple and good. For each partition, just select your filesystem type (ext3, reiser, etc..[swap for the swap file]) then select "format partition" so that it will be formatted, choose the mount point (/, /boot, /home or swap) and then move to your next partition until done. That's it. I usually like ~100M for /boot, (you can easily fit 3 kernels there and 4 will fit). If you have 100G drive, then make / 15G and /home the remaining 85G. You can really easily fit every application you can dream of in a 15G / partition. If you have a 500G drive, then I would make / 20G and then use the remaining 480G for /home. I have just about everything under the sun loaded and it takes a total of 8.1G. (here are my active partitions shown with df -h) Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda6 15G 8.1G 6.1G 58% / udev 1014M 88K 1014M 1% /dev /dev/sda7 51G 32G 17G 66% /home /dev/sda1 43G 23G 20G 54% /windows/C 2 Notes: 1-you don't create /dev, the system does that automatically; and 2-(dual boot with windows, windows needs to be on the first partition of the primary drive. Linux doesn't care where it gets installed) Have fun, you can't hurt it.... -- David C. Rankin, J.D., P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org