How to create and format partitions with Gparted?

[rcrsn51]

So please teach me how to do these partitions. I am ready!

??????

You built a bunch of partitions on the Dell machine so you must have already used Gparted successfully. What else do you need to know? Delete any old partitions and start building new ones.

Right-click on a partition to see a list of operations.

[nooby]

But I want to follow your suggestion and make that small one first.

Now it is a big 19GB one.

So how do I make a small one that will become the sda1 with
grub4dos on it?

I can understand that you know. I have no idea how I did the
Dell machine. That where several days ago and that knowledge
is gone now. And it took me a whole day of experiments to get it
and I don't know what I did. I failed many times before it finally worked.

So need only to know how to start anew now when I have everything set up.

[rcrsn51]

Right-click on the big partition and delete it.
Click on Apply - the big green check mark.
Right-click on the unallocated space and create a New partition.
There are lots of pull-down lists to try.

[nooby]

Yes but one have to tell it how big it should be and such.
Why should I delete it? Should I not resize it so the small
one comes first?

I don't even know how to add one to the one you say I should create first.

Too many unknown things to chose among. I drown in all the options.
Don't know in what order one do things

[nooby]

Okay now I have followed the description from t6he link I gave.
Looks like this

Does that look okay? I guess now I shall install something on the ext3
and tell that to do grub2 on that ext3 whatever name it has.

then I boot back into puppy and use grub4dos then
and install puppy frugally on the first partition with
grubdos finding both puppy and the grub 2 linux?

I am installing LM12 on the ext3 partition now.
Have no idea if that works or not.
It did not ask about making a grub2 install or not
so I hope it place such on that partition. I guess
this install will take a long time? So I get back and
tell if I could boot it or not. Then I reboot into puppy
on a 2GB usb stick and use that one to do a grub4dos
frugal install of lupu528 and hope that g4d find the LM12
and do a good chain load thing so I can boot both later.

[rcrsn51]

It did not ask about making a grub2 install or not so I hope it place such on that partition.

That's the danger here. If the installer didn't give you a choice of where to put GRUB, you have no control. Did it install it on the MBR of the USB drive or on the MBR of your main hard drive? You definitely DON'T want it to do the second one.

That's why it's so important to try this on a test computer.

[nooby]

But this is the test computer.

I am booted in LM12 now but it fail to boot using the LM12 install
It booted using the grub4 dos install.

It never show the grub.conf dsiplay.
So not sure what that is all about.

How can I test that?

Or maybe I have to make the grub2 boot visisble by
edit out the hidden. I 've seen such reports on other forums?

[rcrsn51]

It booted using the grub4 dos install.

That's exactly what you want. You have made GRUB4DOS your primary bootloader.

Or maybe I have to make the grub2 boot visisble by edit out the hidden. I 've seen such reports on other forums?

Why are you still worried about GRUB2? You now have GRUB4DOS working as the bootloader for your system.

[nooby]

But grub2 is the way to boot the majority of linux.

Take Crunchbang as far as I know it will only boot
using grub2 and a lot of other linux says so too?

I mean how am I supposed to add another linux and test that one?

I need to add to 40_custom the stanza for that linux
and then do update_grub or what code there where.

But if I never see grub 2 how can I boot ArchBang
I would need to do gru4dos config again.

[rcrsn51]

But if I never see grub 2 how can I boot ArchBang
I would need to do gru4dos config again.

Exactly. That's how this procedure will work. I described the steps here. In particular, see Step 6.

But grub2 is the way to boot the majority of linux.

Take Crunchbang as far as I know it will only boot
using grub2 and a lot of other linux says so too?

I mean how am I supposed to add another linux and test that one?

I need to add to 40_custom the stanza for that linux
and then do update_grub or what code there where.

Then you have to make a choice. Continue to fight with GRUB2 or switch to GRUB4DOS.

[nooby]

Yes and I did try to follow your advice too.

b. Set the mount point of the selected partition as "/".
c. Install GRUB2 to the partition boot sector. ie sda2, NOT sda.

What I fail to get is to "install GRU2 to the sda2 how does one tell
the installer to do that?

The install do look normal to me. I see a directory named boot and
the grub.conf looks normal too.

So why does it not show up when I boot? Could it have to do with
something like making a file executable or something. What else?

Maybe some setting in BIOS makes it invisible?

Or is it something that I should have done at the install of LM12?

I don't understand what you say here

Then you have to make a choice. Continue to fight with GRUB2 or switch to GRUB4DOS.

AFAIK one can have both and chain load why would I have to chose at all?

[rcrsn51]

What I fail to get is to "install GRU2 to the sda2 how does one tell the installer to do that?

This depends on the distro. They don't always give you this option.

The install do look normal to me. I see a directory named boot and the grub.conf looks normal too.So why does it not show up when I boot? Could it have to do with something like making a file executable or something. What else?

Because GRUB4DOS is now your primary bootloader, not GRUB2.

Then you have to make a choice. Continue to fight with GRUB2 or switch to GRUB4DOS.AFAIK one can have both and chain load why would I have to chose at all?

You CAN chainload, but ONLY if the installer put its GRUB2 on the partition boot sector instead of on the MBR.

In the GRUB4DOS menu, you should see some entries marked "PBR". Those ones will attempt to chainload - they jump directly to the Partition Boot Record in hopes of finding the distro's own bootloader code there.

But if your Mint install put its GRUB on the drive's MBR, that choice won't work.

[nooby]

Much appreciated that you take time to explain.
Maybe I installed Bodhi Linux first so it's installer
did the right thing while LM12 one maybe need
to be very good at setting it up then.

Because it did work on that Dell but not on HP Pavilion
So maybe LM12 have it's own way.
I want to add one partition so I can keep LM12
but try out CrunchBang and others like that.

I did not understand that extended and add partition
within the extended and not make it primary.

What was that about? How does one tell the gparted
to do that trick?

[rcrsn51]

I did not understand that extended and add partition
within the extended and not make it primary. What was that about? How does one tell the gparted to do that trick?

When you ran Gparted, you should have seen the menu that let you choose Extended instead of Primary.

Once the extended partition is created, you should see a choice for Logical instead of Primary.

[nooby]

Thanks I will look for that tomorrow or on Wednesday.
Late at night here so I turn in. Thanks for caring about me.

[rcrsn51]

As a test, I set up a USB hard drive and installed the following Linuxes:

Ubuntu 10.10
Xubuntu 10.04
Mint 12 LXDE
Bodhi 1.4
Crunchbang 10

In each case, I used a manual install procedure like here. The partition names were now sdbx because I was working on the USB drive.

Only Xubuntu did NOT give a choice for installing GRUB. Instead, it auto-installed it on the MBR of the USB drive. However, the next run of Grub4Dos bootloader config replaced it.

Using Slacko, I ran Grub4Dos. It made two menu entries for each Linux. All five conventional entries worked correctly. The chainloader (PBR) entries also worked, except for Xubuntu.

I then added some Puppy frugal installs, both inside the existing Linux full installs and in a dedicated partition. I re-ran Grub4Dos and it identified them correctly.

Update:

Slitaz will run off a full install on USB by adding the kernel argument "rootdelay=10". Slitaz gives you the option of not installing GRUB.

Vector Linux won't work in this system. It insists on formatting its root partition as reiserfs, which Grub4Dos can't read.

Slax will run as a frugal install with persistence.

PCLinuxOS works. However, it still uses legacy GRUB. So, depending on your BIOS, you may not be able to chainload to a USB drive. Also, you may need to manually edit the Grub4Dos menu.lst entry to match the one generated by PCLinuxOS.

Archbang works, but with the same GRUB restriction as PCLinuxOS. Archbang requires some modification to the init so USB booting will work.

Salix works. It still uses the old LILO bootloader, but it has an option to NOT install it. Grub4Dos booted it with the regular entry.

-----------------------

Here is a useful trick: The advantage of installing GRUB2 to the PBR is that you get to use the distro's "official" GRUB2 menu. But if you installed GRUB2 to the MBR instead, you can still bring up that menu. In Grub4Dos, change the chainloader entry to:

Code: Select all

uuid xxxxx
kernel /boot/grub/core.img

[nooby]

Thanks for sharing those experiences.

So if I get it. Every Developer has his own little idea
of what an installer do automatically and what is up
for choice and how they indicate what one can choose?

I take a look at the link and try to follow it.