need help with proposed new install of 9.04

[ahurd]

I am running 8.04 in a dual boot with win2000, which includes /home on a separate partition and swap and a large 350g partition for data. I have downloaded and burned the install disk for 9.04 and need suggestions for how to proceed installing 9.04, hopefully keeping as much of the 8.04 structure as I can. Could someone help?

[Snowhog]

Re: need help with proposed new install of 9.04

It would be helpful to see how your system is laid out. Open a console and type:

sudo fdisk -l

Copy and paste the output in your reply.

[ahurd]

Re: need help with proposed new install of 9.04

here it is:
Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xe0472aba

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 1912 15358108+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 1913 5736 30716280 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 5737 7266 12289725 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 7267 60801 430019887+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 7649 7903 2048287+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 9052 60801 415681843+ 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 4005 MB, 4005560320 bytes
16 heads, 32 sectors/track, 15280 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 512 * 512 = 262144 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x4cac1014

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 16 15280 3907648 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

[Snowhog]

Re: need help with proposed new install of 9.04

Good. Thank you. Should have asked in my first reply, but please post your fstab as well:

cat /etc/fstab

With the output of both, we can easily see how you have your system set up and devise a solution to your question.

[ahurd]

Re: need help with proposed new install of 9.04

Here it is:
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# /dev/sda3
UUID=e38270b7-e9ca-4bb7-b939-fb97471395d1 / ext3 relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /dev/sda2
UUID=cd446e71-9e00-4582-baf0-bb1a3b17af37 /home ext3 relatime 0 2
# /dev/sda5
UUID=2af623e6-e190-4690-b2e5-e7fdf3564996 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
/dev/sda6 /DATA ext3 defaults 1 2

[Snowhog]

Re: need help with proposed new install of 9.04

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System mountpoint
/dev/sda1 * 1 1912 15358108+ 7 HPFS/NTFS Win2000
/dev/sda2 1913 5736 30716280 83 Linux /home
/dev/sda3 5737 7266 12289725 83 Linux /
/dev/sda4 7267 60801 430019887+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 7649 7903 2048287+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris swap
/dev/sda6 9052 60801 415681843+ 83 Linux /DATA


Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 16 15280 3907648 c W95 FAT32 (LBA) Win95

You have Win2000 on the first partition of your first HD, and you have either, Win95 or another 'shared' data area on the first partition of your second HD. Is this correct? I'm not good at converting allocated sectors into space sizes, so can you tell us exactly how much space you made for /, /home, and swap on the first HD, and is the full 4GB on the second HD allocated?

And, when you installed 8.04, where did you tell Grub to be installed? I'm assuming to /dev/sda3 and not the mbr. Is that correct?

[ahurd]

Re: need help with proposed new install of 9.04

I have only one 500g HD sda. From gparted:
sda1 14.65 ntfs win2000
sda2 29.29 ext3 /home
sda3 11.72 ext3 /
sda4 410.1 extended
unalloc 2.93
sda5 1.95 swap
unalloc 8.79
sda6 396.43 ext3 /DATA

[Snowhog]

Re: need help with proposed new install of 9.04

According to the output of fdisk -l, you have two HDs. The second is identified as Disk /dev/sdb: 4005 MB, 4005560320 bytes. It isn't identified in your fstab, so you aren't using it 'automatically' at boot. But it is present. Is it an internal HD or connected via USB?

[ahurd]

Re: need help with proposed new install of 9.04

It is probably an unused old HD that is unused and I had forgotten about

[Snowhog]

Re: need help with proposed new install of 9.04

The simplest way to accomplish what you want, would be to use GParted to partition and format the second HD for the 9.04 installation. This means you don't have to worry about messing with the existing partitioning of the first HD.

The unallocated space on the first HD really isn't enough for installing another OS, if the sizes you gave are accurate. One last request. In a console run:

df -hTxtmpfs

Copy and paste the output. This will give us the allocated size of each partition as well as how much of it is used.

[ahurd]

Re: need help with proposed new install of 9.04


Here it is:
albert@ALBERT:~$ df -hTxtmpfs
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3 ext3 12G 4.7G 6.4G 43% /
/dev/sda2 ext3 30G 14G 15G 49% /home
/dev/sda6 ext3 391G 26G 345G 7% /DATA

I would rather not use the second drive. At best it is very old and slow and might not even work. I had intended on discarding it.

[Snowhog]

Re: need help with proposed new install of 9.04

Okay. Your /DATA partition is HUGE, yet you are only using 7% of it. I'd suggest using GParted LiveCD to resize this partition to something smaller, say 100G, and then partitioning part of the remaining 291G of unallocated space into two new partitions, one of 10G to be used for root ( / ) and a 30G (or larger, your call) for /home. There is no sense using the entire remaining space for /home. This will still leave you gobs of unallocated space for future expansion if desired.

HOW TO RESIZE PARTITION (GParted Documentation)

[ahurd]

Re: need help with proposed new install of 9.04

I would like to keep 8.04 install (with its /home) in case something goes wrong with 9.04 install. Do I need a new /home for 9.04 on its own partition in which case how do I distinguish new from old /home so booting 9.04 knows which /home to use?

[Snowhog]

Re: need help with proposed new install of 9.04

If you go through with resizing your /DATA partition and creating two new partitions (using GParted LiveCD) and setting them up for use with 9.04, you will have separate root and /home partitions for 9.04. You would use GParted to identify the mountpoint to use for each - root for one and /home for the other.

This is no different than when you installed 8.04 on the HD that already had Win2000.

[ahurd]

Re: need help with proposed new install of 9.04

So with 8.04 /home remounted under /root/home, I will be able to boot 8.04 using old /home?