i want to set up my hard drive to have three partitions one is the windows xp home partition, one will be my main Linux partition (for fedora core ) and the other will be a testing ground partition so i can test out latest fedora core tests and or try out other Linux distributions with it. i am going to use the mandrake installer to format and resize my hardrive but what should i set the two Linux partitions as what file system? and will it be easy to delete and overwrite a Linux partition that i will use for testing?
thanks
Kenneth Geddings Jr. Associate Member Free Software Foundation www.fsf.org
Kenneth Geddings Jr. wrote:
i want to set up my hard drive to have three partitions one is the windows xp home partition, one will be my main Linux partition (for fedora core ) and the other will be a testing ground partition so i can test out latest fedora core tests and or try out other Linux distributions with it. i am going to use the mandrake installer to format and resize my hardrive but what should i set the two Linux partitions as what file system? and will it be easy to delete and overwrite a Linux partition that i will use for testing?
thanks
Kenneth Geddings Jr. Associate Member Free Software Foundation www.fsf.org
I'm not sure if you've already set up Windows, but the best way to do things, starting from a clean drive, is to install Windows first, specifying the desired size for the Windows partition with the Windows installer and leaving the rest of the drive alone. Once Windows is installed, start the Fedora Core installation. Manually partition the rest of the disk to your liking. You'll at least want a root partition ( / mount point, ext3 filesystem) for each Linux installation and a swap partition (has no mount point, 'swap' format) that the Linux installations may share. Your swap partition should probably at least match your RAM in size. Many people further subdivide the drive, that's a matter of preference. Once Fedora Core is installed, you'll be able to choose between Fedora Core and Windows (labelled 'Other' by default) using the Grub bootloader. If you want read-write access to your Windows partition under Linux, you'll need to use the FAT32 format when installing it. Support in Linux for NTFS is incomplete. There are projects to allow read-write access to ext3 partitions from within Windows, but I can't name any off the top of my head, nor do I recommend giving read-write access to your Linux partition to something as untrustworthy as Windows. After installing other distributions, it may be necessary to alter your bootloader configuration in order to boot everything. I recommend using Grub from Fedora Core as your bootloader, configuring it for any other operating systems you install. I'm not biased, it just works well. You should probably create a Grub boot disk to keep handy in case your boot record is overwritten.
-Patrick "The N-Man" Barnes nman64@n-man.com
On Wed, 27 Apr 2005, Kenneth Geddings Jr. wrote:
i want to set up my hard drive to have three partitions one is the windows xp home partition, one will be my main Linux partition (for fedora core ) and the other will be a testing ground partition so i can test out latest fedora core tests and or try out other Linux distributions with it. i am going to use the mandrake installer to format and resize my hardrive
Wow, does it support resizing NTFS partitions? I hope the fedora installer supports that in future.
but what should i set the two Linux partitions as what file system?
Doesn't really matter. You can always change it when you come to install fedora.
Ext3 is the only officially supported filesystem in fedora, but in my experience reiserfs is more dependable (let's not start a flamewar please! ;)
However you should not choose vfat as it's not possible to install linux on vfat. vfat is for access to windows 98 partitions, usb storage devices, etc.
and will it be easy to delete and overwrite a Linux partition that i will use for testing?
Yes.
On Thu, 2005-04-28 at 06:33 -0400, Robin Green wrote:
Ext3 is the only officially supported filesystem in fedora, but in my experience reiserfs is more dependable (let's not start a flamewar please! ;)
Does reiserfs work with SELinux yet? I know there were some patches but I don't know if they went anywhere.
My personal experience is that neither fail unless there is a hard drive problem. But I understand reiserfs and selinux don't play nice.
On Thu, 2005-04-28 at 09:38 -0700, Michael A. Peters wrote:
On Thu, 2005-04-28 at 06:33 -0400, Robin Green wrote:
Ext3 is the only officially supported filesystem in fedora, but in my experience reiserfs is more dependable (let's not start a flamewar please! ;)
Does reiserfs work with SELinux yet? I know there were some patches but I don't know if they went anywhere.
My personal experience is that neither fail unless there is a hard drive problem. But I understand reiserfs and selinux don't play nice.
Patches are in 2.6.12-rc3 and thus included in the FC4/devel kernel that should allow using reiserfs and SELinux together. But I haven't tried it myself. You would also need to modify the policy configuration and fixfiles to specify that SELinux should use xattrs on reiserfs; we are waiting on 2.6.12 to make that change upstream.
On Thu, 2005-04-28 at 12:51 -0400, Stephen Smalley wrote:
Patches are in 2.6.12-rc3 and thus included in the FC4/devel kernel that should allow using reiserfs and SELinux together. But I haven't tried it myself. You would also need to modify the policy configuration and fixfiles to specify that SELinux should use xattrs on reiserfs; we are waiting on 2.6.12 to make that change upstream.
BTW, jfs support for SELinux attributes was added in 2.6.11, so ext2, ext3, xfs, and jfs are expected to work with SELinux already, and reiserfs should be functional in 2.6.12.
On Friday 29 April 2005 02:38, "Michael A. Peters" mpeters@mac.com wrote:
My personal experience is that neither fail unless there is a hard drive problem. But I understand reiserfs and selinux don't play nice.
What are the fsck options for ReiserFS? Last time I used ReiserFS a --rebuild-tree parameter to fsck could not be used on a read-only mounted file system - which made it quite inconvenient if that was needed on the root file system.
Another issue of ReiserFS is that if you use a loopback mounted ReiserFS image on a ReiserFS file system then fsck will really mess things up.
tor, 28.04.2005 kl. 12.33 skrev Robin Green:
On Wed, 27 Apr 2005, Kenneth Geddings Jr. wrote:
i want to set up my hard drive to have three partitions one is the windows xp home partition, one will be my main Linux partition (for fedora core ) and the other will be a testing ground partition so i can test out latest fedora core tests and or try out other Linux distributions with it. i am going to use the mandrake installer to format and resize my hardrive
Wow, does it support resizing NTFS partitions? I hope the fedora installer supports that in future.
Probably patent issues.
But systemRescueCD is a *really* handy tool - a 100 MB bootable cd with linux on it, and the tools qt_partition_something (the partition magic clone. I like it better than the original :) ), and a whole lot of others - including tools to reset windows passwords and clamav. Really great tool for: - Fixing partitions (for installing Linux as Dual-boot, or for some other reasons) - Repairing "broken" PC's, whether they are Linux og Windows (and yes it does Captive NTFS).
Kyrre