On Sat, 21 Aug 2004, Chuck Hast wrote:
> I was starting to install the Novell DVD but got cold feet because I
> really do not want to screw up this machine. I would like to know if
> someone in the Tampa Brandon area would watch over my shoulder and make
> sure I am doing all of this as I should. If this were my machine I would
> not worry about it but it is my work machine so I can not afford to mess
> it up, but I can put a Linux partition on it providing I do not mess
> things up.
I can be there if you come and get me (Riverview, can't drive). I did a
similar thing (installed Linux from the Novell DVD onto a formerly XP-only
machine). Just know that there will be a LILO/GRUB prompt before XP
begins loading. Maybe you can get this not to appear, and have the
machine only load Linux if you're holding down a magic key, but I don't
know how.
What I did:
Use a disk optimizer in XP that'll move the data to the left/top/low end.
Reboot from the "System Recovery CD". Back up /dev/hda1 over the LAN in
case you screw up. Use qtparted to shrink the partition from the other
end. Reboot from the Novell DVD. During installation, add / (reiserfs),
swap, /usr (reiserfs). / and /usr will be approximately equally used, at
least with my installation. If you're squeezed for space, make it / and
swap. Swap isn't really vital for lightly-loaded machines with lots of
RAM; see
http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=slrnci4q5i.2pp.ylee%40pobox.com
[eben@pc eben]$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 775172 734988 40184 0 65212 458472
-/+ buffers/cache: 211304 563868
Swap: 401616 94880 306736
[eben@pc eben]$ uptime
5:20pm up 1 day, 1:00, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.07
So with a bit over a day of uptime (afternoon thunderstorms, crappy UPS,
pre-emptive shutdown), it's used <95M swap, and that's with VMware using
>500M.
Choose LILO as the bootloader (because I know LILO; GRUB would also work).
Install "minimal graphical". Reboot. Enjoy SuSE 9.1.
-- -eben ebQenW1@EtaRmpTabYayU.rIr.OcoPm home.tampabay.rr.com/hactarHi! I'm a .sig virus! Copy me to your .sig!
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