Re: installation instructions

[Ben Armstrong <synrg@sanctuary.nslug.ns.ca>]

On Fri, Jul 06, 2001 at 08:44:43PM +0200, Joost van Baal wrote:
> It seems you want to create a dual boot system.  During install, you
> can specify which partitions you want to use for Debian.  Once you feel
> confident with the debian system, you could e.g. use your old Slackware
> home partitions.
> 
> The debian installation process doesn't touch any partition unless
> explicitly given permission to do so.

Back to the doc suggestion.  Reviewing the doc here:

http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch-partitioning.en.html

Explicit mention is made of other (non-Linux) OSes:

	If you already have an operating system on your system (Windows95,
	Windows NT, OS/2, MacOS, Solaris, FreeBSD, ...) and want to stick
	Linux on the same disk, you will probably need to repartition the
	disk.

But nowhere does it say anything about another Linux distro.  Furthermore,
this document doesn't mention GNU parted, which would likely be the route
to go if you needed to repartition an existing Linux install to make room
for a new one.  (I notice that GNU parted is in potato.)

I do see:

	"Lossless Repartitioning When Starting From DOS, Win-32 or OS/2"

But the slant of the rest of the document is if you have something other
than one of these, you'll destroy your data if you try to repartition, so
you should move your data elsewhere first.  Good advice, still, but the
user shouldn't end up thinking that it simply cannot be done.  It can be
done, as long as the risks are assessed first and all reasonable
precautions taken.

I thought this might have been rectified in CVS.  But looking, I find the
document here: 

http://cvs.debian.org/boot-floppies/documentation/en/partitioning.sgml?rev=1.31&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup&cvsroot=debian-boot

And still no mention of GNU parted, nor installing Debian on a system with
another Linux distro already on it.  Perhaps this should be fixed?  Is
this debian-doc's baby, or does it go off to debian-boot (not that they
need anything more to worry about at the moment :) ?

Ben
-- 
    nSLUG       http://www.nslug.ns.ca      synrg@sanctuary.nslug.ns.ca
    Debian      http://www.debian.org       synrg@debian.org
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