Re: Partioning Vista equipped laptop.
> On Tuesday 30 December 2008 22:18:41 John Culleton wrote:
> > I just bought an HP Pavilion dv9925nr wiht Vista for my wife. Knoppix
> > runs on it but I haven't sorted out the wireless LAN connection yet
> > for Knoppix.
> >
> > I want to install Linux permanently on this box, which requres
> > repartitioning. Currently there are two partitions, one for Vista and
> > one for backup of Vista. I need suggestions for partitioning software
> > that will allow me to reduce the size of the Vista partition to make
> > room for a Debian partition. Suggestions on preparing the Vista
> > partion prior to reduction in size are also welcome. Other than one
> > or two emails and Firefox I have added no files to the system.
Hi, I've just been through this process. I wish I'd made
better notes because it turned out to be quite involved.
The computer is a Toshiba Satellite L305D-S5890 with AMD Athlon QL-62,
(512KB cache per processor) AMD Radeon 3100 video, Atheros
802.11 b/g wireless.
My first approach was to use the partition manager provided
with Vista to shrink the partition. That managed to shrink
the main Vista partition (150GB) by just 5GB, even after
hours of turning off paging, turning off checkpointing and
other things that inconveniently happen to interfere with
partition resizing (each warning of dire consequences if
disabled.)
I wanted more, so I tried several live cds. However none
including gparted-live succeeded: either didn't boot
(typically booting the kernel but not finding the DVD/CD
drive) or couldn't resize NTFS partitions. (Later I found
the drive is /dev/sr0, maybe that will work if you specify
it at the boot prompt.)
I finally accepted what Vista offered: 5GB. The freespace
should be made as an extended (not primary) partition. That
gives the most flexibility, especially if you intend
to use more than one partition for linux. (I made it
primary at first, then later had to repartition.)
I installed Debian on the 5GB partition.
The Grub installation automatically setup the dual-boot
part.
Then:
apt-get install ntfsprogs
which includes Ntfsresize. That was the one that worked for
me to resize the main Vista partition (150GB to 30GB).
Then I could expand my Linux partition, and I lived happily
ever after. More or less: it took a week or so to
reconfigure what I had in my other installation.
My first installation was amd64 sid. But then realized is
something doesn't work in 64-bit, I'll need to check if it
works in 32-bit, so I did a second installation. Now I'm
using that second installation more than the first. The i686
kernel detects my Athlon QL-62 (both processors), and my
notebook stays warm doing work units for Folding@Home.
The amd64-targeting kernel works with the i686 sid just
fine, except for one tiny library that is important to me.
Otherwise I'd love bragging rights.
Now if I can just get a USB webcam to be recognized
properly so that Skype under linux will work... (I bought
two.)
Good luck with your repartitioning/installation!!!
Joel
> > --
> > John Culleton
--
Joel Roth
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