MBR 4 Partitions

duke11235 · 2009-10-10 00:44:34

I already have Mac OS X, and Windows XP. I understand that refit doesn't support extended partitions(this might be a myth) After reading the user guide, it says that Arch would like a /root partition, a /var partition, a /home partition, and a swap partition. Fedora seemed to use only a /home and a /root. I tried this once before, and no matter what I tried Windows gave me hal.dll missing( I could access the Windows partition from Mac, and see it) So my question is, to anyone who is using a GPT formatted drive, how do I format the partitions? Should I use Lvm and how would I set that up.( I don't really understand terminal commands) I would really like to get my macbook running with Arch, windows(games) and Mac.

Thank You

fumbles · 2009-10-10 07:25:03

You can just stick Arch (and any distro for that matter) on one big root (ie. '/') partition. It gets a tad complex when you are trying to use more than one OS on the one system.
With EFI and GPT you don't have this limit of only four primary partitions on the one disk. I am unsure of the exact process.

But whatever you do BACKUP EVERYTHING BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING!

duke11235 · 2009-10-12 04:44:02

So I looked through the text installer. Can I encrypt and run linux within one partition or lvm group. Could I get some example code, or a link to something. Partitioning is something I m not very good at. Thank you for replying.

vacant · 2009-10-12 08:31:40

A couple of days ago I reconfigured my laptop which had four primary partitions (vista, arch, kubuntu and home). First I defragged vista then used a kubuntu livecd to shrink vista on sda1.

Then I did what you're wanting to do:

I used just the arch install image on a usb flash drive to create a 150MB boot on sda2, a luks-encrypted sda3 (rest of disk), set up LVM2 and made logical partitions on the encrypted partition for arch, kubuntu, swap, tmp, home, store.

How? I printed out and followed http://www.pindarsign.de/webblog/?p=767

edit: oh, and what fumbles said: BACKUP. If you come back here with problems and we find out you haven't backed up, you'll get help but there will be lots of sniggering, tut-tutting and sucking of air through clenched teeth

Last edited by vacant (2009-10-12 08:35:38)

duke11235 · 2009-10-12 13:34:34

So this would create just one group(one entry) on the mbr that includes the boot home and swap partitions? I need it to have just one for the 4 partition GPT/MBR hybrid limit. If I create another partition or leave free space, for use as Windows partition, before I start, will either Windows or Linux care? Thank you, It looks promising.

Last edited by duke11235 (2009-10-12 14:00:41)

vacant · 2009-10-12 14:07:39

duke11235 wrote:

So this would create just one group(one entry) on the mbr that includes the boot home and swap partitions?

Not quite.

The link is suggesting two partitions: a 150MB /boot on one primary partition and the second partition covering the rest of the disk encrypted, then that is divided into as many logical volumes as you wish with LVM2.

Though I believe grub2 is being developed to work on booting from an encrypted partition.

Here's my layout (remember I have an extra primary partition for vista)

# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x95aa95aa

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1        4013    32234391    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2   *        4014        4031      144585   83  Linux
/dev/sda3            4032       14593    84839265   8e  Linux LVM

# mount
/dev/mapper/vg-arch on / type ext4 (rw,noatime,commit=0)
none on /dev type tmpfs (rw,relatime,mode=755)
none on /proc type proc (rw,relatime)
none on /sys type sysfs (rw,relatime)
none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw)
none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
/dev/sda2 on /boot type ext2 (rw)
/dev/mapper/vg-home on /home type ext4 (rw,noatime,commit=0)
/dev/mapper/vg-tmp on /tmp type ext4 (rw,noatime,commit=0)
/dev/mapper/vg-store on /mnt/store type ext4 (rw,noatime,commit=0)

# swapon -s
Filename                                Type            Size    Used    Priority
/dev/mapper/vg-swap                     partition       511992  0       -1

When making the swap logical volume I used the "-C y" flag but I don't think swap ever gets used so I would notice if swap wasn't contiguous

duke11235 · 2009-10-12 21:13:23

So this creates two partitions. The problem(I think) is that Windows MBR can have 4, and the GPT partition scheme supports no extended partitions. If i implement this,(and I really want too, how can I make Windows install alongside. With my computer being Mac and having an EFI system partition, one mac partition, a /boot and one lvm group, doesn't that fill the mbr before windows is installed? I assume Arch supports the GPT, so it doesn't need it, but Windows is so crappy( If they had designed this better, I wouldn't be having this problem) Does Arch support Grub2? Ubuntu and Fedora 12 will I believe

Thank you for being so responsive(I've asked elsewhere and got nothin)

Last edited by duke11235 (2009-10-12 21:17:37)

vacant · 2009-10-12 21:35:19

I'm using grub2. It can read ntfs as I have a Puppy Linux frugal install on my Vista, however although the grub2 faq says it supports ntfs + compression, when I tried compressing my sda1 I couldn't boot puppy so decompressed it again.

Maybe someone has their kernels, initrds, and grub on their vista partition thus not needing a small parition just for boot?

I can't remember what the Arch installer does in the way of formatting if you specify a partition as /boot so if I was going to try having one less partition by putting linux kernels and grub2 on my vista partition, I'd do it manually.

http://grub.enbug.org/CurrentStatus

duke11235 · 2009-10-12 23:01:47

If you use LVM for your /boot add following before menuentries:

insmod lvm

and specify your root in menuentries as:

set root=(your_lvm_group_name-your_lvm_logical_boot_partition_name)

I pulled this off the arch wiki for installing grub2, so I can include the /boot in a lvm group?
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRU … b2_package

CONFIRMED LVM BOOTUP:
http://www.sannes.org/?p=4
So it is now possible to include the /boot in a lvm group. It solves all my problems. Do you know of a command to install grub2 in the arch installer? Does the arch installer support installing additional packages from repository?

Last edited by duke11235 (2009-10-13 04:28:32)

vacant · 2009-10-13 07:30:12

I don't think grub/grub2 supports encryption so if that's right you can't follow that link I gave in post #4. You'll have to set up LVM2 and logical volumes then encrypt each volume you want secure but not the boot logical volume.

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Sys … r_dm-crypt

grub2 is in extra

duke11235 · 2009-10-13 14:05:41

I can install things from extra in the standard arch installer? Or should I download it and make a grub disk.

So I'd load the kernel modules
modprobe dm-crypt
# modprobe aes-i586
then create the partitions, encrypt them individually, and add them to an lvm group? How do you add existing partitions to such a group? OR do I create a lvm2 group and then encrypt only certain members of the group using
cryptsetup -c aes-xts-plain -y -s 512 luksFormat /dev/sda3 but replacing dev/sda2 with a lvm group coordinate
(your_lvm_group_name-your_lvm_logical_partition_name) How would u point to a paritition within an lvm. Can u provide an example. Thanks

vacant · 2009-10-13 15:14:31

I can't advise on doing this during an install of Arch as that's not what I did. I used the Arch Install image to copy my existing Arch / (6GB) and all other linux partitions on my laptop (/home, other distros etc) to another PC over the network using "netcat". I then wiped the linux partitions on my laptop and set up /sda2 ext2 for /boot and /sda3 the rest. I then encrypted /sda3, set up lvms2 logical volumes on top and copied back my linux stuff. I mounted the newly encrypted distros and altered /etc/fstab, so here is how I reference logical volumes:

$ cat /etc/fstab
#
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
#
# <file system>       <dir>         <type>    <options>     <dump> <pass>
none                  /dev/pts      devpts    defaults      0      0
none                  /dev/shm      tmpfs     defaults      0      0

/dev/sda2            /boot          ext2      defaults         0 0
/dev/mapper/vg-arch  /              ext4      defaults,noatime 0 1
/dev/mapper/vg-home  /home          ext4      defaults,noatime 0 0
/dev/mapper/vg-swap  swap           swap      defaults         0 0
/dev/mapper/vg-tmp   /tmp           ext4      defaults,noatime 0 0
/dev/mapper/vg-store /mnt/store     ext4      defaults,noatime 0 0

and my grub2 boot entry is

menuentry " arch" {
set root=(hd0,2)
linux /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/mapper/vg-arch cryptdevice=/dev/sda3:vg ro
initrd /kernel26.img
}

though I could also have used grub.

At some stage the order for what you're trying to do is: create a big partition, make it an LVM2 partition, make a group use that partition, create logical volumes in that group, encrypt the ones you want (not boot).

Last edited by vacant (2009-10-13 15:14:51)

lestoil · 2009-10-13 17:33:40

There are many tutorials on the web on how to install linux,winxp,unix on macbook and imac using efi/refit. Some videos show users with more than 4 oses on a mac. Why not add a simple arch install 1st to what you have already until you get used to arch linux?

duke11235 · 2009-10-13 22:32:19

I personally haven't seen anything over a tri boot, but I haven't looked. My main problem is the 4 partition limit. Mac needs 2, Windows must have 1 and that leaves only one left. Maybe if I deleted the efi system partition it would allow me to install a 4th(risky for firmware updates), but this allows me to run the best of all three worlds. If u have a video or tutorial for quadbooting, can u link it. I am curious......

In response to lestoil, I am not a new linux user, but this is the first time I've attempted an ncurses based install. I have an arch install in a vm, but my real system is more complicated.

Does the Arch installer install grub2 by default? Is there an option, or do I have to install it manually?

If anyone has tribooting advice, when I tried this before, I installed Linux last, Windows second and had 5 partitions. I think that may have caused the windows bootloader problem of being unable to find hall.dll(I think it just couldn't find its partition.I'm almost sure it was last on the gpt) I assume I should install Windows last.

When I look at a disto like Fedora, every 6 months I see improvements like displayport support, faster kcow2 images, better webcam support, better power management, etc My question is whether or not these improvements are implemented in arch. I assume u never have to burn a cd to upgrade in pacman, and that it updates packages, but does pacman update the underlying system.........

Also, how is boot time and battery life in arch. I would think the minimal packages and processes combined with the latest kernel lead to a somewhat substantial battery life.

What is the command to show the documentation in the arch installer? Can I browse the internet while in it?

if anyone here ones a macbook 4.1 or perhaps macbook in general, have they fixed the brightness keys, and sound? (Hack to fix it in Fedora by switching to six channels in alsamixer)

The community has definitely been the most helpful I've used,(thanks vacant):) pacman is incredible and the wiki is detailed, thorough and extremely useful. Thank you

Last edited by duke11235 (2009-10-13 23:27:57)

vacant · 2009-10-14 08:47:01

Regarding "burning update CDs", no it's far simpler that if you modify your backup routine to include an "rsync" of the pacman pkg cache.

Your Arch system is installed from packages from the "core" install image. As you do pacman updates, new and additional packages download to the pacman cache directory. Now that cache will grow over time. You can empty it by pacman -Scc, or more useful, you can just prune old/unused packages by regular Pacman -Sc. So doing the latter and backing up cache means you can restore your Arch system or build a clone on another PC.

Obviously my music/videos are backed up elsewhere, but I can restore my 6GB Arch install plus my /home on a 4GB flash drive

Battery life? My laptop gives two hours general use on Arch using the fglrx driver and Vista Business x64. I find the open source ati graphics driver better for displaying HD movies on my 42 inch TV but the reason I don't use it day to day is that the temperature is around 6 to 10 C higher which means more fan activity and therefore would mean a shorter time on battery.

If you install from the core iso/img, you can connect to the internet and browse using text-based "links". I don't know if links is on the ftp install iso/img.

duke11235 · 2009-10-14 13:40:14

Grub2 is in the extras, but unavailable for install. Pity, but it shouldn't be too hard to install from a grub cd

I would still like to know if I can browse the internet from the installer.(console based browser)

Command for help docs in installer?

Lastly, I'll assume that what Fedora innovates gets to Arch eventually.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-10-10 00:44:34

MBR 4 Partitions

#2 2009-10-10 07:25:03

Re: MBR 4 Partitions

#3 2009-10-12 04:44:02

Re: MBR 4 Partitions

#4 2009-10-12 08:31:40

Re: MBR 4 Partitions

#5 2009-10-12 13:34:34

Re: MBR 4 Partitions

#6 2009-10-12 14:07:39

Re: MBR 4 Partitions

#7 2009-10-12 21:13:23

Re: MBR 4 Partitions

#8 2009-10-12 21:35:19

Re: MBR 4 Partitions

#9 2009-10-12 23:01:47

Re: MBR 4 Partitions

#10 2009-10-13 07:30:12

Re: MBR 4 Partitions

#11 2009-10-13 14:05:41

Re: MBR 4 Partitions

#12 2009-10-13 15:14:31

Re: MBR 4 Partitions

#13 2009-10-13 17:33:40

Re: MBR 4 Partitions

#14 2009-10-13 22:32:19

Re: MBR 4 Partitions

#15 2009-10-14 08:47:01

Re: MBR 4 Partitions

#16 2009-10-14 13:40:14

Re: MBR 4 Partitions

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