[SOLVED] Installing Arch alongside Ubuntu Lucid and Windows Vista

Ben9250 · 2010-06-10 04:05:43

(I have already posted a thread on this same topic however I worded it quite poorly and it was a lot longer than this one so I've reposted and will delete the older one)

Hi, I'm Ben, I currently have Vista, Debian and Ubuntu on the drive of my Dell XPS M1530. I started out with Vista and got introduced to Linux through Ubuntu and I want to try and dabble in some other Linux Distros for the learning opportunity mostly. I've read the beginners guide for Arch and looked at this forum and the wiki but I'm a bit confused with the partition of the hard drive part of the beginners guide, as in Ubuntu it does it all for you. The beginners guide shows how to do different partitions and different types like this:

Name Flags Part Type FS Type [Label] Size (MB)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
sda1 Primary Linux 15440 #root
sda2 Primary Linux 10256 #/var
sda3 Primary Linux swap / Solaris 1024 #swap
sda4 Primary Linux 140480 #/home

and once those are created then you mount them (that's what I've understood). It says you can do this in Gparted and skip straight to the mountparts bit of the install.

My questions are:

1). Is it o.k. to put these new partitions I would intend for Arch Linux together in an extended partition?
2). Do I need to create all of these partitions or can I just do one? My Ubuntu consists of a swap partition and then one ext4 logical partition. Can something like this be done with Arch? (I assume if it can it would just be to use a swap partition and a /(root) partition?) or does it definately need a separate /boot and /var partition?

3). This question concerns the bootloader: The beginners guide section about the bootloader (GRUB) is in the context of Arch Linux being the only operating system on the computer, but with me this will not be the case. Is there something different I need to do like edit a grub file in my current Ubuntu installation?

My current Drive Configuration is below, just so you can see where I'm coming from.

Model: ATA Hitachi HTS54252 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 250GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32.3kB 42.5GB 42.5GB primary ntfs
3 168GB 250GB 81.7GB extended
5 168GB 240GB 72.1GB logical ext4
6 240GB 244GB 3108MB logical linux-swap(v1)

Thank you sooooo much in advance to anyone who can help me with this, I realise it's quite a big question in all but I'm really interested in installing this and learning a more advanced distro.
Cheers

Last edited by Ben9250 (2010-07-05 21:49:58)

Inxsible · 2010-06-10 04:14:05

Ben9250 wrote:

(I have already posted a thread on this same topic however I worded it quite poorly and it was a lot longer than this one so I've reposted and will delete the older one)

This one ain't much shorter ;-)

I already answered your questions in the other thread seconds before Allan closed it.
1) Yes,
2) Yes. There is no necessity to create /boot and /var and /tmp. the only requirement is that you NEED to have a / (root). Even swap is not compulsory. Although a separate /home is recommended so that you can re-install OSes without having to lose all configuration files in your /home.Try searching for Partitions in the Arch Wiki and you can read up on what is recommended and why.
3) See my other post. You have 3 choices, use Debian grub, or Ubuntu grub, or Arch grub and a 4th bu kinda complicated choice would be to have each distro their own grub in their respective partition. But I wouldn't advise that for you seeing that you are pretty new to linux.

Last edited by Inxsible (2010-06-10 04:20:30)

Ben9250 · 2010-06-10 05:57:15

Thanks a lot for your help, I've decided clear my hard drive and start again with a clear view of the how the hard drive will be organised, with a seperate /home partition so I can have Vista, Ubuntu and Arch Linux on the disk. I'm gonna forget about Debian for now.

Ben9250 · 2010-06-10 11:56:05

I have gone through the install (understanding the config part as much as I can and seemingly it worked) and missed out installing the bootloader because I wanted to make use of the already existing one in Ubuntu. Interestingly there is no menu.lst file in /boot/grub/ although there is a grub.cfg file but it says not to edit it at the top of the file. I've had a look around elsewhere for anything to do with grub but they don't look like they make much sense as they're written in complex programming code. The /root partition I made for arch appears as one I could mount and I had a brows to see what it was like and it was pretty much the same layout as other linux distros but it did have a menu.lst file in /boot/grub/ which included an entry for arch Linux, and one for what I believe is Windows. Eve though I didn't go through with the install grub bootloader step. Can anybody give me some guidance as what to do? I'm very much looking forward to seeing if my setup worked
Cheers.

{EDIT} I have solved this by using sudo update-grub in the ubuntu gnome terminal.

Last edited by Ben9250 (2010-06-10 15:07:24)

thisoldman · 2010-06-10 14:07:50

Ubuntu uses grub2. If you wish to use the Ubuntu bootloader, it's probably best to consult their wiki and forums to get the information you need.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2

You can still install Arch's bootloader and grub. Either way you decide, it's a good learning experience. Take your time as you follow the instructions.

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Grub
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Gru … stallation

Arch Linux

#1 2010-06-10 04:05:43

[SOLVED] Installing Arch alongside Ubuntu Lucid and Windows Vista

#2 2010-06-10 04:14:05

Re: [SOLVED] Installing Arch alongside Ubuntu Lucid and Windows Vista

#3 2010-06-10 05:57:15

Re: [SOLVED] Installing Arch alongside Ubuntu Lucid and Windows Vista

#4 2010-06-10 11:56:05

Re: [SOLVED] Installing Arch alongside Ubuntu Lucid and Windows Vista

#5 2010-06-10 14:07:50

Re: [SOLVED] Installing Arch alongside Ubuntu Lucid and Windows Vista

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