Arch Linux

fdac

Member

From: Brisbane, Australia

Registered: 2005-06-19

Posts: 96

Dual-booting - filesystems, LBA and BIOS settings

Hi,

I want to have about 100 GB of my SATA hdd in a brand new custom PC shared between Arch and other OSes like WinXP, for data and media files in a multi-boot setup. 

I installed WinXP and made a 100GB extended partition using the disk management tool in XP.  Unfortunately I couldn't format FAT32 logical drives in the partition any larger than 32GB.  NTFS is no good as I want reliable read and write access primarily from Arch.

So, I tried using cfdisk in Arch to create a 100GB FAT32 logical drive using LBA.  Unfortunately, WinXP wouldn't recognise this logical drive and wanted to reformat it as normal FAT32 or NTFS. 

What I have now done to get it working is use standard FAT32 and split into three 32GB partitions which are accessible from both OSes.

I tried one last thing, changing the sector addressing mode in the motherboard BIOS (Asus A8N-SLI) from "Auto" to "Large" to see if this would allow WinXP to recognise the LBA FAT32 partition.  Unfortunately this stopped Windows from booting at all, so I returned it to "Auto".

Any suggestions on how I can enable a single 100GB partition shareable between both OSes?  Should I try flashing the BIOS then retrying with LBA enabled by default in BIOS?

Cheers
Francis

Karma XXL

Member

From: Budapest, Hungary

Registered: 2005-06-13

Posts: 91

Re: Dual-booting - filesystems, LBA and BIOS settings

You could try installing Arch on an EXT3 partition, then installing this [URL=http://www.fs-driver.org/]Installable File System Driver for Ext2/3[/URL].

Do not create FAT32 partitions over 32GB by any means, you would only regret it. It is possible, but the huge FAT table needed to access every file would slow your windowsXP to crawl. I'm talking from experience, when I converted a 60GB NTFS partition to FAT32 with Partition Magic (yes, that way it's possible), every chkdsk session took three hours and used up one and a half gigabytes of memory. And I could no longer convert, resize or move it ever. I had to move every data from that disk, delete the partition and repartition/reformat it.

That's some scalability...

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fdac

Member

From: Brisbane, Australia

Registered: 2005-06-19

Posts: 96

Re: Dual-booting - filesystems, LBA and BIOS settings

Thanks, Karma,

The FS driver is the reverse of what I had been thinking - use a Linux partition for the storage area then modify Windows to access it, rather than the other way around.

I'll give it a try this week.  Looking forward to getting this new machine up and running with dual boot.

Cheers
Francis

fdac

Member

From: Brisbane, Australia

Registered: 2005-06-19

Posts: 96

Re: Dual-booting - filesystems, LBA and BIOS settings

Sorted it out. 

I now have on the new machine:

25 GB FAT32 with (that other OS)

25 GB ReiserFS - Arch /

25 GB Ext3 - Arch /data, also mounted in other OS using the fs-driver

100 GB Ext3 - Arch /media, also mounted in other OS using fs-driver

75 GB free space for future Arch64 install and other stuff.

I'm almost completely free of that other OS.  The only thing I need it for now is a business accounting package called Cashbook.

I am the treasurer of a local orchestra I play in (www.qwo.org.au) and need to use something simple and reliable to manage the accounts.  So far, I haven't found any Arch packages that do the job.  I looked at GnuCash but it seems like a bit too much work to get running.

I have also tried to run the Cashbook .exe using Wine but haven't had any luck - it just doesn't work.

Any suggestions for accounting  software, or similar experience? 

Cheers
Francis

Snowman

Developer/Forum Fellow

From: Montreal, Canada

Registered: 2004-08-20

Posts: 5,212

Re: Dual-booting - filesystems, LBA and BIOS settings

accounting software:
kmymoney - http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?d … =1&ID=1765
jgnash - http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?d … =1&ID=1409

T-Dawg

Forum Fellow

From: Charlotte, NC

Registered: 2005-01-29

Posts: 2,736

Re: Dual-booting - filesystems, LBA and BIOS settings

I would recommend jgnash. Its a java app modeled after gnucash and is under active development. Its fairly new but the future looks bright for it.

And remember to vote for one if you like it. We have no finance programs (to my knowledge) in official or unofficial repos.

fdac

Member

From: Brisbane, Australia

Registered: 2005-06-19

Posts: 96

Re: Dual-booting - filesystems, LBA and BIOS settings

Thanks guys.

Both of those suggestions look like personal finance managers.  I actually need a basic business accounting system where I can record transactions, reconcile bank accounts, track petty cash and issue invoices and statements.

Off topic, I know - sorry.

Cheers
Francis