arch installation question

red123 · 2011-01-08 09:26:37

I am trying to install Arch, but I ran into a very misleading step. I have already pre-partitioned my hard drive with GParted so everything is good to go until I picked the option "Manually configure block devices, filesystems and mountpoints" in the installer. I am a little confuse on how this actually works. The part that scares me the most is that it read all of my partitions as raw-nofs. Once pick the 3 partitions to mount /, /home, and swap, will the remaining partitions that say raw-data be unharm? This is the first time that I have seen something like this so I want to make sure my Windows partition will be safe. Is there a way for the screen to show how much space has been allocated onto the partitions as well as the current filesystem on the partitions? I want to make sure that I am picking the right one.

Last edited by red123 (2011-01-08 09:28:27)

graysky · 2011-01-08 09:49:45

If you don't modify a partition it is unchanged by the installer. You can switch to another tty by CTRL+ATL+Fx and run fdisk -l /dev/sdx to see the sizes of your partitions. I don't think you can do it in the installer.

Archie_Enthusiasm · 2011-01-08 10:06:50

Hi,

with gparted or with any same-like tool, you can partition your hard disk in any way you like. There you must not touch your windows partition, otherwise it will be gone when you save the partition schema. But when you come to that manually configuring block devices... etc. you just need to have the partition schema you set up with gparted or whatever in mind. I would recommend you to have /boot, /root, and /home folders at least. (you can also have suspend-to-disk partition if you want for suspending). Once you partitioned spaces for /boot,/root/,/home, assign the partitions the according options (like ext2 for /boot and select /boot as the folder, ext3 for both /home and /root etc...) then just go ahead with the rest of the installation.

I hope this helps.

P.S.: If you are afraid of touching your windows partition, the only way and the time to do it while the cd installation is used is when you partition your hard disk with the corresponding tool (for example gparted in your case).

hokasch · 2011-01-08 10:33:52

Once pick the 3 partitions to mount /, /home, and swap, will the remaining partitions that say raw-data be unharm?

Yes. IIRC, "raw-nofs" just means that you neither defined a mountpoint for the partition in your install, nor have marked it for filesystem creation. In other words, these remain untouched. Instead of fdisk, you can also run cfdisk in another tty to get a better "overview" about the different partition names.

red123 · 2011-01-08 11:41:34

Heh, I went on and did the installation after I am assure that raw-nofs means that it will not be changed. Post-installation was a little scary when I saw that my Windows partition was not on the GRUB menu. A little editing of the menu.lst fixed that.

One concern that I have right now is that I was wondering what was in the manual partition option and when i went in there it gave me an error saying that the end of my second partition (Windows partition) is "partially in the last cylinder". The windows partition as well as the the / partition is on a SSD. Has anyone seen this error message before? It kicked me back to the main installer menu after displaying it.

One more thing, why do you recommend me having a separate /boot partition? Currently I only have a /partition on my SSD and a /home and swap partitions on a mechanical drive

ANOKNUSA · 2011-01-08 17:15:34

I think it's an old-school *nix thing. It's not necessary to have a separate boot partition, but there are some advantages to it:

1. If you dual-boot with Windows, you don't have to worry about GRUB being overwitten.
2. Similar to the previous issue, if you have multiple distros installed, they can all share the same /boot partition (so long as you have GRUB set up properly)
3. Just less of a chance of overwriting the boot info, if you don't play around with it.
4. Save disk space, if you only have one distro.

I myself have never had a separate /boot partition, but some folks like it.

Arch Linux

#1 2011-01-08 09:26:37

arch installation question

#2 2011-01-08 09:49:45

Re: arch installation question

#3 2011-01-08 10:06:50

Re: arch installation question

#4 2011-01-08 10:33:52

Re: arch installation question

#5 2011-01-08 11:41:34

Re: arch installation question

#6 2011-01-08 17:15:34

Re: arch installation question

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