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#1 2011-06-06 00:47:50

Draucia
Member
Registered: 2011-06-05
Posts: 128

Need help installing alongside with Windows 7

I am currently running Linux Mint, and want to switch over to Arch Linux. I want to install Arch alongside with Windows 7. Here are my current partitions:

http://piclion.com/images/partitions.png

So basically I am a noob at partitioning and don't know much. Am I doing this right? The partitions /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda3 are for recovery, and /dev/sda2 is Windows 7. I shrunk Windows 7 and made an extended partition (/dev/sda4). Than made a 6GB root (sda8) on ext4, 100 MB /boot (sda5) on ext2, 1 GB swap (sda6), and rest for my home (sda7) on ext4. Now I'm puzzled on what to do next. Do I right click and manage flags? The only one I find relavent is boot, so I right-clicked on sda5 (100MB), clicked manage flags, and selected boot. When I go to /arch/setup and select "Manually Partition Hard Drive", and select /dev/sda4, it shows up with an error. It's something like "Partition starts on end of disk". I will go back to it when I get time and write down the exact error. Can somebody please tell me what I'm doing wrong? I'm a complete noob once it comes to partitioning. Thanks!



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Last edited by Draucia (2011-06-06 00:48:21)

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#2 2011-06-06 01:30:25

sand_man
Member
From: Australia
Registered: 2008-06-10
Posts: 2,164

Re: Need help installing alongside with Windows 7

You don't need to change any flags. Only windows partitions need the 'boot' flag.
When you set up your partitions in Arch, ignore sda4. That is just an extended partition. Basically its an encapsulation of the logical partitions which are sda8,5,6,7.
However I'm not sure if it's still the case or not but I don't think you can have your root partition in front of the /boot. It might be different these days so I'm not sure.
Anyway, when you set up Arch and manually configure partitions, you need to select the right partition for each /boot, /, /home, swap. None of them will be /dev/sda4.


neutral

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#3 2011-06-06 02:09:46

Draucia
Member
Registered: 2011-06-05
Posts: 128

Re: Need help installing alongside with Windows 7

sand_man wrote:

You don't need to change any flags. Only windows partitions need the 'boot' flag.
When you set up your partitions in Arch, ignore sda4. That is just an extended partition. Basically its an encapsulation of the logical partitions which are sda8,5,6,7.
However I'm not sure if it's still the case or not but I don't think you can have your root partition in front of the /boot. It might be different these days so I'm not sure.
Anyway, when you set up Arch and manually configure partitions, you need to select the right partition for each /boot, /, /home, swap. None of them will be /dev/sda4.

Ok that make more sense now lol. I couldn't boot into anything. It says there is no media to boot. Got kinda scared that I formatted my Windows partition lol. Thanks for clearing it up. I will try to get my root partition after boot. Is there a specific order these go in? I thought when I selected sda4 it would than give me places to to put /boot, /home, swap, etc. Will do this and report back. Thanks!

Last edited by Draucia (2011-06-06 02:10:29)

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#4 2011-06-06 03:40:32

Inxsible
Forum Fellow
From: Chicago
Registered: 2008-06-09
Posts: 9,183

Re: Need help installing alongside with Windows 7

I wouldn't create a separate boot partition. Arch grub is patched so that it can boot from ext4 as well even if you were not going to use grub2. Unless you have a pressing need for a separate boot, I would give it a skip. A separate /var with reiserfs would make more sense.


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There's no such thing as a stupid question, but there sure are a lot of inquisitive idiots !

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#5 2011-06-06 11:07:30

Draucia
Member
Registered: 2011-06-05
Posts: 128

Re: Need help installing alongside with Windows 7

Inxsible wrote:

I wouldn't create a separate boot partition. Arch grub is patched so that it can boot from ext4 as well even if you were not going to use grub2. Unless you have a pressing need for a separate boot, I would give it a skip. A separate /var with reiserfs would make more sense.

http://piclion.com/images/untitlueu.png

Sorry for the noob question but where would boot go? Would I put it with root? Thanks

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#6 2011-06-06 14:24:02

Inxsible
Forum Fellow
From: Chicago
Registered: 2008-06-09
Posts: 9,183

Re: Need help installing alongside with Windows 7

you just don't create a partition for it. The installer will then create boot under the / (root) partition itself.

Read this : https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Partitioning


Forum Rules

There's no such thing as a stupid question, but there sure are a lot of inquisitive idiots !

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#7 2011-06-15 12:38:42

PSW
Member
From: Brighton
Registered: 2011-06-15
Posts: 32

Re: Need help installing alongside with Windows 7

Here is how I install mine, for numbers I will assume you have a 100GB HDD and 2GB of RAM:

Boot from Win7 DVD and create two partitions, then install Windows7 on one of them. During the install Windows will create a 3rd partition to boot from. You will now have:

sda1 - 100MB - Windows Boot - boot flag
sda2 - 50GB - Windows 7 - no flags
sda3 - 50GB - Unpartitioned Space - no flags

Next boot into Arch and choose to manually partition the drives using cfdisk, using the unfinished space create 3 logical partitions of the sizes 100MB, 2GB, and 50GB. Mark the 100MB one you just created with a boot flag and unmark the 100MB one Windows created.

Now you should have:

sda1 - 100MB - Windows Boot - no flags
sda2 - 50GB - Windows 7 - no flags
sda3 - 50GB - Unpartitioned Space - no flags
sda5 - 100MB - Linux Boot - boot flag
sda6 - 2GB - Linux Swap - no flags
sda7 - 50GB - Arch - no flags

Click OK/Confirm/Write and then continue to the next step - File Systems and Mountpoints.

Here you need to set the FS for sda5,6,7 and make sure not to touch sda1,2. Choose ext2 for sda5, swap for sda6, and ext3 for sda7. You will also be asked for mountpoints. Pick "/boot" for sda5 and "/" for sda7. Click OK/Confirm/Write and then continue to install Arch like normal, when you get to installing the bootloader make sure to install it on /dev/sda and uncomment the Windows part of the grub/menu.lst file.

Reboot the system and you are done big_smile

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