hi riba43,

I agree in general terms. I always prefer an automatic procedure and don't think I'm smarter than the folks who put the installer together. I don't like at all to tinker with partitions, and have in past usually accepted the automatically generated partitioning proposals, both for Fedora and Suse. However, I always check if the automatic partitioning proposal makes sense. The one the installer came up with didn't make sense. So I won't take the risk. This may be a specific problem that has to do with the file system that vista runs on, but I don't have a clue about it.
(The automatic proposal was: To delete the windows partitions, with the hint that it can't resize them, then use the entire disk and make new partitions which didn't show anything of the installed OS, and listed it all under Linux).

I shrank my Visa down to 45 gig. Then set up a 18 linux boot partiion, a 9 gig "spare" partition for playing with other distros, a 1.7 gig swap space, which left me with 70 gig for "home".

I have a 160 gig drive, but after the Acer utilities partition I only had 149 gig left.

It went very well for me. Grub comes up and lets me chose between SuSE or Vista. It even mounts the vista partition as /windows/C

It's good to read that you succeeded starting on a PC with Vista. So I'm encouraged to try again.
Did you do the shrinking of Vista during the installation of the linux distro, or before, still using Vista?
(I did the resizing with Vista, then booted up the installation disk and became concerned that it was going to blast away my Vista partition, and aborted the install.) And I am assuming you made a custom partition, in "expert" mode, is that correct?

R.

I downloaded suse 10.3 in less than 3 hours (yeah I gotta a damn fast connection )....and I'm seeding the official torrent also

ironic is that I'm reluctant to install it , I'm waiting until all my favorite software rpm packages get available for the new breed 10.3.

cuz I'm so flopping lazy to compile them from source!

I tried this again and took some notes. Under Vista, the blocks on the disk are as follows:
71 MB EISA config
10 GB Recovery
83.64 GB C: OS (vista)
52.83 GB Unallocated
2.5 GB remaining primary partition.
As mentioned before, I had previously used the management tools of Vista to shrink Vista to obtain the unallocated 52.83 GB.

When I start up suse 10.3 installation it first proposes to delete both the 10GB Recovery and the 83.64 GB for the OS. In particular it identifies the partitions as follows:

delete 10 GB Recovery identified as /dev/sda2
delete 83.64 GB C: OS (vista) ( /dev/sda3)

It wants to delete two other partitions of 2.5 GB and 2.4 GB which it identifies as /dev/sda4 and /dev/sda5

The planned deletions were shown in red font, with the additional comment that it can't resize the 10GB and the 83.64GB partitions. It then proposes to:

create an extended partition /dev/sda2 with 149.9 GB
create swap partition /dev/ada5 2.0 GB
create root partition /dev/sda6 20 GB
create partition for home /dev/sda7 with 127.9 GB.

So this proposal completely wants to get rid of all windows and it's not what I want.

So I chose Create Custom Partition Setup
It gives me two options,
1: Use 1 IDE 149.0 GB. /dev/sda Toshiba ..
2: Custom partition (for experts).

First I try 1. Then it gives a list that lists the current partitions:
1: 70.5 MB Dell utitility (/dev/sda1)
2: 10.0 GB HPFS/NTFS (/dev/sda2)
3: 83.6 GB HPFS/NTFS (/dev/sda3)
(X) 4: 53.8 GB unassigned
5: 2.5 GB unknown (/dev/sda5)

It proposes to use the marked unassigned 53.8 GB partition to install opensuse 10.3. That looks as I want it. However: There is a choice of two check marks "proposal type", either to (a) propose a separate home partition, or (b) to create an LVM based proposal. No matter what I check, none, a or b, or both, when I press Next, the message appears: "The current selection is invalid. Two few partitions are marked for removal or the disk is too small. To install Linux, select more partitions to remove or select a larger disk." Mmmh. 53.8 GB is not enough? What's the matter with that? Does KDE really need that much? Note that I hadn't even had the chance to select any packages to install.

So I go back and try the other option, expert partitioning. It's not what I like either: It comes up with an initial proposal that doesn't even list the Vista partition and instead denotes the 10 GB Recovery partition as an extended 149.9 GB partition. This is the initial "expert proposal":

device size F type mount Label
/dev/sda 149.0 GB Toshiba-MK1637GS
/dev/sda1 70.5 MB Dell Utility DellUtility
/dev/sda2 148.9 GB Extended RECOVERY
/dev/sda5 2.0 GB F Linux swap swap
/dev/sda6 20.0 GB F Linux native (ext3) /
/dev/sda7 126.9 GB F Linux native (ext3) /home

I stayed away from trying to edit this, instead I pressed reread partition table (under the menu labeled expert...). This then shows me the original partition table but there is no indication of the free space. The 53.8 GB that I had previously taken away from Vista (using the management methods in Vista) are simply not in the partition list. Further, after the command "reread partition table", it does not allow me to change anything about the table, and I have to go back. So, again, I abort the installation, post this long lament here and hope for some enlightenment.

I also installed SuSE 10.3 with a pre-existing VISTA installation. The only gripe was that I actually have 2 hard drives and it did not ask me where to install GRUB. It just wrote over the Vista MBR. No worries and everything is working fine.

REWTEDSCO: If I were you, just create your custom partition scheme and go with it. Forget the automatic partitioning because you are spending too much time on something that should be trivial.

Unfortunately it doesn't feel trivial to me. There is a good chance that I totally mess it up. In the custom setup mode, the installer doesn't give any hint about the existing free space, that's the first thing I don't get. The empty partition that I generated using Vista, is only indirectly visible, in that the highest cylinder address in the current partition table is 19456 while the last cylinder for the existing OS is at 12233. There are a lot of questions. If I have to do it all by hand, do I also need to specify the cylinder range for the existing installation? How do I specify the extended disk partition ( that currently starts at a very high address, and has only 2.4 GB)?
I realize I'm a little pampered by the experience of usually correct initial guesses for the partition table in previous installations. But what the heck, if you encourage me a little more, I might just jump over that shadow (and possibly trash the thing;-) I better look for the restore disk. ...

p.s. I tried another idea, namely to remove the unallocated partition under Vista, and restoring the original size of the vista partition. It turns out that vista also can't do anything with the unallocated space. I tried to remove the unallocated space by extending the main partition. Doesn't work. Then I tried to use vista to change the unallocated 52.8 GB into a volume F:, it doesn't do it, claiming there isn't enough space on the disk. Huh?

What I did was set up the partitions exactly how I wanted them using the Vista tools, which, by the way, are very cool.Then I booted up the SuSE 10.3 dvd, and double clicked on the "Partition" link. In there I set the partition I wanted the linux boot on to "/", and the partition I wanted the linux data on to "/home". I had forgot about swap, so I shrank the "/" parition 1 gb, which somehow gave me a 1.7 gb swap space. I then set it to "swap".

I then finished up the install. When I was done the machine boots into grub, with a SuSE boot, a windows boot, and a SuSE safe mode boot, which doesn't work.

A couple little secrets here, which you may or may not know. First, when the install asks you about repositories, click on the two checkboxes saying you want to add them. Now this only works if the install can reach the internet. My experience is that if it can't reach the internet, going thru the network setup options it gives you doesn't seem to work. No worries tho, just make sure you add them latter in SuSE, there's an icon for it in Software.

Also, be very leery of installing any software that doesn't come thru one of the repositories.

BTW, the automatic partition setup is assuming you want to use SuSE on the whole system, I really doubt there is anyway it could "guess" what you really wanted, and figure it out.

BTW, buy a copy of Ghost from symantec. You'll need another windows computer, Figure out how the stuff that runs in Command mode works, and ghost the machine before you do anything. That way you screw up you can just restore from ghost.

REWTEDESCO:
For the custom partition scheme, the only thing you should touch is the 52.83GB and the 2.5GB. As long as you don't touch your NTFS partition with Vista, you don't have to worry about hosing your existing Vista installation. If the partition scheme isn't what you want you go back to SuSE and mess around with the custom partition, again not touching the 83.64GB Vista partition. If that doesn't work, then just run the bootsect.exe to restore the Vista MBR to wipe out GRUB. As dougnc noted, automatic partitioning is probably meant to wipe your entire disk out, not keep pre-existing OS's.

thanks dougnc and Micro420 for your hints. I'll try again either methods, but have a few more questions.
Dougnc, you said you used the vista tools to set up the partitions you wanted. I intended also to do this. I had shrunk vista by 52.8 GB and obtained an unallocated partition, and was planning then to make a new volume of this. However, now I can't change anything to this partition under vista - there may be something that i overlook. For example, I tried the following in Vista:
Under Computer->management->Disk Management I get a visual of the disk, showing the 52.8GB unallocated partition. I right-clicked it and select New Simple Volume, which brings up a wizard. I step through it, trying to change the partition into a volume F or (any other letter, with or without formating it, etc.) but it fails in all cases with the message "There is not enough space available on the disk(s) to complete this operation". Could you give a few more details how you got the partitioning done? (The preinstalled OS is the "vista home premium" version.)

Micro420, I understand I shouldn't touch the NTFS partitions (10GB recovery and 83GB OS). However, in expert mode, I am forced to entirely rewrite the partition table. This also includes that I need to specify the boundaries of the windows partitions, doesn't it? It's not that I would be able to edit an existing partition table - the way the installer script brings up the initial proposal for a partitioning is totally off.

(Another thing I have to check is if there could be a difference between the installation script on the Suse DVD and what I'm trying to use, namely the smaller Suse KDE CD. I had given up on the DVD because of a problem with MD5 sum. I'll retry this by burning another copy.)

Actually, I didn't go that far with the Vista partitioning stuff. I'd leave that 52gb blank space alone in Vista. When you go into the SuSE install it's probably going to see that as a FAT32 partition. In the SuSE partition section you can allocate that however you want.

I think I might have already messed it up.
I had earlier shrunk the vista partition to accommodate linux. Suse's installer didn't care about the free space, and still wanted to wipe out all of windows on the disk. I believe the reason is that the free space does not contain a primary partition. - Why? Initially, with the pre-installed OS, the disk had already 4 primary partitions, (1) ~70 MB partition, (2) a 10GB restore partition, (3) the OS partition and (4) a 2.5GB empty (?) partition at the end of the disk, whose purpose I don't understand.
Next I then followed the idea to create empty partitions under vista so linux could be installed there. In order to make this happen, the only option was to delete the 2.5 GB partition at the end of the disk, because otherwise there was no method to create new volumes (logical partitions, I guess) in the unallocated part that was left from shrinking vista. The reason is - in my understanding - that there can be either 4 primary partitions on the disk or 3 primary partitions and the rest logical partitions. So I decided to simply delete the 2.5 GB block and somehow succeded to declare this and the partition previously labled "unallocated" as free space. Then I booted up the openSuse 10.3 installer (from a DVD, the earlier mentioned problem with MD5sum error was a non-issue, fixed after burning yet another DVD, but slower).
This time the installer came up with a proposal that seemed reasonable, it wanted no longer to destroy the windows partitions, and to create 2GB of swap, 20GB for root or /, and about 36 GB for /home. I was delighted to see this, but only for a little while, until it came to start the formating: While formating the swap space of 2GB, it came up with error -3030 and that was the end of it. Back to hacking.

Looks like that now I finally get it to work.
I suspect that it failed while formating the swap space (see my previous posting) may have to do with the fact that I mocked around with the proposed setup. I wanted to keep some kind of empty 2.5GB block at the end of the disk and reduced the /home partition by that much before I clicked the install button. It failed and I don't know why.
So I tried again. I subdivided under vista the free space after the vista block into two parts, one big device F with most of the space, and little one at the end of the disk which I formated in vista's favorite (default) format. Then I destroyed the device F, creating an about 55 GB block of free space, while the end of the disk space of 2.5GB remained "enemy territory". This time, the linux installer took the bait and proposed exactly what I wanted, 2 GB swap, 20 GB root and some 32 GB /home plus all the proper mount points. And it actually didn't crash when formating. It's installing now, and I'm looking forward to the next problem (or may be no problem).

For now all is fine. The installation of openSuse10.3 worked without any further problems. The central trick was that I needed to get rid of one of the four primary partitions that were on the pre-installed system. Using vista's computer management tools I got rid of number 4 which was a 2.5 GB piece at the end of the disk space. In the space created by shrinking the vista partition, I first created a new volume F, which I later deleted to make actual free space. The Linux installer then automatically chose this free space to install openSuse. It also made no mistakes with dual boot: vista boots up fine, no problems. From the grub window, at boot time, Suse is the default, and there is windows1 and windows2. I need to remember that using windows2 is the proper choice to boot vista. windows1 refers to the restore function for vista. I might change the labels later to avoid mixing this up. But for now, I'm happy with the successful installation, except I haven't tried wireless yet. Thanks a lot for the advice from micro320, dougnc, and others.
Of course, I still wonder what the purpose of the now deleted 2.5GB primary partition was. Appearantly, it had been completely empty.


R