Need instructions for dual boot F12 / Vista with /data directory

[deborahgsmith]

Hi Everyone,

I have to reinstall Vista on my laptop and I am having trouble doing that after installing Fedora 12. I think its because I am using ext4 and I don't know how to reformat to a place where I can get Vista to recognize any of the partitions.

When I try to reinstall Vista there is not a drive that Windows will recognize so I am a bit stuck. All the guides in the world for reformatting the drive seem to be a cluster and I am hoping there is someone here that can tell me what will work for sure before I start trying anything.

Does anyone have instructions on how I can dual boot Vista and Fedora with a separate /data directory so that I can keep my data (.thunderbird, .mozilla, .purple, etc)?

I have to reinstall Vista because I think that my wireless switch has been turned off by Dell. (Linky here: http://support.dell.com/support/topi...40A68F5B282502)

This happened before when I went from Fedora 8 to 9 and I reloaded Vista and Dell drivers to fix it. Although I see some bugs flying around about the RFKill switch being disabled by a kernel I am not sure that this is the problem in my case - although up until some point in Fedora 11 I had wireless working just fine.

I will be updating my BIOS and other things from Dell using Vista when I get it loaded. (I also want to play WoW).

So, can anyone help me format this drive, partition it the way it needs to be, and get into a dual boot situation with Vista and Fedora 12 with an extra drive on the side for my data? I would like to be able to blow away and recreate whatever I want on my hard drive without having to move everything to an external drive and then back again if I can help it.

I have the distros for Ubuntu, CentOS, and Fedora handy but if I must I can go downstairs and get Windows ME, XP and Windows 7 disks as well.

If this is too much work and my Dell wifi-radio does this to me again then I am going to buy a small USB wifi receiver and be done with it. Any suggestions on a small and well-supported USB wifi receiver are most appreciated.

Thank you all for any help and guidance you can provide.



Deborah




Some info for you about my laptop:

The current hard drive structure:

[root@localhost ~]# df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root
301459960 3356616 282790040 2% /
/dev/sda1 198337 32804 155293 18% /boot
tmpfs 1996884 1908 1994976 1% /dev/shm
/dev/sdb1 120024384 22327264 97697120 19% /media/FAT_32 <-- external hard drive with data on it.

I have 4GB of RAM on this guy:

[root@localhost ~]# free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3900 1065 2834 0 61 407
-/+ buffers/cache: 596 3303
Swap: 5951 0 5951

Fn + F2 doesn't produce anything in dmesg and I see nothing about the RFKill switch in the logs.

[deirdre@localhost ~]$ uname -a
Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.31-0.125.4.2.rc5.git2.fc12.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Aug 11 21:00:45 EDT 2009 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

[root@localhost ~]# /sbin/lspci
0b:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g (rev 01)

I switched the wifi/bluetooth to off and then back on and here is what dmesg says:

usb 7-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 6
usb 7-2: New USB device found, idVendor=0a5c, idProduct=4500
usb 7-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
usb 7-2: Product: BCM2045B2
usb 7-2: Manufacturer: Broadcom
usb 7-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
hub 7-2:1.0: USB hub found
hub 7-2:1.0: 3 ports detected
usb 7-2.1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 7
usb 7-2.1: New USB device found, idVendor=413c, idProduct=8126
usb 7-2.1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
usb 7-2.1: Product: BCM2045
usb 7-2.1: Manufacturer: Broadcom Corp
usb 7-2.1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
usb 7-2.2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 8
usb 7-2.2: New USB device found, idVendor=0a5c, idProduct=4502
usb 7-2.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=0, SerialNumber=0
usb 7-2.2: Manufacturer: Broadcom Corp
usb 7-2.2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
input: Broadcom Corp as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.2/usb7/7-2/7-2.2/7-2.2:1.0/input/input15
generic-usb 0003:0A5C:4502.0003: input,hidraw0: USB HID v1.11 Keyboard [Broadcom Corp] on usb-0000:00:1d.2-2.2/input0
usb 7-2.3: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 9
usb 7-2.3: New USB device found, idVendor=0a5c, idProduct=4503
usb 7-2.3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=0, SerialNumber=0
usb 7-2.3: Manufacturer: Broadcom Corp
usb 7-2.3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
input: Broadcom Corp as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.2/usb7/7-2/7-2.3/7-2.3:1.0/input/input16
generic-usb 0003:0A5C:4503.0004: input,hidraw1: USB HID v1.11 Mouse [Broadcom Corp] on usb-0000:00:1d.2-2.3/input0

[Zanpactou]

Hi!
You need to either read and understand these articles :
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1778
http://www.petri.co.il/the-ultimate-...rtitioning.htm
or look in your local paper for a computer monkey that can do it for you (In exchange for food stamps, beer or even money.)

I can recommend downloading the gparted live cd from here :
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php
burning the image to disc.
Backing up anything important onto your external hard drive.
Unplugging your external hard drive.
Boot the gparted live cd.
Use gparted to remove/delete all partitions from /dev/sda.
Exit gparted, reboot computer, install vista.
Then install Linux. Fed 12 is certainly nowhere near prime time yet, so better off getting F11 and installing that instead.
The alpha, betas and pre-releases are only really for the curious and experienced that are prepared to bug hunt, report and test patches. They are for testing only and the installer even says that it's not intended for production use.

Originally Posted by deborahgsmith

Does anyone have instructions on how I can dual boot Vista and Fedora with a separate /data directory so that I can keep my data (.thunderbird, .mozilla, .purple, etc)?

Good luck with that.

[JohnVV]

a question ?
if you do not how to partition a drive , then WHY are you using the still in TESTING fedora 12 BETA

[Zanpactou]

Hi John,
I don't think someone's inability to partition a hard drive or to understand how to do that is a good enough reason not to test or install pre-releases. It is a little foolhardy to hose a disk but we all learn by our mistakes. After all, the installer will partition for you automatically if you allow it.
Disk partitioning is somewhat of a "Black art" To those that know enough about it and I honestly believe that it's something most users (Including testers) Should ever need to fully understand.

You do have a fair point though; it's absurd to want to install fedora 12 to your hard drive to test it when you use Windows Vista and haven't even got that installed yet.

[SlowJet]

"After all, the installer will partition for you automatically if you allow it"
.
Only under certain conditions.
Otherwise the user needs to use parted from a livecd or use the anaconda installers custom partitioning from the dropdown box which will go into disk druid. Where the user definitely needs to know about partition, files system types, the allcation size, the volume manage (if used) and it extent size, mount points (and what they are used for), free disk space, free VG space, primary vs. logical partitions, where and when to use the extended partition.

Good luck and have fun trashing your windows and fisrt Fedora install.

SJ

[Zanpactou]

Hi SlowJet,

Originally Posted by SlowJet

Only under certain conditions.

The certain conditions you mention are the three most common use cases that most users will face. Any other kind of partition configuration is gonna be for advanced users that understand the fundamentals of disk partitioning.
The three (And the most common) Use cases that I think the installer caters automatically for are :

Use a brand new empty disk - The installer will prepare the whole disk for you.
Resize a Windows partition and prepare the free space for installation.
Replace the existing Linux installation by formatting the Linux partitions before installation.

In this thread deborah simply needs to install Vista, then let the fedora installer resize the Windows partition and use the free space. So deborah really doesn't need to know any advanced stuff and neither would most other users because they mostly need one of the three catered for use cases listed above. I refer to them as "automatic" because the installer will always present you with an option to choose from; whatever it sees fit, based on your computer's existing disk partition layout (Whether it's ideal or not.)

So you always get an automatic option. It's just whether you choose to accept it or not.

[SlowJet]

The default installation is for quick review and testing.
It is advanced as it uses LVM with a seperate /boot partition and not meant to be permanent.
It has no separate data area, no backup area, no snapshot area.
It is 10,000% more likely to die from a error than using sperate partitions for the various pools of files.
Almost no one new to lInux would be able to modify it at all.


You made all that stuff up based on your opinion of how it should work because some other OS does stuff a certain way.

SJ

[Zanpactou]

Originally Posted by SlowJet

You made all that stuff up based on your opinion of how it should work because some other OS does stuff a certain way.

SJ

Please test the Alpha and you'll see why you've made a silly statement there. If I wasn't so busy with bug reports, I'd create some screen shots to deal with your ignorant negativity.

[SlowJet]

"Use a brand new empty disk - The installer will prepare the whole disk for you."
Normal quick review and test install. Used by many. a /boot ext type 83 and an LVM PV type 8e

"Resize a Windows partition and prepare the free space for installation."
Only works if Windows ntfs is clean and the only OS on the system and ia on a primary partition and not a dynamic disk or part of a raid system. Risk of killing the ntfs is high.

"Replace the existing Linux installation by formatting the Linux partitions before installation."
This was broken in snapshots, created a second boot partition. Definition of "Replace Linux" is not clear and so only works for the baisc install.

The fourth choice is to create an encrypted system.

The fifth choice is custom partitioning, which is an easy to use gui called disk druid.
It can make a /boot, /, /home and swap, in a couple of minutes. Point and click, type or select the values.
Eventually, a user will need to use this choice.

SJ

[Zanpactou]

OK. I'm stopping this here because your last post is still objective of the sake of being objective. If you want to talk about the installer please start another thread. If not please try to help deborah.
The installer doesn't need to create a boot partition anymore. I wouldn't expect an operating system installation program to create a backup or snapshot area. No one provides that as an option.
Anything being likely to die is your opinion and certainly not based on anything factual other than your experience. If the lvm solution was default for fedora 11, it was chosen because it is a good idea.
The developers of the installer (Anaconda) Know what they are doing.

[SlowJet]

"The developers of the installer (Anaconda) Know what they are doing."
So use custom partitioning and the disk druid and your problems will be solved.

SJ

[AdamW]

deborah: you should be able to use just about any Linux live CD to reformat the hard disk. The tools available will depend on the disk you boot. Probably the easiest thing would be to boot a regular distribution, go through the installation until you hit the disk formatting step, then tell it to delete all the partitions on the disk so it's just blank, unpartitioned space, and apply the changes. Then cancel out of the installation, and do the Windows Vista install.

Another thing you might check before doing that, though, is whether the disk contains a secret recovery partition you can use to restore the exact default Dell installation of Vista by pressing a special key combination during boot up. Many systems ship that way, these days. Google should be able to find out if it's the case for your system...if you give us the exact model number for your laptop, I can help you look.

[deborahgsmith]

Hi Gang,

I am wireless again. w00t. Chalk one up for following directions - when you can find the right ones anyways! I am grateful to RPMfusion for the repos that helped me get away from the Cat5. Currently I am fighting the "Blackberry tether" battle as well as trying to "ghost" an image so I can recover more quickly - onward and upward!

Thank you Zanpactou. I appreciate you. I didn't think that my question would draw that kind of response. I am hoping that trend doesn't continue here.

@Slowjet and JohnVV - Well, I guess I dont have an answer to why I dont know how to do these things. I will learn if you point me to a place where I can find out then I can help others who don't understand it know too. Putting me down or ridiculing me isn't helping me get there. I haven't used Windows on a regular basis in several years actually, I just saw that some people using Fedora had dual-boot with Data directories and wanted to know more.

Admittedly, I do need to learn how to use Gparted or just the normal Anaconda partitioner - I was just hoping it would be easier to figure out and when I wrote this thread I was already kind of pissed off and frustrated so i apologize if I came off as being lazy. Its not very intuitive when you get to the special partition screen what to assign and where. How many times do you see the partition choices anyway? Just on install I would think.

I would still like to have a way to be able to have more than one operating system on this laptop. I have lots of space and 4GB ram so why the heck not! It would be great to know how to create a data directory where I can store the info I end up transferring back when I crash this guy (.thunderbird, .purple, firefox passwords, etc) so I will have to look for that online I guess. It would be like having four computers all in one and I could run a stable Fedora, the Alpha/Beta Fedora, Vista (spit) and maybe Windows 7 or Ubuntu.

My college student daughter runs Ubuntu (forced that on her 4 years ago because of windows and its ilk) and sometimes I am called with questions that I cant answer in Ubuntu language so it would be helpful to be able to look there.

So I have Rawhide running fine and I did use the entire hard disk when I loaded it. I don't need Vista running on a partition I guess as I do have a few licenses for VirtualBox around here someplace. I had Vista and Windows 7 running in VB on F11 a few months ago. I am not sure if I can play WoW on VB but I do see others playing it using Linux anyway so i can try that.

Pfft.

@AdamW -I am intrigued by the secret partition you mentioned. I am using XPS M1530 and delight in trashing an install and reinstalling - its actually what I bought this laptop for in the first place. I think I still have the main partition that Dell puts in (unless my last attempt at partitioning blew that away) if there is a command to run or somewhere I can look I will be happy to have you direct me.

If I crash I will just reload. It doesn't take long and every time I do it I learn something more. Keepass and my backup files come in handy these days.



D.

[AdamW]

deborah: a bit of Googling suggests you press F8 on bootup:

http://en.community.dell.com/forums/t/19257684.aspx
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/52...rry-dell-m1530

Blackberry tethering: install the barry package, then run something like:

pppd call barry-sprint

as root, and hope. There's several variants of the final parameter (barry-verizon, barry-tmobileus and so on), look at the contents of /etc/ppp/peers/ to see what they all are. If you aren't using a provider with one of the parameters named after it, just try some of the others and see if you find one that works.

it would be nice to have this integrated into NetworkManager, but it's a bit tricky as it needs NM to call an external application (pppob, which does the necessary icky work to make the Blackberry work like a regular PPP device). It's on Dan's list of Stuff To Get Done, but I'm not sure how high up the priority ladder it is. So if you get the pppd to go through successfully, you might need to run 'dhclient ppp0' or similar to get an IP address and everything before you can start using the connection. Once you're done, ctrl-c the pppd process.

edit: should note, that only currently works for USB tethering. Bluetooth tethering is a horse of a somewhat different color.

[Dies]

Originally Posted by deborahgsmith

I would still like to have a way to be able to have more than one operating system on this laptop. I have lots of space and 4GB ram so why the heck not! It would be great to know how to create a data directory where I can store the info I end up transferring back when I crash this guy (.thunderbird, .purple, firefox passwords, etc) so I will have to look for that online I guess. It would be like having four computers all in one and I could run a stable Fedora, the Alpha/Beta Fedora, Vista (spit) and maybe Windows 7 or Ubuntu.
.

Thunderbird is very easy to share across installs, because you can select which folders to use in Preferences. So just create a Thunderbird folder in a place where all systems can access it, for example an ntfs partition, and point Thunderbird at it.

For your other apps, not sure, though I don't see why a symbolic link wouldn't work.


BTW, glad to see you didn't let anybody scare you away.

scared of breaking things = scared of learning things