[kwlug-disc] Natty Release & Linux / WinXP coexist

[unsolicited]

John Johnson wrote, On 04/23/2011 8:30 AM:
> On 2011-04-23 00:46, unsolicited wrote:
>> - being able to google on another machine while doing this is most 
>> helpful, as is this list, while you're going through this. 
> 
> Been there (to the Google). Done that (And Googled).
> With confidence gained from the list, I poked around (without making 
> changes) and found that, with WinXP, fdisk is gone. It has been replaced 
> with Diskpart. My Bad.

Not relevant here, anyways. You'll use parted or gparted to shrink 
windows.

> Diskpart on the 160 GB HDD shows:
> C: NTFS 148372 (User/Win XP Partition)
> D: FAT32 4245 MB (Recovery Partition)
> and 7 MB partitioned.
> 
> C: is mostly unused with 139521990656 bytes free (129.9 GB).
> The WinXP machine was largely unused in the way of apps.
> It was used for viewing European/UK football until the power supply died.
> 
> My intent to have most of the space on C: mapped to the (new) Linux 
> partition.
> (A second HDD for apps and data could be in the mix later.)
> 
> As for GUI vs. command line, I have no problem with either.
> I go back to SCO, both Xenix and Unix, Zeus (Unix System III) and 
> another built on Unix System V.
> I have seen, mostly through this list, that many of the sysadm commands 
> with which I am familiar are like fdisk have been superseded by new ones.
> 
> Learning the new sysadm commands is one of the goals of the exercise.
> Somewhere on my list is LAMP (omitted from my earlier list).
> LAMP leads to experiments with setting up a web server and web hosting.
> And I realize that LAMP is where I may hit the wall with the diminutive 
> 512 mb ram.

Surprisingly, not. You'll be fine.

Write the recovery partition off to DVD, then nuke it.

So, partition as:

/sda1 C: - 30 GB, Win OS
/sda2 F: - 30GB, clone of C:, unmounted
/sda3 /  - 30 GB
/sda4 Extended
/sda5 2GB Swap
/sda6 rest ext3 data - don't worry or do anything with it until Linux 
is in and happy.

Not to start any partition wars, here, please.

Get a Clonezilla and Kubuntu Live CD. Play with Clonezilla and get a 
back up off to another disk (it only needs as much space as used). 
This can be via net, to usb key, whatever.

shrinking with gparted really is dead simple, even if it isn't obvious 
that it is dead simple.

Although, I can appreciate wanted to take it in, the first time.

If you have a spare 40GB disk sitting around, slap it in and go ahead 
and load linux to it. Take the first one out in the mean time if you 
like. Your BIOS options will set which disk to boot to, so you're in 
no danger.