Partitioning suggestion for dual-boot laptop? Some questions

doktorn · n00b Joined: 27 Jul 2005 Posts: 2 Location: Sweden

Hello all,

I've been a gentoo user for the last year and I'm really satisfied with that. Before that I've been on FreeBSD for ~5 years. Now, the time has come to install Gentoo on a laptop. I've never run anything but windows on a laptop before, so this will be an interesting trip. The laptop is a Dell Lattitude C610 with 512MB Ram, Intel 2200BG Wlan (not the stock one!) and 1200MHz Intel P3 Mobile CPU.

I'd like your opinions on how to optimally configure the partitions on a ~60GB disk for dual-boot (Windows & Gentoo). I'll give a start suggestion for the discussion:

hda1: (primary partition) /boot ext2 32MB
hda2: (primary partition) C: NTFS 20GB
hda3: (primary partition) / reiserfs 20GB
(hda4: Extended partition, containing:)
hda5: (logical) D: FAT32 20GB (for sharing data between linux & Windows)
hda6: (logical) (swap) 512MB

Some questions pop up right here... things I've never thought of before.
* Does to swap need to be on a primary partition?
* How to deal with "hibernate", i.e. "suspend to disk"? I've read somewhere that this requires a separate partition for dumping RAM+SWAP? True?
* If the above is true, does it need to be a primary partition, or does it need to be within the first <1024 cyl?

Thanks for any input and ideas.

Best regards
Rickard Borgmäster

voytas · Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 11:57 am Post subject:

there is free read-write ext3 windows driver so you can use ext3 instead of fat for shared partition
search google for it

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syg00 · Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 12:10 pm Post subject:

Suck it and see.
Except, never fully allocate a disk - you always find you need some more somewhere you hadn't anticipated. Much easier to accomodate if you have some unallocated - I'd leave say 10 Gig unallocated.
Nothing need to be on a primary partition on a (modern) Linux system. As for hibernation, look at suspend2 - it uses the swap, so just bump that up to handle it.
For the shared partition, I too prefer fat32 - experience I've had with Windows drivers for Linux filesystems hasn't been all positive. YMMV.

doktorn · n00b Joined: 27 Jul 2005 Posts: 2 Location: Sweden

I have looked at suspend2 and I will try it. However, how about the sizing of the swap partitiion? I couldn't find anything about that. But common sense tells that it should be (at the very least) the same size as the physical RAM. Else there would not be enough space to write the RAM to disk. But what will happen if swap is actually used? Guess I'll have to see for myself....

syg00 · Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2006 12:49 pm Post subject:

See suspend2 howto.
I suspect if you use the old rule of 2xRAM you'll be o.k., although I have a dim recollection of Nigel suggesting 1.5xRAM would suffice. This was a talk he gave to LCA just over a year ago.

Seems he's given up fighting to get it merged into the mainline - Pavel being somewhat intransigent.
Bummer.

The Mad Mahdi · Posted: Thu Apr 27, 2006 3:29 am Post subject:

I'd suggest putting Windows first as I've found it's rather Pavel :wink:

about where you put it: I once tried to install it on a Gentoo system in second place, it said it was going to format my Gentoo partition, got halfway through, then stopped (without damaging the partition :lol:

). /boot was originally supposed to go before the 1023-cylinder limit (an old BIOS thing), but it should be ok to put it even at the end of the disk unless your BIOS is REALLY ANCIENT by today's standards.

dmartinsca · Posted: Thu Apr 27, 2006 10:53 am Post subject:

You may want to make your swap partition a little bigger. Consider that although the partition may be ~512Mb, formatting it as a swap partition uses some space. cfdisk lists my swap partition as 512.49Mb, top reports 500432kb = 488.7Mb

simeli · Posted: Thu Apr 27, 2006 11:46 am Post subject:

I once had a dual boot system. did the same thing, boot first and windows afterwards. The problem was, that Windows showed up as being installed on drive D: and Norton Internet Security refused to install on anything other than C: For that I'd also recommend putting Windows on the first Partition and all Linux stuff thereafter. GRUB in the MBR. Worked like a charm.
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