<div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 7:44 AM, Marko Vojinovic <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:vvmarko@gmail.com" target="_blank">vvmarko@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div>
> "The boot loader is installed on a partition that doesn't lie entirely<br>
> below 128 GB. The system might not boot is BIOS support only lba24 (result<br>
> is error 18 during install grub MBR)."<br>
> __________________________________<br>
><br>
> What does it ('the installation process') want to say?<br>
<br>
</div>Ok, you need to learn a bit or two about booting a PC. Dual-booting is a<br>
nontrivial thing to setup, so you need to be aware of what is actually going<br>
on inside.<br>
<br>
You want to read about that on<br>
<br>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booting#Boot_sequence_on_standard_PC_.28IBM-" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booting#Boot_sequence_on_standard_PC_.28IBM-</a><br>
PC_compatible.29<br></blockquote><div><br>I am going to read this all as soon as I get the time.<br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);padding-left:1ex">
When you turn on a computer, the very first thing that happens is that the<br>
motherboard oscillator clock stats ticking. This invokes a piece of hardware<br>
that sends a reset signal to the processor. The processor than resets itself<br>
and starts executing commands from a fixed predetermined position in memory.<br>
This is where the bios resides.<br>
<br>
The bios gets loaded, does a bunch of initialization and self-testing stuff,<br>
and eventually looks up the MBR (master boot record) of your hard disk, to<br>
load an operating system.<br>
<br>
The MBR is located at the very beginning of the hard drive, and is 512 bytes<br>
long. It contains the partition table of the disk, and a "stage 1" bootloader<br>
--- a small piece of code which knows "where to look" for an operating system<br>
to load. Now comes the catch --- this piece of code is very size-constrained,<br>
so it relies on bios routines to access the remainder of the hard disk. The<br>
bios, however, may be old, and not have built-in support to access the whole<br>
space of the 250 GB hard drive. Or maybe it can. It depends on your particular<br>
bios, and the SuSE installation cannot check whether bios is capable of this<br>
or not.<br></blockquote><div><br>Oh I see.<br> <br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);padding-left:1ex">
In the end, you get the warning that the "stage 2" bootloader, which is to be<br>
positioned at the beginning of the /dev/sda6 partition, might be out of reach<br>
of bios. If it is, your system would fail to boot the SuSE installation.<br>
Windows would be bootable no problem, because its "stage2" bootloader is at<br>
the beginning of the /dev/sda1, which is on the "near end" of the hard drive,<br>
and thus certainly within the reach of bios.<br></blockquote><div><br>What earlier I used to think is that, "BIOS only send the instructions to the boot-loader (probably or whatever it sends the signal to) to just boot, BIOS has not such a bigger memory to have the hard-disk, so hard-disk is always beyond the hands of BIOS, but rather BIOS just sends the signal that ***IT*** should be booted and ***THAT*** gets booted.<br>
<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);padding-left:1ex">
Of course, once the OS gets booted, </blockquote><div><br>from which location?<br> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);padding-left:1ex">it can see the whole disk with no<br>
problems, because the OS kernel (both the Windows and Linux one) is much more<br>
powerful than the bios, and does not rely on the bios to access the disk.<br></blockquote><div><br>Okay. <br></div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);padding-left:1ex">
You have two options:<br>
<br>
(1) To look up the docs/specifications of your bios version on the Internet,<br>
and read wheter or not it supports large hard drives (and how large).<br></blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);padding-left:1ex">
(2) To experiment --- proceed with the installation of SuSE and hope that bios<br>
can access the disk that far. My bet is that it can, since Ubuntu had no<br>
problems booting from the same place on the disk. ;-)<br></blockquote><div><br>You are absolutely correct and I got booted with SUSE, installed it with all that default options and it got booted!<br> <br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>
> Now the partition table (which came BY DEFAULT, at the step at which the<br>
> above error (in red) came) was as follows:<br>
> __________________________________<br>
><br>
> /dev/sda 232.89 GB<br>
> /dev/sda1 116.88 GB HPFS/NTFS NTFS /windows/c<br>
> /dev/sda1 116.01 GB Extended<br>
> /dev/sad5 4.75 GB Linux swap Swap Swap<br>
> /dev/sda6 20.00 GB F Linux native Ext4 /<br>
> /dev/sda7 91.25 GB F Linux native Ext4 /home<br>
> __________________________________<br>
><br>
</div><div>> First line: Well, /dev/sda is the whole of hard disk and its capacity is<br>
> 232.89 GB. Its well understood. But when I bought, the vendor told me the<br>
> capacity of 250 GB, so remaining (250-232.89) GB=17.11 GB are where, I<br>
> don't know.<br>
<br>
</div>Q: How many meters are there in a kilometer?<br>
A: 1024 --- ask any programmer! :-)<br>
<br>
You want to read about that on<br>
<br>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#Unit_multiples" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#Unit_multiples</a><br>
<br>
When a disk manufacturer says 1GB, they typically mean 1 000 000 000 bytes,<br>
which is 1000^3. When an OS says 1 GB (or more precisely 1GiB), it means<br>
1 073 741 824 bytes, which is 1024^3. Hence the difference.<br>
<br>
Also, some of the space on the disk is used up for filesystem data (and its<br>
backups), some of it may be reserved for root (for administration purposes),<br>
etc.<br></blockquote><div><br>Ah well.<br> <br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>
> Second line: /dev/sda1 is the Windows partition, and I guess it is taking<br>
> number '1' since it is the default boot option...? It has been formated by<br>
> NTFS file system as shown clearly.<br>
<br>
</div>It takes a number 1 because it takes the first position on the disk, physically<br>
speaking (it's on the "near end" of the disk). Boot order has nothing to do<br>
with this.<br></blockquote><div><br>Okay.<br> <br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>
> Third line: /dev/sda1 extended? Is it windows only? If yes, why its size is<br>
> 116.01 GB? and not 116.88 GB (which is in the line just above it). What<br>
> does it mean?<br>
<br>
</div>I believe that wolud be /dev/sda2, rather than /dev/sda1.<br></blockquote><div><br>Yeah, you are correct, it was /dev/sda2 (confirmed in the installation).<br> <br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);padding-left:1ex">
You want to read about that on<br>
<br>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_partitioning#PC_partition_types" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_partitioning#PC_partition_types</a><br>
<br>
In short, there can be at most *four* primary partitions on a disk. If there<br>
is need for more, one of these four is declared as "extended", and is chopped<br>
up into a larger number of "logical" partitions. In your case, there is one<br>
primary partition (/dev/sda1), and another primary partition (/dev/sda2) which<br>
is declared extended, and contains several other logical partitions inside it.<br>
<br>
Its total size is 116.01 GB, which is the space divided between swap, / and<br>
/home. The other primary partition, /dev/sda1, is used by Windows (the C:<br>
drive), and it is 116.88 GB in size.<br>
<br>
The 116 for sda2 has nothing to do with the 116 for sda1, it's a coincindence<br>
that they are almost equal in size, dividing your 250 GB disk in two almost<br>
equal pieces. It could have been different, depending on the size of the<br>
Windows partition.<br></blockquote><div><br>Right, okay, I got the idea.<br> <br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>
> Fourth line: /dev/sda5 Okay Linux swap, understood and it is separate<br>
> partition. I don't know where /dev/sda2, /dev/sda3, /dev/sda4 have gone??<br>
><br>
> >From '1' it has jumped to -->> '5'...!<br>
<br>
</div>The dev/sda2 is the extended partition, and /dev/sda3 and /dev/sda4 would be<br>
3rd and 4th primary partitions, if you had them. But you don't --- you have<br>
only two primary partitions, sda1 and sda2, the latter being declared<br>
extended. It contains several logical partitions, which are numbered sda5 and<br>
onwards.<br></blockquote><div><br>Okay.<br> <br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);padding-left:1ex">
Trust me, it would be an even bigger mess if logical and primary partitions<br>
were mixed up in numbering. Don't worry about it.<br>
<br>
Incidentally, in principle you could customize your partition setup, and<br>
instead set up four primary partitions, like this:<br>
<br>
/dev/sda1 for Windows<br>
/dev/sda2 for Linux /<br>
/dev/sda3 for Linux /home<br>
/dev/sda4 for Linux swap<br>
<br>
That way all partitions would be primary, and there would be no extended<br>
partition. However, if you later choose to divide one of those partitions into<br>
two or more, you're out of luck --- you would have to back up the whole<br>
partition, delete it and create an extended one in its place.<br></blockquote><div><br>Oh I see.<br><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>
> Fifth line: /dev/sda6 is the root, since at the last symbol '/' is coming<br>
> and again its a separate partition. But why it is calling Linux native? And<br>
> why there is coming a 'F' written just after 20.00 GB, what is it<br>
> representing?<br>
<br>
</div>You want to read more about that on<br>
<br>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem#File_systems_and_operating_systems" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem#File_systems_and_operating_systems</a><br>
<br>
It is called Linux native because the filesystem which is to be put on it is<br>
ext4, rather than fat32 or ntfs, which Windows could use. The "F" symbol is<br>
the mark that this partition is going to be formatted during the install,<br>
deleting all previous data that may be on it (the Ubuntu OS, in your case).<br></blockquote><div><br>Well, got.<br> <br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>> -Boot from MBR is disabled (enable)<br>
> -Boot from "/" partition is disabled (enable)<br>
> __________________________________<br>
><br>
> I don't know WHY to enable any one of the above options or to enable both<br>
> or to not touch............? And what does they mean (the above options).<br>
<br>
</div><br>The installer is asking you where you want to put the stage1 bootloader. There<br>
can be several stage1 bootloaders on the disk, and they can be configured in a<br>
"chain" --- the first one is always in MBR, and it redirects the booting to the<br>
one that is on /dev/sda1, or the one on /dev/sda6, or elsewhere. That's how<br>
you get to choose which OS to boot when you turn on the computer.<br>
<br>
The SuSE can set up the MBR bootloader and/or the /dev/sda6 bootloader for<br>
you, or skip it if some other OS is already using the MBR (that would be<br>
Ubuntu, in your case).<br></blockquote><div><br>SUSE would automatically delete the MBR (which right now points to Ubuntu) and would set the other defaults.....in it? <br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);padding-left:1ex">
Since you are going to delete Ubuntu, its bootloader in MBR will fail to work.<br>
You want to let SuSE set up the MBR, and leave the / partition alone. SuSE<br>
will take care of itself, and it will take care of Windows via chainloading<br>
its bootloader on /dev/sda1. You *don't* want to leave Ubuntu's bootloader in<br>
the MBR.<br></blockquote><div><br>This is a small typical, what I got means I should not change this because Ubuntu is in MBR and we are going to delete the Ubuntu, so enabling it would/could make it some problem...?<br>
</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);padding-left:1ex">
If you instead wanted to install SuSE alongside Windows *and* Ubuntu, you<br>
would have more than one way to answer this question (and it could get quite<br>
complicated). When setting up multiboot environments, you *always* want to be<br>
aware of what you are doing when configuring the bootloader(s), and *need* to<br>
learn and understand how it all works together. One wrong choice can render<br>
the whole machine nonbootable. </blockquote><div><br>The system by mistake also if becomes Non-bootable, as in the case just in above para, would it permanently become non-bootable or we could re-write the hard-disk from scratch....(just in doubt...for future experimentation....) However, in my case it is just dual booted, working.<br>
</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);padding-left:1ex">The dual-boot is the simplest of these
configurations, but still you need to have a good idea what you are doing. :-)<br></blockquote><div><br>Yeah.<br> <br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);padding-left:1ex">
Btw, unwillingness to learn these things is one of the reasons why some people<br>
opt to using virtual machines instead of multiboot environments (of course,<br>
this is not the only reason, there are other pro's and con's...).<br></blockquote><div><br>I didn't go in virtual environment only because I thought it would be much better option to do...<br><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);padding-left:1ex">
Given that you are a beginner, I can suggest to keep / and /home separated,<br>
with additional partitions for swap and Windows. Choose / to be 20GB, choose<br>
swap to be 2GB (it can't hurt, since you have 2GB of physical RAM), and choose<br>
/home to take up all space that remains on the disk, since that is where all<br>
your user data will reside (documents, music, movies, etc.... you want it to<br>
be big enough).Later on, if you choose to reinstall Linux, you just format the / partition,<br></blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);padding-left:1ex">
and point the new installation to use the old /home (without formatting it),<br>
thus keeping all your data, customizations etc. across installs. There can be<br>
some nontrivial gotcha's there, but in general it will work better than just<br>
having one big / partititon.<br></blockquote><div><br>This is what the default openSUSE was going to do and I let it go....
However, it is a very basic question but we can boot (or not) from /home since it is a separate partition...(like /dev/sda1, windows)....?<br><br>Many new concepts, really good to know. The only problem with me is that I am in some other job, so get less time. BUT I liked Linux, anyhow, it is a great place.<br>
<br>I wonder why Windows was governing the world during a long era and people readily pay for it.... though Linux is such a great environment....! Isn't it?<br><br>--<br>THX<br></div></div>