formatting your hard drive for testing

[Kenneth Geddings Jr.]

i want to set up my hard drive to have three partitions one is the 
windows xp home partition, one will be my main Linux partition (for 
fedora core ) and the other will be a testing ground partition so i can 
test out latest fedora core tests and or try out other Linux 
distributions with it. i am going to use the mandrake installer to 
format and resize my hardrive but what should i set the two Linux 
partitions as what file system? and will it be easy to delete and 
overwrite a Linux partition that i will use for testing?

thanks

Kenneth Geddings Jr.
Associate Member
Free Software Foundation
www.fsf.org

[Patrick W. Barnes]

Kenneth Geddings Jr. wrote:

>  i want to set up my hard drive to have three partitions one is the
>  windows xp home partition, one will be my main Linux partition (for
>  fedora core ) and the other will be a testing ground partition so i
>  can test out latest fedora core tests and or try out other Linux
>  distributions with it. i am going to use the mandrake installer to
>  format and resize my hardrive but what should i set the two Linux
>  partitions as what file system? and will it be easy to delete and
>  overwrite a Linux partition that i will use for testing?
>
>  thanks
>
>  Kenneth Geddings Jr.
>  Associate Member
>  Free Software Foundation
>  www.fsf.org
>  
I'm not sure if you've already set up Windows, but the best way to do
things, starting from a clean drive, is to install Windows first,
specifying the desired size for the Windows partition with the Windows
installer and leaving the rest of the drive alone.  Once Windows is
installed, start the Fedora Core installation.  Manually partition the
rest of the disk to your liking.  You'll at least want a root partition
( / mount point, ext3 filesystem) for each Linux installation and a swap
partition (has no mount point, 'swap' format) that the Linux
installations may share.  Your swap partition should probably at least
match your RAM in size.  Many people further subdivide the drive, that's
a matter of preference.  Once Fedora Core is installed, you'll be able
to choose between Fedora Core and Windows (labelled 'Other' by default)
using the Grub bootloader.  If you want read-write access to your
Windows partition under Linux, you'll need to use the FAT32 format when
installing it.  Support in Linux for NTFS is incomplete.  There are
projects to allow read-write access to ext3 partitions from within
Windows, but I can't name any off the top of my head, nor do I recommend
giving read-write access to your Linux partition to something as
untrustworthy as Windows.  After installing other distributions, it may
be necessary to alter your bootloader configuration in order to boot
everything.  I recommend using Grub from Fedora Core as your bootloader,
configuring it for any other operating systems you install.  I'm not
biased, it just works well.  You should probably create a Grub boot disk
to keep handy in case your boot record is overwritten.

-Patrick "The N-Man" Barnes
nman64(a)n-man.com

[Robin Green]

On Wed, 27 Apr 2005, Kenneth Geddings Jr. wrote:

>  i want to set up my hard drive to have three partitions one is the
> windows xp 
>  home partition, one will be my main Linux partition (for fedora core ) and 
>  the other will be a testing ground partition so i can test out latest fedora 
>  core tests and or try out other Linux distributions with it. i am going to 
>  use the mandrake installer to format and resize my hardrive 
Wow, does it support resizing NTFS partitions? I hope the fedora installer 
supports that in future.

>  but what should i 
>  set the two Linux partitions as what file system? 
Doesn't really matter. You can always change it when you come to install 
fedora.

Ext3 is the only officially supported filesystem in fedora, but in 
my experience reiserfs is more dependable (let's not start a flamewar 
please! ;)

However you should not choose vfat as it's not possible to install linux
on vfat. vfat is for access to windows 98 partitions, usb storage devices, 
etc.

>  and will it be easy to 
>  delete and overwrite a Linux partition that i will use for testing? 
Yes.
-- 
Robin

[Michael A. Peters]

On Thu, 2005-04-28 at 06:33 -0400, Robin Green wrote:

>  
>  Ext3 is the only officially supported filesystem in fedora, but in 
>  my experience reiserfs is more dependable (let's not start a flamewar 
>  please! ;) 
Does reiserfs work with SELinux yet? I know there were some patches but
I don't know if they went anywhere.

My personal experience is that neither fail unless there is a hard drive
problem. But I understand reiserfs and selinux don't play nice.

[Stephen Smalley]

On Thu, 2005-04-28 at 09:38 -0700, Michael A. Peters wrote:
>  On Thu, 2005-04-28 at 06:33 -0400, Robin Green wrote:
>  
>  > 
>  > Ext3 is the only officially supported filesystem in fedora, but in 
>  > my experience reiserfs is more dependable (let's not start a flamewar 
>  > please! ;)
>  
>  Does reiserfs work with SELinux yet? I know there were some patches but
>  I don't know if they went anywhere.
>  
>  My personal experience is that neither fail unless there is a hard drive
>  problem. But I understand reiserfs and selinux don't play nice. 
Patches are in 2.6.12-rc3 and thus included in the FC4/devel kernel that
should allow using reiserfs and SELinux together.  But I haven't tried
it myself.  You would also need to modify the policy configuration and
fixfiles to specify that SELinux should use xattrs on reiserfs; we are
waiting on 2.6.12 to make that change upstream.

-- 
Stephen Smalley <sds(a)tycho.nsa.gov&gt;
National Security Agency

[Stephen Smalley]

On Thu, 2005-04-28 at 12:51 -0400, Stephen Smalley wrote:
>  Patches are in 2.6.12-rc3 and thus included in the FC4/devel kernel
> that
>  should allow using reiserfs and SELinux together.  But I haven't tried
>  it myself.  You would also need to modify the policy configuration and
>  fixfiles to specify that SELinux should use xattrs on reiserfs; we are
>  waiting on 2.6.12 to make that change upstream. 
BTW, jfs support for SELinux attributes was added in 2.6.11, so ext2,
ext3, xfs, and jfs are expected to work with SELinux already, and
reiserfs should be functional in 2.6.12.

-- 
Stephen Smalley <sds(a)tycho.nsa.gov&gt;
National Security Agency

[Russell Coker]

On Friday 29 April 2005 02:38, "Michael A. Peters" <mpeters(a)mac.com&gt;
wrote:
>  My personal experience is that neither fail unless there is a hard
> drive
>  problem. But I understand reiserfs and selinux don't play nice. 
What are the fsck options for ReiserFS?  Last time I used ReiserFS a 
--rebuild-tree parameter to fsck could not be used on a read-only mounted 
file system - which made it quite inconvenient if that was needed on the root 
file system.

Another issue of ReiserFS is that if you use a loopback mounted ReiserFS image 
on a ReiserFS file system then fsck will really mess things up.

-- 
http://www.coker.com.au/selinux/   My NSA Security Enhanced Linux packages
http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/  Bonnie++ hard drive benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/postal/    Postal SMTP/POP benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/~russell/  My home page

[Kyrre Ness Sjobak]

tor, 28.04.2005 kl. 12.33 skrev Robin Green:
>  On Wed, 27 Apr 2005, Kenneth Geddings Jr. wrote:
>  
>  > i want to set up my hard drive to have three partitions one is the windows xp 
>  > home partition, one will be my main Linux partition (for fedora core ) and 
>  > the other will be a testing ground partition so i can test out latest fedora 
>  > core tests and or try out other Linux distributions with it. i am going to 
>  > use the mandrake installer to format and resize my hardrive
>  
>  Wow, does it support resizing NTFS partitions? I hope the fedora installer 
>  supports that in future. 
Probably patent issues.

But systemRescueCD is a *really* handy tool - a 100 MB bootable cd with
linux on it, and the tools qt_partition_something (the partition magic
clone. I like it better than the original :) ), and a whole lot of
others - including tools to reset windows passwords and clamav. Really
great tool for:
- Fixing partitions (for installing Linux as Dual-boot, or for some
other reasons)
- Repairing "broken" PC's, whether they are Linux og Windows (and yes it
does Captive NTFS).

Kyrre