Dual Boot Upgrade To 1.9 Question..(SOLVED)

[SaddleTramp]

Morning all ! I had to, for reasons annoying to say the least,set up the system dual booting Vista & Ubuntu 1.8 64 bit as per here....http://apcmag.com/how_to_dualboot_vista_with_linux_linux_is_already_installed.htm....worked like a dream

Question is,not sure of the process once 1.9 comes out ? attached screen shot shows the 26.38gb partition is the one with Vista.
When I boot from the 1.9 ISO,do I just let it overwrite the existing 1.8 ?????

Hope you can lead me in the right direction for an answer,however it will be easy to start from scratch if needs be !

Thanks in anticipation.

Hey Nick...yeah..you can install over 1.8...

[drama]

ive nvr dual booted with windows and linux. always been 2 different linux os's. but that should work. however you do realize that any documents or anything you have saved on that partition will be lost right?

also i would shrink down that swap partition. 2gb of swap should be more than enough for any situation. i kno the general rule of thumb is 1.5-2 times your installed ram size. however this i believe is when you sit around 1gb ram or lower. i have only 1gb installed and my swap usage has NEVER went over 250mb even during heavy video encoding sessions while still having several other apps running (xchat,vlc,firefox,azureus as well as a few others that i almost always have running as well) and my pc has still remained very snappy.



-drama

[SaddleTramp]

Thanks for your quick reply SaddleTramp

Just another question ? If I boot ( now ) with the 1.8 CD,can I expand my XP partition? or will that interfere with the grub file ??
Will I still be able to dual boot ?

Need to expand the XP partition as the greedy bugger has stolen a lot of room !

First...as Drama said, any doc's or files you have on 1.8 will be lost when you install 1.9 over it...so if there are, you'll want to back them up on DVD or somethin'...

XP partition...you may have to unhide that part of SDA1 (the .5MB) first...then shrink SDA1 you have 1.8 on...then resize XP to the left over the unhidden and what you get out of shrinkin' 1.8. When you restart, boot back into XP FIRST...it may come up with a 'disk/file size error' but don't panic...it usually asks to restart so it can run chkdisk...then may/may not want to restart again...if restart, then boot into XP again and let it come up...I ran Vista, but XP should do about the same...

Don't know how much room you need for 1.8/1.9...but there are some other alternatives to your setup if you're interested...and as Drama said, you only need 2 or 3 GB at the most for Swap file...I was triple booting with Vista, UE1.8x64, & UE1.8x32...piece of cake...all with just 1 2GB Swap file.. hope all this helps ya out ...

[SaddleTramp]

Thanks Saddletramp-haven't had the 2 short blacks yet !

I did mean Vista Not XP....( all tips greatly appreciated )

Does the above mentioned still apply to Vista ? & to "unhide" those hidden parts,do I boot via the "live" cd and use qtparted?? sorry for the hammerin' !!

& yes I am interested in other forms of set up if your kind enough to post them....

Well...if you sure you don't mind startin' from scratch...here's what I had: (SDA1 - 250GB Sata -ran all my distros and Vista; SDB1 -320GB Sata - Backup drive for everything Ultimate Edition)

1. I set up all my partitions with GPartedLiveCD first
1a. set up SDA1, Primary Partition, NTFS, 50 GB
2. Set up remaining (unallocated) partiton as Extended EXT3 partition SDA2 (this is so Vista doesn't try to install anything on the rest of the drive (because it's extended, Vista will only install on the Primary Partition (50GB). Vista will also designate part of it as the D: (recovery) drive...you can delete the recovery partiton with GParted and resize Vista back into it (do this before installing Ultimate Edition),
3. After you're totally done with the Vista install...then get ready to start your Ultimate Edition installations (figure out what you wanna do and how you want to do it)
4. It was easier for me to setup the Extended partition for my Ultimate Edition installations with the GPartedLiveCD disk before even starting to load Ultimate Edition. I setup 2 50GB partitions (SDA5 & 6) for the root (/) directories of UE1.8x64 & x32...The remaining partition I subtracted 2GB from and split in half what was left to SDA7 as the home (/home) partiton for UE1.8x64...SDA8 as the home partition for UE1.8x32...the 2GB at the end for Swap file.
5. Then I installed my 1.8x32 first in SDA6 & 8.
6. Installed 1.8x64 in 5 & 7

The reason I put the Ultimate Edition root partitions up front is because I've read (then tried myself) that it would be faster to install partitions that are read/write to the most up front..I did notice a little bit of increase in speed & performance..so that's how I do it all now...

So there ya go...

[SaddleTramp]

Thanks so much for all the details

Printing now so when 1.9 comes & I screw the system...........!

Have a great day,can see your busy on the forums today.

Yepper...print out lots of stuff myself...makes it easier when ya can read it in front of you
..just happen to have some extra time today since the heat index outside is 110 deg's Lots cooler in here

[SaddleTramp]

43.33 celcius
Used to live in Darwin,up northern end of Oz where it used to get to 122 degrees Fahrenheit !!
Now thats hot !!

Appreciate your time today. Another question ? Booted via 1.8 disc and shrank the swap file down to 2gb, (thanks to drama1981 for the tip),attached (screenie). Now I have 9.31gb of what WAS unallocated space.(changed to ext3) Is it easy to "grow" another partition to use this? & not take away from the Vista partition (which I extended at the same time)

These are temp measures for the moment,will follow your details at a later date & when 1.9 comes out.God Theaman is a hard worker ! & takes a lot of s... Tell em all where to jump!

Yeppers...122 is Damn Hot!!! There ya go, when ya think ya got it bad, there's always worse!!!

Well, as far as I know to date Nick, you can't resize a Primary partition into an Extended partition & vice versa...when I set mine up and couldn't find anyone that had before, it saved me a lot of headache to do some research BEFORE I started into the setup...I knew I couldn't when I was running all M$ stuff, so I wanted to be sure what *nix would or wouldn't let me do...sorry bro', but that shrimp won't cook on the bar-b

[drama]

Now I have 9.31gb of what WAS unallocated space.(changed to ext3) Is it easy to "grow" another partition to use this? & not take away from the Vista partition (which I extended at the same time)

do you want to add this 9.31gb to your main ext3 partition (sda1) or your vista partition (sda2)?

[drama]

Hi Drama1981 To my main ext3 partition .

ok this is what i would do. next time you install. when it gets to the partitioning section. choose manual. then delete your main ext3 as well as your swap. this should delete that extended partition as well.

you have to delete them seperatly though. first delete the swap then it will go back to the list of partitions. you will still see your vista,your large ext3 and you will see unallocated or free space. this time delete the ext3. it will now go back to the list again. this time you will only see your vista partition. the rest will be unallocated.

now click the unallocated. then choose new partition. a small screen will pop up. next to size it will say the full size of unallocated (in mb). we want to drop 2000 off of that so we have room for our swap. so if it says 250000mb we want to edit it so it says 248000. partition type should be primary. mount point should be / and file system should be ext3. then click ok.

we have just create dour main etx3 partition mount at / now it goes back to the partition list again. we have ext (we just created) our vista and approx 2000mb unallocated (give or take a few mb's) this will be our new swap. tick the box taht says format next to our new ext3 partition.

now we will set up our swap. click unallocated again. and create new partition again. this time we only need to choose logical. and filesystem as swap. no mount point is needed. click ok.

this concludes the partitioning. and you can now continue with the install as you normally would.

THROUGHOUT THIS WHOLE PROCESS MAKE SURE YOU DONT TOUCH THAT VISTA PARTITION THOUGH.

now i cant advise as to if it can be done in gparted or not. ive never tried it. if you try it in gparted though DONT delete your main ext3 as it will delete your current install as well. with gparted you can try to delete the swap. then the extended. create a new extened. then new swap at 2gb size. then try to grow the ext3 with the remaining unallocated.

im not sure if this will work in gparted though. perhaps someone else can verify this. i do know the first idea i mentioned works. but can only be done during install.

[SaddleTramp]

As far as partitioning goes, GPartedLiveCD allows you to Label the partitions as well, whereas the Partition Manager in Ultimate Edition doesn't have that option.

Drama, my question is: Once Nick deletes SDA3 Extended (Swap) partition, the 11.32GB unallocated partition is still going to be to the right of the Windows (NTFS) partition. When he deletes SDA1 (main EXT partition), it's going to still be on the left of the Windows partition. Now I'm thinkin' whatever he does next, to get anything from right to left of the Win partition, it's got to go thru Win (SDA2). If he's going that route, wouldn't he have to create an 11.32GB SDA3 "Primary" partition, then at the end of that, create a 2 GB SDA4 SWAP partition (leaving the 9.31 SDA3 Primary partition between the Win SDA2 and SDA4 Swap partitions), then format the 9.31 partition to NTFS Primary, resize Windows to the right to take this up, then resize Windows from the left (front) of the Windows partition so that unallocated space is between Windows and SDA1. Reformat this unallocated space to EXT3, then resize SDA1 into that. The danger there would be moving the Windows files at the front from resizing the Win partition to the right. It's worked for me before without any problems...but that's not to say it'll work everytime without glitching something up in Windows.

[TheeMahn]

43.33 celcius
Used to live in Darwin,up northern end of Oz where it used to get to 122 degrees Fahrenheit !!
Now thats hot !!

Appreciate your time today. Another question ? Booted via 1.8 disc and shrank the swap file down to 2gb, (thanks to drama1981 for the tip),attached (screenie). Now I have 9.31gb of what WAS unallocated space.(changed to ext3) Is it easy to "grow" another partition to use this? & not take away from the Vista partition (which I extended at the same time)

These are temp measures for the moment,will follow your details at a later date & when 1.9 comes out.God Theaman is a hard worker ! & takes a lot of s... Tell em all where to jump!

Similar to my setup Tripple boot xp, Ultimate Edition 1.8 & Ultimate Edition 1.9, had to croak debian to get Ultimate Edition 1.9 done. I don't think I have ever used much more then 40 GB even after Ultamatix has installed everything it can... I try and provide double of what I typically use...

Windows is a hogg. I think the only thing I have on it is xp and 2 games that is it and it has consumed ~40 GB already.