General Partition Problems
Posts: 5
When I first booted Mepis from the CD, I thought it would be a perfect companion to my native Windows XP on the hard drive. That is, until I went to try and install it.
There are two, maybe three partitions on the drive. The first is a Dell recovery partition, which came well in handy. The second is a 74G NTFS partition, for XP. And the last, I guess, is about 37 megs or so of empty space. My system specs were (I've added a gig of RAM since, but everything else is the same): Pentium IV Dell Dimension 4600, 512M (now 1.5G) RAM, one DVD-ROM/CD drive, one CD/RW drive, a floppy drive (because I still can), the hard drive above, NVidia GeForce FX 5200 graphics, Sound Blaster Live 24 bit(? don't usually notice, but it wasn't active under MEPIS), and Windows XP Home Edition with SP1. There's a slow modem with dialup internet in there somewhere, too.
I went through and defragged the XP partition, ran scandisk, and the like, and went to QtParted to see if I could resize the NTFS partition. What I found was that I could only gain about 10 megabytes more of empty space for the last partition by shrinking the NTFS, but not any further, so I wouldn't be able to install. I tried it anyway, just to get that last bit of space. Oops.
First, let me say I have NO possible way to backup my hard drive. None. It's just the system, my old one (which I tried MEPIS on, and it crashed) with 4G of Win98 space, and CDs, but not nearly enough to back up the system. So, ok, maybe I should have tried that first. But I didn't. I came this || close to losing my hard drive.
QtParted wouldn't do it, so I went for PartitionMagic. It seriously didn't like me. I was fortunate enough to reset the MBR from the Dell partition, thus why I'll never think about deleting it, and I haven't really touched MEPIS since. A shame, really.
It gets better. The night I tried shrinking the partition, I had about a quarter of the NTFS partition free, somewhere around 37 gigs. I have 15 left.
So my question is this: is there a way to shrink the Windows partition just enough to fit MEPIS in, and then enable it to work with the NTFS partition. Or am I out of luck till I get more HD space?
I have also been thinking about trying to get MEPIS onto the old system, and again, linking it to the NTFS partition, giving me three OSes (there's too much good to still be had from 98). MEPISLite sounds to be the answer for that, since the old sys didn't get further than MEPIS checking all the RAM and such. Off the top of my head (which is bad, since I had the old one hooked up yesterday), the old sys is a Pentium II Dell Optiplex (old), with, I would guess, 128 or 256 megs of RAM, 4 gig HD, a CD drive (no RW), a broken floppy drive, and Windows 98 SE, still kicking.
I recently installed BootIt NG, a very versatile OS manager with support for something like 200 partitions and a ton of OSes, to the old system in anticipation of really any Linux OS, but since it only has 98, it's a bit useless right now.
Okay, I'll admit, I'm starting to ramble by now, but hey, that's how I go for support. So basically, with my given setup, how do I get MEPIS? (Hmm, all that just to point to an RTFM.... too bad the FM doesn't help). Either way, great work with the OS. Just wish I was able to use it. Sorry for the extremely long post (and all the parenthetical phrases; I do this from time to time, it prevents RTFMs)
More Info Please
Posts: 5513
Hi Telanus. Sorry to hear you're having so much trouble loading Mepis. Please provide some clarification on your current setup. Depending upon exactly how your drive is partitioned will determine whether you can resize things!
Boot your system with the Mepis Live CD (BTW, which version of Mepis are you using?). From there, open a konsole. Enter the following two commands and post the results:
mount # will show what's currently mounted cat /etc/fstab # will show what COULD BE mounted
This will also show us what type of hard drive you have (IDE, SCSI, SATA). If the extra partition space you have is in an EXTENDED, LOGICAL partition, then QTparted does not like to resize it 
Also, if you already have four physical partitiions defined, you will be unable to add any more. Your drive can have, at most, three physical partitions and one extended partition. The extended partition can then be split into multiple logical partitions. This may be more than you originally thought you'd have to get to, but I assure you, if you profide more information, we should be able to help you further along 
Jon
Thanks, but not quite
Posts: 5
[to the first replier, I actually said 37 megs]
I'm fairly certain the CD was Mepis 3.4.3. Loaned it from a friend who loves it. I'd have to get in touch with him to get it back (which is proving to be a problem), or download another ISO from my other friend who has a much faster connection than my measly dialup.
As for the konsole stuff, I've read somewhere that there is a (sort of) way to emulate that on a Windows box. Some other way I can get the partition info? I do remember seeing some System Application that showed me a detailed image of the partitions for the HD, but now I can't remember where it is. Disk Defrag is coming to mind, but I just checked and it's not. Any thoughts?
To both, thanks for the support!
-Telanis
Partition Info
Posts: 5513
Unfortunately, Windows doesn't give a good enough representation of partition information for non-Windows systems
You can try downloading GParted, which is a Linux distro specifically designed to partition things. I personally have not used it, but a new version just came out. You could try firing it up and see what it says.
DistroWatch.com: GParted LiveCD
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=gparted
There are a number of commercial partition tools available like Partition Magic, Partition Commander, etc., but for simply finding out your currrent partition info, it's probably overkill.
A SMALL DISTRO that you could use is DamnSmallLinux
DistroWatch.com: Damn Small Linux
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=damnsmall
It's only 50 Meg in size, so even with a dialup it won't take an eternity (only 1/4 of one (grin)). Using it, you can get "Linux-type" partition information
Jon
DSL looks good
Posts: 5
Yep, I have Partition Magic, though not sure why, since I've been avoiding it.
DamnSmallLinux looks great, especially after going through all the documentation and forums. Do you happen to know how big it is when installed to HD? I could possibly put it on the old system. And 50 megs? No problem. I'll just either start in the morning and wait for around, hmm, six hours or so, depending on how cooperative dialup feels, or I could go over to my friend's house and steal his connection for about 30 seconds (I am soooooo envious of his speed, 100megs in just over 5 minutes)
37 GB is plenty of space for a large OS image
Posts: 205
Just to ensure closure and also to clarify in case a newbie comes along and reviews this thread: 37 GB is more than enough to contain a full OS and quite a number of applications.
I have Windows XP, a full MS Office implementation, and several Web browsers, installed on just over 5 GB of partitioned disk space. I reserve between 4 and 8 GB for Linux partitions. Most, except for the very largest distributions, fit just fine on 4 GB of space, but they are getting larger and larger with each release. (Once upon a time around ten years ago, I could fit BOTH Windows 95 AND a Linux system on a 2.1 GB hard drive with 100,000 to 200,000 free blocks in each system! Not so today, but 37 GB is certainly enough room for one or two OS at least. I can fit about eight distinct systems in that much space for my purposes. Your mileage will vary, but 37 GB, at least in 2007, will be PLENTY of space!
Hope this helps.
Brian Masinick
mailto:masinick@yahoo.com
true. but.....
Posts: 2299
Just to ensure closure and also to clarify in case a newbie comes along and reviews this thread: 37 GB is more than enough to contain a full OS and quite a number of applications.
Very true. But the original poster only had 37 MEGS. And that is a bit meagre.....
Newbie or not Newbie, there's always a question
51 year old eyes lie a lot!
Posts: 205
I could have sworn I saw 37 GB, but if only 37 MB, you can't even get a DSL into that today unless you use a cut down edition. You could run DSL or Puppy Live, though and read the stuff you need. I think they are both over 50 MB these days in size - still pretty compact, but even that wouldn't fit in 37 MB.
So the real issue was squeezing something out. There are a few floppy based distros still around if even DSL or Puppy couldn't help out, so it would be possible to work with a system that has a floppy for a bootable device. If there is a CD bootable device, booting MEPIS or Knoppix would work. A 2003 edition of MEPIS - prior to the version that moved to KDE, would be really good as a diagnostic system boot tool, as is any decent Swiss Army Knife KNOPPIX version.
Brian Masinick
mailto:masinick@yahoo.com
You say you have/had empty
Posts: 190
You say you have/had empty un-partitioned space of about 37gig on you hd? - Use that! - My whole hard drive (in my laptop) is only 40gig and i have three OS's plus a data partition (and the original recovery partition that i never used).
From a live CD session you should be able to partition from there using QtParted - but it is often quirky and may refuse to do what you want. Re-sizing NTFS partitions can be risky - ovbiously 74 gig is far too much for XP but if you can't shrink it just use the remeaining space.
I recommend doing this:
Make 1 partition etx3 of 10 gig for Mepis /home /root and all
then make an extended partition - SWAP of 1 gig
Use the rest of the sapace for another extended partition FAT32 that you can store your data on to share between XP and Linux.
If QtParted won't play - try from a command line (as root)
cfdisk - its a text based partitioning tool - harder to use but more likely to work if QtParted won't...