Mounting dual boot linux partition from Arch [SOLVED]

Hey guys,
I have just installed Arch for the first time and im wondering if someone can explain how i can mount my other partition (which is currently used for Ubuntu)
basically when i first installed it, the partition comes up in nautlius as Mass Storage Drive: 20.3 GB media and prompted for credentials. After a few unsuccessful attempts i was not able to mount the drive and the prompts for credentials no longer displays.
When i right click it and click mount or try to open it, nothing happens. Does anyone know how to solve this?
Thanks in advance
Last edited by rogg (2009-08-14 08:05:39)

Thanks everyone for the help, i managed to get it working by editing the fstab
ill post up how i did it, in case anyone else wants to know:
identify the partition:
(can use gparted or fdisk -l)
identify uuid:
sudo blkid
edit fstab and add:
your partition as specified, you can use the existing mounted partitions as a guide to help
hope this helps
Does anyone know how to mount the partitions via nautilus/gui?, or at least have it show up as a seperate file system (have the partition appear in the "places" bar?

Similar Messages

Dual boot with WinXp and Arch-Solved

Hi friends,
I was using windows boot loader to boot into arch instead of grub. I used this:
dd if=/dev/hda7 of=arch.lnx bs=512 count=1
to get the first 512 bytes of the partition in which I installed arch and then added a line directing towards arch.lnx (moved to windows partition) in boot.ini. But now after reinstalling arch, when i do the same to get first 512 bytes of the partition, it generates a blank file and hence using that I'm not able to boot into arch. Grub is installed in this partition only. Any hints about this issue.
EDIT: I dont know what was the problem exactly, but after I reinstalled grub by "grub-install /dev/hda7" and then did the above command, it worked fine.

moderator comment: This is a question on Kubuntu installation but it seems to me OP specifically wants to know how to set up his partitions without harming Arch. As long as the discussion remains about Arch Linux this thread can stay. I'm going to have to move this from Installation to Newbie Corner.
Annorax wrote:I assure you that I am doing my own research. I am new to Linux and new to dual booting and was just looking for some pointers and a place to start reading.
Please see this. I advise you to read the links 2ManyDogs gave. You also need to give us more information about your partitions, such as what is mounted where. I suspect you only have primary partitions and will need to convert one into an extended partition.

[SOLVED] Dual boot windows 7 and arch Linux with seperate hard drives

Ok so I'm stuck trying to get my computer to dual boot windows 7 and arch. They are installed on different hard drives and I have grub 2 as the boot loader. I can't find any tutorials on how to do it with seperate hard drives I know how to do it if they are on the same hard drive. Also I want windows on the "first" hard drive how do I check to see which one it considers the first?
Last edited by bdawg (2012-09-21 23:15:37)

DSpider wrote:
drobole wrote:If you want to change it so that sda becomes sdb and sdb becomes sda, you should be able to do that in BIOS.
Not from the BIOS. He would need to physically open up the computer and switch the cables between them (or add another drive).
There's no actual performance increase in changing this order. Performance increase is when you have the partitions as close to the beginning of a HDD as possible, where the platters spin faster (basic mechanics, not to be confused with CD/DVD, which are being written from the inside-out to prevent errors after extended usage), and it especially doesn't apply to SSDs whatsoever.
You may be right about that. I remember I had to do this a while back but I probably switched the cables. It also messed up the drive mapping in Windows 98 if I remember correctly.

[SOLVED] Can't install; dual-boot sharing partitions?

Hi, I'm currently dual-booting Linux Mint 14 and Windows 7 on my laptop, and decided to replace Mint with Arch. Somehow, though, I don't think I ever divided my HDD into seperate partitions for Linux and Windows. Using gparted (or fdisk), /dev/sda (my HDD) has essentially got a Dell utility partition (100MiB, sda1), a recovery partition (15GiB, sda2), a 1 MiB unallocated space, and a 284 GiB section labeled "OS" (sda3). I can't touch the partition on Linux because it's always in use.
I can't get through with the installation because of this, and can't find an answer no matter how often or in-depth I RTFM. If someone could point me in the right direction, that'd be great.
Thanks.
http://imgur.com/8qfpbbW
EDIT: This has been [SOLVED].
Last edited by SELame (2013-07-29 22:55:13)

I would recommend downloading the gparted cd here, and setting up your partitioning scheme from there. I am quite suprised about your system setup though, you may want to nuke it and start again because something weird is going on.
Yeah, I'm not sure exactly what's happening. I'll look into using gparted as a LiveCD, but I'd rather not wipe everything if I can help it.
I don't know if this is the case, but Ubuntu had (has?) an option to install to an image on the windows partition (wubi), rather than a partition of it's own. It's possible that Mint adapted this for their spinoff, and would explain why you only have a Windows partition.
I recommend that you modify your partition scheme if you want to install Arch. Shrink your Windows partition as much as the Windows partitioner will allow (avoid gparted and similar tools for this purpose, the Windows in-built partitioner should be adequate), then create an extended partition to house your Arch partition, swap partition, data partition, or whatever partitions you want.
Yeah, I installed Mint from a mounted image in Daemon Tools, so that could explain it. I'll look into shrinking my Windows partition and seeing if I can somehow remove Mint from my Windows partition. I still have grub and all, if that makes any difference.
there is a mint4win, do you see something like this on boot? http://i.imgur.com/sPOMx.png
Yep! I may have installed mint4win. Let me look into that.

Dual booting Windows 8 and Arch Linux with UEFI

Hi all!
I'm trying to install Arch Linux on my computer where I already have Windows 8, and I'm getting a little stuck when it comes to the partitioning.
Following the beginner's guide and the method here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Un … n_in_Linux for setting up the partitions properly, regarding UEFI. My problem is that when using cgdisk to set up a new EFI system partition (ef00), I get an error message when trying to write the partition table (just saying that something went wrong). I figure the problem is that I already have a partition like this (correct me if I'm wrong), but it really looks like it succeded (see info below). So my question is: How do I preceed to keep my Windows 8 installation happy, but installing Arch? Do I remove the old EFI system partition and create a new one, or is there some method that allows me to edit the already existing one, to allow me to dual boot Windows 8 and Arch?
My partition table now looks like this:
Part. # Size Partition Type Partition Name
1007KB free space
1 500MB Windows RE Basic data partition
2 300MB EFI System EFI system partition (this one was already present on my system)
3 128MB Microsoft reserved Microsoft reserved partition
4 63.5GB Microsoft basic data Basic data partition
8 512MB EFI System EFI System partition (this is the one I tried to create when I got the error message)
5 29.5GB Linux filesystem Arch (this is where I was going to put my Arch installation)
6 22GB Windows RE Basic data partition
7 1024MB Windows RE Basic data partition
615KB free space
Just for the record; I only created partition #8 and #5.
Any help is appreciated! And sorry for beeing a total noob, but I really suck at this.

sudo make sandwich wrote:If it is possible to share ESP between OSes, how do I do this (would it be sufficent to follow this section: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners'_Guide#For_UEFI_motherboards)?
There's really very little to do to share an ESP between OSes. Most OS installers will auto-detect the ESP and use it. Problem solved. For Arch it may be a bit more effort just because Arch uses a more hands-on installation process, but I've only done a couple of Arch installations, and the last one was several months ago, so I don't recall the details clearly enough to comment.
And how big will the partition need to be? The beginner's guide says 512MB or higher.
I don't know what was in the mind of the author, but my guess is that's because that's roughly the cutoff point where mkdosfs starts creating FAT32 by default rather than FAT16. The ESP is officially supposed to be FAT32, not FAT16, although FAT16 usually works OK. It's also possible to create FAT32 on smaller partitions by using an explicit option to mkdosfs ("-F 32").
The optimal size of the ESP depends on the files stored on it. If you don't store your Linux kernels, something as small as 100MiB is usually adequate; but a few Linux kernels and their initrd files can consume twice that amount. My own recommendation is for the ESP to be 200-500MiB.
The only error message I got from cgdisk is "Problem saving data! Your partition table may be damaged!", however booting Windows again works fine. Parted did not complain about antything.
Use the "verify" function in cgdisk. That will reveal any problems with the data structures. If a verify turns up OK, then that means that cgdisk ran into some sort of disk problem. Running gdisk rather than cgdisk and using the gdisk "w" option (without making any changes) may produce a more helpful error message.

Dual boot Windows 7 and Arch from 2 seperate drives (UEFI)

Hello everyone, I've been working on installing Arch to a secondary hard drive for the past few hours, but I am trying to make sure I won't mess up my Windows 7 install. I have found several topics talking about dual booting Windows 7 and Arch, but not a whole lot on booting them from separate drives. My drives are currently setup as follows.
sda (120GB SSD for Windows 7)
sda1 (100MB System Reserved NTFS partition)
sda2 (Windows 7 install)
sdb (1TB HDD for Windows programs, files, etc)
sdb1 (1TB NTFS partition)
sdc (1TB HDD)
sdc1 (boot 512MB FAT32)
sdc2 (root 500MB ext4)
sdc3 (home 300GB ext4)
sdc4 (swap 10GB)
rest unallocated "free space"
I used Gparted to create the partitions. I ended up getting hung up on the "Create Filesystems" sections, specifically this line"
# mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sdXY
Now that I am looking at it, I'm thinking the "Create Filesystems" section maybe isn't necessary because I've used Gparted?
If it isn't necessary, when I get to the "mount the EFI System Partition to /boot" section, would I simply use
# mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt/boot
instead of
# mount /dev/sdXY /mnt/boot ?
The way I had this setup with Ubuntu was 3 partitions on sdc (/, home, swap) and I set my PC to boot to the sdc drive on startup. The boot loader would then give me the option to boot into Ubuntu or Windows 7, and I never had to alter the sda or sdb drives at all. Is this possible through Arch? My thinking is that even if it isn't, I should still be able to enter the BIOS boot menu and select which drive to boot manually correct? That wouldn't be too big of a deal for me because I spend 90% of my time in Linux, and only use Windows for Photoshop and gaming occasionally.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. I would have just tested this out, but I am afraid of messing up my Windows install.

After several sleepless hours I had to give up and go to bed about 5 hours ago. The installation process went smoothly (or so I thought). I followed the tutorial closely and upon rebooting I was met with a blinking cursor. After some googling I found others who said I should press TAB, but nothing seemed to work.
I rebooted to the iso disk and found the "boot installed OS" option and noticed it said "Press TAB to edit". I then found the boot parameters and tried everything from hd0 0 to hd4 4. I believe I have Grub setup correctly because every option besides hd0 0 either says "Booting..." and then gets stuck, or says "That disk and partition combination does not exist". So yea, I think hd0 0 is the correct boot path, it just gets stuck with the blinking cursor.
silverhammermba wrote:
You have the right idea. You want to install a bootloader on sdc1 which will be able to boot both Arch and Windows.
Your best bet would be to use something like rEFInd. It has a "scanfor" option that should automatically detect your BIOS-configured Windows installation and add a boot option for it. Note that depending on your motherboard, you may have to switch to UEFI-only mode and Windows will be unbootable without the assistance of a UEFI program which is backwards compatible with BIOS (like rEFInd).
Thank you for the link. Considering I can't get into my install and the actual install only took about 30 minutes, I think I am going to just start from the beginning again with REFIndr. It seems much simpler. I only used Grub because I've used it before with Ubuntu, but my very limited knowledge is telling me Grub is probably the problem.
MoonSwan wrote:Just an idea: My bios has a "Boot-up Prompt" which I can invoke when it's POSTing by hitting F11. This brings me to a menu that allows me to choose which drive I want to boot up that day. I use it when Syslinux isn't working properly (Which is right now as a matter of fact ...) in order to boot Windows so I can do some SCII, for example. I, too, dual-boot but I have both OSes on different SSDs. So my 120GB Crucial SSD has Arch on it and the 240GB Kingston has Windows, SCII, Portable Apps, etc and nary the two shall meet. It makes dual-booting easier in the case of a corrupt OS or MBR or what-have-you. You may want to give your Bios a better look to see if you can do the F11 trick. It probably can and will usually tell you so at POST by printing that information on-screen along with your drives-detected and other messages (I hit Pause sometimes to read all the POST messages).
This is exactly what I was talking about doing when I mentioned:
My thinking is that even if it isn't, I should still be able to enter the BIOS boot menu and select which drive to boot manually correct?
That's good to know, because even if this next install doesn't work I think if I pull the other drives I should be able to get it working fairly easily.
Thanks again everyone.

Dual booting win 7 and arch: cannot install grub to partition

I have read the arch wiki page on dual booting and several other sources on line, but I am still struggling to get this to work.
I am trying to dual boot arch and windows 7 on my lenovo ideapad s205. the machine comes with windows 7 pre-installed.
I shrank the win 7 partition and added an extended partition with 3 logical partions for /boot, swap, and /.
I am able to install and run arch by installing grub to the mbr. when I do this, though, I cannot boot windows. (the windows section of grub menu.lst is uncommented and points toward hda0,0. I have tried hda 0,1 as well).
I have also tried to use the windows boot loader to load arch, as described in the arch wiki page on dual booting. The problem here is that, taking this approach, I should install grub to my /boot partition, but when I try to do this, the installer only allows me to install grub to sda or sdb (the usb stick).
I have read that grub should be able to boot linux from a logical partition. Is this so?
Is there something wrong with the arch installer that it is not giving me the option of installing to a partition rather than the mbr, or is this a problem with my partition scheme, or something else?
I am tempted to remove lenovo's recovery system, but on the other hand, I have already needed to use it several times while monkeying around with installing arch.
Thanks for any help.
UPDATE:
I now have the laptop dual-booting win 7 and arch. My solution ( adapted from here: http://helms-deep.cable.nu/~rwh/blog/?p=177) was to:
1. installed arch on the partitions I had created for it, but skipped the "install bootloader" stage.
2. in win 7, I downloaded and installed EasyBCD and made an entry for arch in it. I checked the option to "Use EasyBCD's copy of GRUB"
3. When I restarted, I got a grub error because the entry in grub's menu.lst was pointing at the wrong partitions for the kernel and root.
4. So I went back into the arch live disk, mounted the boot partition and edited menu.lst.
Now when I start the laptop, the windows boot loader starts and I can choose between win 7 and arch. when I select arch, grub4dos starts and gives me the option to start arch. this is not particularly elegant (nor is it fast), so I think this solution is less than ideal, but it does work.
I'd be interestd in any thoughts about what went wrong and what a better solution would be.
thanks.
Last edited by ratchet (2011-10-10 19:09:16)

ratchet wrote:II am able to install and run arch by installing grub to the mbr. when I do this, though, I cannot boot windows. (the windows section of grub menu.lst is uncommented and points toward hda0,0. I have tried hda 0,1 as well).
Is this a typo in your post or how it was in menu.lst? Surely it should be hd0,0 and not hda0,0? The entry I have in my menu.lst is as follows:
# (2) Windows
title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
What was yours?
Last edited by JHeaton (2011-10-10 20:18:22)

Dual Boot Windows 7 and Arch with Shared NTFS partition.

Hi everyone,
I want to dual boot windows 7 and Arch Linux.
Here's the problem... my hard drive isn't the biggest. I want to store all my music, movies, pictures, and documents on partition that both linux and windows can access seamlessly.
I want the partition to be NTFS. -- (the programs that map an ext4 drive to Windows are trash).
Here's what I think I need.
30GB NTFS to Windows.
30GB ext4 to Arch Linux
The remainder (190ish GB) to Shared Data.
I don't want the swap partition because I have a SSD and 4GB of RAM.
What is the best way to setup my partitions? And is this even possible?
Thanks!

Not a problem. I would create:
First of four primary partitions for windows.
Second of four primary partitions for /boot
Third of four partitions is an extended partition encompassing all the space not used by the first two partitions.
Put everything else inside the extended partition.
Mine is a bit more complicated, but this should give you an idea:
ewaller@odin:~ 1005 %sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda
Password:
Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x87b33479
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 121778159 60888056 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 597366784 625135615 13884416 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 121778160 597366783 237794312 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 * 121778223 123770219 995998+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 123770283 131770589 4000153+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7 193213818 597360959 202073571 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 131781258 193213754 30716248+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda9 131770591 131781194 5302 1 FAT12
Partition table entries are not in disk order
ewaller@odin:~ 1006 %
Partitions 1 and 2 are Primary partitions. Partition 3 is an extended partition. All the others live in partition 3

Can i "copy" a 200 GB boot camp partition from Mac Pro to MBP?

i spent a lot of time working with virtual machines and i have decided i simply have to increase the size of my mac pro HD and put a boot camp partition in it.
can i COPY a 200 GB windows 7 boot camp partition from my 1 TB Mac Pro drive to a 200 GB partition on my MBP that will have a 500 GB drive?
this would let me focus on doing a full install and full setup on the Mac Pro and just copy this over to the MBP (when i get the new drive) saving me a ton o time.
TIA
Also, is this something for WinClone?

hi kappy. THANK YOU.
is it possible that you or anyone has actually done this machine to machine and partition to partition?
i want to avoid a situation where i try to do this only to find it works better or is much simplyer to the the fresh install on the MacBook Pro just fresh.
- jon

[Solved] Arch + W8 dual boot, UEFI, partitioning question

Hello,
I'm buying new laptop with preinstalled W8 (Lenovo E430) and I'm planning to dual boot. I've read Beginner's guide, Installation guide, searched forum, etc., but I'm still unsure how to deal with creating partitions for Arch while keeping Windows.
From the Beginners' Guide:
If you are intending to follow the advice to create a GPT partition table then you need to choose "Advanced" and then select "gpt" from the drop-down menu. This cannot be done if you have a pre-existing Windows installation on the drive which you wish not to destroy.
and from the Partitioning:
To dual-boot with Windows, one must use MBR.
A special exception to this rule: dual-booting Windows 64-bit using UEFI instead of BIOS, one must use GPT.
My W8 will be 64bit and also is Arch.
So, my question is. When I shrink W8 partition and create free space for Arch, do I have to choose 'gpt' option (2nd quote) or not (1st quote) for formatting? Or am I reading it totally wrong?
I would give it a try, but that destroying thing kind of scares me.
Last edited by centos (2013-06-18 19:24:58)

The wiki quotes you've presented make it look like the wiki was created with an MBR/BIOS assumption and then poorly edited to incorporate GPT/EFI information. The rules, presented in a more cohesive way, are these:
Windows ties its partition table type to the computer's firmware: under BIOS, Windows requires MBR; and under EFI, Windows requires GPT.
Linux is more flexible: It can use either MBR or GPT under BIOS. In theory, Linux can use either MBR or GPT under EFI, although many EFIs seem to require GPT, so it's best to stick with GPT on EFI-based computers.
When dual-booting, Windows is the limiting factor when it comes to partition table type.
Most EFIs include a Compatibility Support Module (CSM), which enables them to boot BIOS-based OSes. The CSM can usually be enabled or disabled in the firmware setup utility, although the details of how to do this vary from one implementation to another.
Computers that ship with Windows 8 pre-installed almost always use EFI, and therefore GPT.
Converting from MBR to GPT or vice-versa is possible with GPT fdisk (gdisk, cgdisk, or sgdisk), but this requires re-installing the boot loader for any already-installed OS(es). If Windows is one of those OS(es), it's probably not worth the effort.
GParted and parted can convert from MBR to GPT or vice-versa only by destroying existing partition entries, so you should use these tools to make such a change only on a blank disk or if you intend to lose all the existing partitions.
Since you (centos) say you're installing to a computer with a pre-installed Windows 8, you've almost certainly already got an EFI/GPT setup. Under these circumstances, you won't be choosing a partition table type unless you want to completely wipe that installation and install both OSes fresh. GParted will detect the partition table type and work with it automatically; you should not select the option to create a new partition table, which your first quote (partially) describes. You should, however, be sure that you install Arch in EFI mode and that you install an EFI-mode boot manager and/or boot loader, rather than a BIOS-mode version of GRUB. Getting an EFI-mode Windows and a BIOS-mode Linux to coexist is possible, but awkward. Converting a BIOS-mode Linux installation to boot in EFI mode is also possible, if you mistakenly install in BIOS mode; but it's usually easier to install in EFI mode to begin with. There are lots of threads here on EFI-mode Arch installations, as well as information in the Arch wiki on this topic. Unfortunately, EFI is still new enough that there are still a lot of kinks to be worked out, both in specific firmware implementations (many of them are buggy) and in OS support (which is still not as mature as is BIOS support).

[Solved]dual boot windows 7 and arch linux

I have successfully installed arch linux dual boot with the original win7 on my PC. If I only use linux, then the system works well. The problem is that once I boot into Win7 then after reboot, the linux boot manager will stop working and the system always boots into windows automatically. My guess is Win7 automatically repair the boot loader.
My current solution is whenever I have finished using Windows, I'll boot with my linux USB installation, and run "gummiboot --path=/boot install". Afterwards, linux will work fine. But I believe there must be a better solution. Any help will be appreciated.
I have UEFI board by the way.
Last edited by jl2014 (2015-04-19 17:35:57)

Thanks for all your help first! I have tried Head_on_a_Stick's suggestions as the first step. Here is what I did. I have created :
$ cat /boot/loader/entries/windows.conf
title Windows
efi /EFI/hidden/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
The window boot path was :
/boot/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
and I changed
/boot/EFI/Microsoft
to
/boot/EFI/hidden
After reboot, I clicked 'Windows' option on the linux boot manager. Below are the error messages:
Windows failed to start.
File: \EFI\Microsoft/Boot/BCD
Info: An error occurred while attempting to read the boot configuration data.
Any idea what goes wrong?
I'll try other suggestions soon. Thanks all of you again.
Last edited by jl2014 (2015-04-19 00:03:33)

Dual-booting with Windows 8, Arch Linux first?

I initially had Windows 7, then Arch. Now, I have a key for Windows 8. I can just upgrade the previous Windows 7 partition, but I only allocated 37 GB originally, so I want to expand it - I would therefore need to delete the partition and make a new one. However, dual-booting guides say that Windows should be first. What is the best way to go about this?

srs5694 wrote:
x33a wrote:Thanks, that's interesting. I always thought that it didn't run without secure boot.
Note that Secure Boot is NOT synonymous with EFI. Secure Boot is one optional feature of EFI. In fact, of five computers I've got that use EFI, only one supports Secure Boot.
I did know that
Microsoft requires manufacturers to ship their computers with Secure Boot enabled in order to get a Windows 8-compatible sticker. Because most manufacturers consider the lack of such a sticker to be the kiss of death for their products, this means that nearly all computers that ship with Windows 8 ship with Secure Boot enabled. Because Secure Boot is an EFI feature, this means that these computers also use EFI.
This does not mean that Windows 8 itself requires either EFI or Secure Boot; the requirement is a marketing requirement for new computers. If you buy a Windows 8 package at the store, it will install on an older BIOS-only computer (assuming it's not too old), on an EFI computer that lacks Secure Boot support, on an EFI computer with Secure Boot support but with that feature disabled, or on an EFI computer with Secure Boot and Microsoft's keys enabled. (It is possible to replace your firmware's Secure Boot keys, which would prevent the installation of Windows unless you re-signed the Windows boot loader yourself.)
Note also that it's possible to switch Secure Boot on and off, at least on x86-64 systems. (Microsoft's Windows 8 sticker requirements specify that users must be able to do this on x86-64 systems; but on ARM computers, Microsoft's sticker requirements say that users must not be able to disable Secure Boot.) Windows 8 should continue to boot when you turn Secure Boot on or off; however, some versions of GRUB have problems chainloading to other EFI boot loaders (including the Windows boot loader) when Secure Boot is enabled.
Thanks, that's very informative.

Thinkpad t520 dual boot win 7 and arch + optimus issue

--today I got my first laptop and first thinkpad..... thinkpad t520 with the following specifications:-
intel i5 2520M - HD+ AG display (1600*900) - 4 gigs of ram - nvidia optimus -Hard disk 500Gigs 7200rpm - windows 7 and some other windows applications unfortunately a friend bought it for me so he bought it with alot of applications
--the problem is that I've been using arch linux for a year now, and I love it, no experience with laptops, and I intend to keep windows because I purchased for it and I want dual boot with arch so what is the right disk partitioning to install linux and keep windows untouched............ in my old desktop it was only arch and it was like that:
128 mb ext2 boot
2048 swap
50000 mb / ext4 and the rest of the disk for home folder, now with dual boot what is the right partitoning?
the second question Does bumblebee work fine with archlinux?
how to access bios?
Is there any thread to help to install arch on thinkpad t520 in details ?
Do I leave the battery always installed or what?
Last edited by big mac (2012-02-04 13:46:40)

the Arch partition should take some space from the windows7_os partition. You should keep the Lenovo_Recovery partition if you don't have a Windows installation DVD, or if you think you may want to reset your hard drive to its original state someday. In my laptop I have completely removed it.
I have a dual boot of Archlinux/Windows7, and I use the following partitioning
/dev/sda1 ntfs 60.0GiB /media/C (for windows os)
/dev/sda2 (extended partition)
/dev/sda3 swap 4.0GiB swap
/dev/sda4 ext4 30.0GiB root
/dev/sda5 ext4 30.0GiB home
/dev/sda6 ntfs 376GiB /media/D
I use the last partition as a shared partition between Arch and Windows, for storing music and videos... I use it also for installing games, so that I can play them either from windows or from Arch by using wine.
I'm not saying this is the best way to do it, but this has been working for me, also I don't use a separate /boot partition, I used to have it when I had multiple Linux distros, but with Arch alone I don't find it necessary.

Dual boot Linux - Windows on Satellite U940

Hello to everyone.
I'm quite new on this forum and I have a brand new Toshiba Satellite U940-10N? Using Linux for 2 years, I'd like to install a debian wheezy distribution on it.
On my former computer, only Debian was installed so I'm net really comfortable with dual boot especially with the ssd.
I don't really like windows but I keep it to work sometimes on it.
Do you think it would be better to install the linux system on the system like I've seen it on most of threads, with only the /home on the HDD ? Or do you think it would be interesting to build another raid like it is now for windows ? Would I have better perfomances and speed that way ?
Another question : is it possible to have an ext4 data partition and make windows to see it or do I have to write it in ntfs ? I have noticed that fat32 and ntfs written on linux with gparted are not reconized by windows 8.
Those are my questions for now.
Thank you for your help.

Hi there
First let's look at your situation - the U940-10N will most likely be a Win8 unit, right?
If YES - then the BIOS has to be set up to boot UEFI.
Secure Boot can be disabled.
It seems Debian is not so far in supporting UEFI / EFI boot modes.
Look at this announcement from back in October:
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/News/2012/20121018
So, you will need to make sure your debian flavor can boot in UEFI boot mode.
If not, You will have issues getting both OS'es (Debian and Win8) to live side by side and boot without issues.
Next, You'll need to make sure Debian is able to install a boot loader that takes Windows 8 into account and is able to start that OS.
Looking at storage, I tried to install Fedora on a dual-storage system (SSD + HDD).
I installed the OS on the SSD and my Home structure was placed on the HDD.
This worked very very well.
I think this also provides the best performance, however I have no real statistics to back it up.
Ext4 is not supported by Windows out of the box, but there is a driver existing which implements ext2,3,4 support for Windows: http://www.ext2fsd.com/
If You ask me, I would rather have Linux accessing an NTFS partition than have Windows trying to write to an Ext2/3/4 partition. I am fully confident in the NTFS support from Linux but not the other way around.
If the Fat and NTFS partitions are not recognised by Windows, please check that the partitions are Fat32 or NTFS.
It may be that the file systems are NTFS / Fat but the partitions have Linux signatures.
Hope this helps
BR Tom

Any special caution to have a dual boot (Linux + win 7) on a X220 thinkpad ?

May I need any special caution to have a dual boot (ubuntu 11.04 + win 7) on a X220 with the mysterious UEFI firmware ?
Thanks in advance,
Paul

Hi
The unit was preinstalled with Win 8 64bit right?
Changing the BIOS setting from UEFI to CSM and disabling the secure boot prevent the notebook from booting the Win 8!
Therefore the unit cannot find the bootable device and switches to last option: LAN.
But since the notebook cannot find bootable system via LAN, the error PXE-E61: Media test faliure, check cable appears.
If you want to use a dual boot, you have to boot into Win 8
In Win 8 you have to create an partition for Linux installation. This can be down in Win 8 disk management. You have to shrink an last partition and have to create new one on the available free space.
Now to start the Linux installation you need an media.. you can burn the Linux iso on DVD or an bootable USB stick. There are many details in internet how to create such media.
Once you have created the bootable USB, restart your PC with connected USB.
Press F12 to get the boot menu. Now you should see the USB memory stick (if bootable!!!) choose USB and you should be able to install Linux (Ubuntu is great!)
Here is a nice page which would provide the whole step by step instruction!
http://www.intowindows.com/dual-boot-windows-8-and-ubuntu/

Mounting dual boot linux partition from Arch [SOLVED]

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