[SOLVED] Longwinded beginner - Dual-boot & partition questions

Question

Hello,
I'm interested in installing Arch Linux alongside Windows XP (dual-boot). I have little previous linux experience, although I have rented some servers that have used it in the past, as well as compiling some stuff with it while at University (studying Computer Science). Nevertheless, I am relatively confident that if I can still boot into XP, I will be able to acccustomise myself and like the fact that this distribution seems to be hands-on and leaves a lot up to the user.
I've been reading the Beginner's Guide and the dual boot guide, and I would like to get started, however, I'm not going to go ahead with this until I am certain that I will be left with a system that can still boot into Windows XP. I assume that it'll take me a while to get to grips with Arch, and in the meantime it would be massively inconvenient if I couldn't work/play/etc...
What I already know
Anyway, currently I have a 250GB hard drive that I use for Windows (as well as 3 other hard drives full of stuff). I have partitioned the drive with Windows XP on it with gparted like so:
(in order)
UNALLOCATED                         32GB
SDB1 (Windows XP)                 50GB
SDB2 (Downloads)                  150GB
I hope to use the unallocated space to hold linux (and then have access to my other windows drives in the future, using ntfs-3g), however, I am a little confused over what partitions I 'should' have and how large they should be, considering that I will use the OS to mainly develop, browse the web, listen to music, etc...
I was thinking:
/boot    -- ext2         -- 100MB
/          -- ext4         -- 15GB
swap    --                -- 1GB
/home  -- ext4         -- 12GB
/var     -- ReiserFS   -- 4GB
Questions
• Is 30GB too little, even though most of my stuff is on other NTFS hard drives?
• How large should / be? I've read that it contains /bin, /dev, /etc and others. How do I know how much space these need? Am I misunderstanding things?
• Is a /var partition unnecessary? How large should it be?
• 10GB for /home, 1GB for swap, 100MB for /boot?
• Do I need a /tmp or /usr? This is a single-user machine, but I don't want it to get messy!
• I was thinking of giving /boot ext2, and /var ReiserFS, and then giving every other partition ext4. That okay?
• Do I need to set these partitions up when installing, or can I set them up in advance with gparted - it might be simpler.
• Due to already having 2 NTFS primary partitions on the hard disk, I presume that some of the above will need to be logical partitions in an extended partition? How is this done?
Once the partitions have been set up, and linux is installed, I presume it's just a matter of completing the rest of Part I of the guide, and then ammending /boot/grub/menu.lst to include 'Windows XP'? At that point I am able to restart Windows XP, and only delve into Arch when I want to continue with the configuration, fixing, and so on...
Sorry for the wall of text, and thanks for your patience. (:
Last edited by Bedtimes (2009-09-27 14:21:55)

Answer 1

That's the thing, I expect that I'm doing something wrong with the GRUB loader - and I admit my hard disk layout has been quite strange for a long time before installing linux.
Basically, it currently looks like this:
/dev/sda1    ntfs    Music           250GB
/dev/sdb3    ext2   /boot           120MB
/dev/dsb4    extended
---- /dev/sdb5    linux-swap       1GB
---- /dev/sdb6    ext4    /           20GB
---- /dev/sdb7    ext4    /home   12GB
/dev/sdb1    ntfs    Windows XP  50GB
/dev/sdb2    ntfs    Downloads    150GB
/dev/sdc1    ntfs    TV & Movies   950GB
• This list is in order that the entries appear on the hard disk, hence /boot is in the first 1024 cylinders of the hard disk, but as you can see the sdb numbers are actually in the chronological order that I created them.
• I used an extended partition with logical partitions inside since I had read that there was an issue with more than 4 partitions in a hard disk, and I already had 2 NTFS partitions.
• When it asked me to install GRUB to the MBR, I installed it to SDB as opposed to SDBx as it asked me to in the manual. This is the drive that contains /boot!
• I just managed to amend something in the menu.lst, in order that I can boot into Windows XP. Therefore my machine is not totally fucked up any more. (: Unfortunately, what I changed doesn't make sense to me, since I would have expected Windows XP to be on a different hard disk.
The contents of sdb3:
grub    kernel26-fallback.img    kernel26.img
lost+found    System.map26    umlinuz26
When typing the command /sbin/blkid:
/dev/sda1: UUID="D0..." LABEL="Music" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sdb1: UUID="A8..." LABEL="Windows XP" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sdb2: UUID="557..." LABEL="Downloads" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sdb3: UUID="2676..." TYPE="ext2"
/dev/sdb5: UUID="0474..." TYPE="swap"
/dev/sdb6: UUID="0886..." TYPE="ext4"
/dev/sdb7: UUID="519becf..." TYPE="ext4"
/dev/sdc1: UUID="46AC59" LABEL="TV & Movies" TYPE="ntfs"
Inside /boot/grub/menu.lst:
timeout 5
default 0
color light-blue/black light-cyan/blue
# (1) Windows XP
title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
# (2) Arch Linux
title Arch Linux
root (hd1,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/0886... ro vga=773
initrd          /boot/kernel26.img
# (3) Arch Linux (Fallback)
title Arch Linux (Fallback)
root (hd1,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/0886... ro vga=773
initrd          /boot/kernel26-fallback.img
edit: I'm able to access all of the installation partitions with gparted-live's terminal (by mounting the devices I need to access into folders in my root folder), so is there anything else you want me to check/change in order to find my linux root/boot partition?
Last edited by Bedtimes (2009-09-27 12:54:24)