If this was your landing page: This is part one of a three part article/tutorial. Article Page 1 >

Part 2a: Installation & Partitioning For Gag Boot Manager

Image 1. This is the state of two of my hard drives at the time of this openSUSE 10.2 installation. I had XP pro x64 running on Disk 0 (sda) and XP pro x86 running on Disk 1 (sdb). So you can see why I did not care to have Grub taking over my master boot record. Grub would have worked fine, but reconfiguring Grub when you make changes down the road is a much bigger pain in the ^$$ than using GAG Boot Manager. With GAG you simply hit one or two keys, delete or add an OS after deleting an OS / partition or adding an OS / partition.

NOTE: The device name is likely to be either /dev/sda for a SATA or SCSI disk, or /dev/hda for an IDE disk. Also, the highlighted area encompassing sda5 through the free space is an extended partition. Linux will recognize this as sda4.

In this case I already had Red Hat installed on sda6, sda7 and a Swap partition already created on sda8. I used gparted 0.3.3-0 to create sda10 for the openSUSE Root partition, sda11 for openSUSE Home partition. I already had a Swap partition for Red Hat (sda8), so I will use this same swap for openSUSE. All This can be done just as easily from within the SUSE installation. Sometimes I will just use unallocated free space. Whatever method you use, just make sure you know your hard drive setup before moving forward.

Note that some versions of Linux will not recognize your pre-setup scheme and you will have to do it from within the install. However, openSUSE 10.2 will show your personalized setup once you are in advanced options from within the installation.

Note that I only create a (/) Root, Home and swap partition and in just that order. That way when you configure GAG Boot Manager, you will know to direct it to the first Linux partition shown as we will be installing Grub in the Root partition.

Image 2. The first thing we want to do after the initial Preparation is to get into Expert mode. In openSUSE 10.2 just click the Expert Tab. Now, choose Partitioning.

Image 3. As you can see, the suggested partitioning scheme SUSE has in mind has nothing to do with what we want. SUSE has spotted the unallocated space of 50.41GB on Disk 1 (sdb). Refer to Image 1. whenever needed.

Now choose "Create Custom Partition Setup" as seen below.

Image 4. Now choose "Custom Partition Setup (for experts) as seen below.

Image 5. As you can see I have already created the (/) Root partition. You can also see every partition I have created for SUSE is right in front of use in relation to Image 1. (sda10 for Root, sda11 for Home and Swap-sda8. You would now do exactly as I did and highlight your intended Root partition and the click the "Edit" (or "Create" as the case may be) as seen on the bottom of this image. Refer to Image 1. if needed. Onward to Image 6.

Image 6. All I did to edit the Root partition was to set format to Ext3 and (very important) set the "Mount Point" to Root (/). You will not have to worry about "Fstab Options" while creating your Linux OS partitions. Click OK when finished. Next...

Image 7. Now highlight (or "Create" as the case may be) your intended "Home" partition. Next...

Image 8. All I did to edit the Home partition was to set format to Ext3 and (very important) set the "Mount Point" to Home (/home). You will not have to worry about "Fstab Options" while creating your Linux OS partitions. Click OK when finished. Next...

Image 9. Now highlight (or "Create" as the case may be) your intended "Swap" partition. Next...

Image 10. All I did to edit the Swap partition was to set format to Swap and (very important) set the "Mount Point" to swap. You will not have to worry about "Fstab Options" while creating your Linux OS partitions. Click OK when finished.

Note: Even though this swap partition was already created and formatted, have the Linux installer format the partition. Same with the Ext3 partitions above.

1. We have now finished editing or creating the necessary linux partitions for our install. After you click OK you will be back in the "Expert Partitioner" (Image 8). When you are happy with your partition scheme click "Accept" at the bottom of the "Expert Partitioner".

2.Once you click "Accept" in the "Expert Partitioner" the Linux installation will send you back the main "Installation Settings" area (Image 2.)

3. You may now close this page and click the link on the main article page "Part 2 Installing The Linux Boot Loader".

4. Below (Image 8.) is an optional partition and "Fstab" demo. If you want to include the option below, keep going.

Image 11. (Optional) You will notice in Image 8 below that I have a Windows FAT32, (or vfat in Linux terms) partition between the two Linux operating systems. I have this volume set to be auto mounted when Linux boots in read / write mode and there will be an icon to this volume in your Linux Devices Menu. Just highlight and click "Edit" Next...

Image 12. This partition is already formatted and has data on it, so I chose the "Do Not Format" option. If the partition was already created before you started your Linux installation, your "Mount Point" should already be listed and may be different from the one listed here. If it is not listed you will have to pick it from the drop down menu.

Now you would choose the Fstab Options. Next...

Image 13. Pick mount by Device name and check Mountable by user as displayed below. The Arbitrary option value should already be set.

The fstab and mtab files are closely related. You can find them in the /etc/ folder once you are booted into Linux.

Now click OK and you will be back in "Expert Partitioner" > Click Accept and you will be back safe and sound in "Installation Settings. In this same area we will customize the Linux boot loader. Close this page and click the link on the main article page "Part 2 Installing The Linux Boot Loader".

If this was your landing page: This is part one of a three part article/tutorial. Article Page 1 >