Dual boot, partitioning, plus questions.

Hey, I'm thinking of taking the plunge and trying Ubuntu but I have a few specific questions.

As it is now I have a Dell diagnostics partition, a C drive which holds XP and a extended partition D drive with My Documents, settings for Firefox and Thunderbird etc. Is 10GB enough for Ubuntu and 4Gb for the swap file (grub)? I'd be shrinking my D drive using PartedMagic. As I understand, these would need to be ext3, correct? Also, I'm not sure if I can shrink D: within an extended partition. Assuming I can , is it OK to have Ubuntu in an extended partition and the swap file?

Also, not long ago I upgraded my internal HDD and wiped out Media Direct which was on a hidden partition which was easier said than done. I'd like to be able to use the button to boot into Ubuntu and the normal power button to boot into XP as it is now. From a cold boot if I press the MD button now I'll get a MD slash screen before booting into XP.

I've read a few threads about using the MD button but I'm kind of lost here and would appreciate specific directions for the above.

 

Too complex? I suppose I could try the Ubuntu forum.

 

10GB is enough for most usages.

4GB should be quite enough. How much RAM do you have (2GB??? going by your sig) and what is your RAM usage currently? (Grub has nothing to do with the swap.)

All Linux partitions on which you store files are normally ext3. The swap partition has its own format.

Yes.

I can't help you with your questions about the MD button.

 

First off I know the reading that I'm about to suggest can seem tedious, especially if there's a desire to get Linux up and running as quickly as possible, but the Ubuntu's installation manual (8.04 for i386), has a good appendix specifically dealing with partitioning. Additionally there's some good howtos in the Ubuntu documentation on partitioning, and some good howtos in the Ubuntu user forums. Reading through some of this information can not only help you answer the questions you know you have, they can actually help answer questions you might not know you have, at least not yet.

The Ubuntu partition appendix states that, "A generous workstation or server installation should allow 4–6GB", so 10gb for your Linux installation should be fine. Furthermore there's a lot of recent discussion around swap partitions on this board, and in my opinion (what else), which is mirrored in Ubuntu's Swap Partition FAQ, is that you should have a swap partition, and it should be equal to the RAM you have installed (minimum of 2gb). The reason for that is that if you want to hibernate, you will need a swap partition as big as your RAM. Grub has nothing to do with swap partitions, as has been pointed out.

Once you shrink your NTFS partition, (I'll assume your D drive is an NTFS partition), you will now have free unpartitioned space available to install Linux into. If you now boot the Ubuntu install CD, it can automate the entire process of partitioning and formatting this unpartitioned space for your Linux installation. Also, you don't have to use the ext3 file system, although it's probably the most popular file system for Linux installations. Please note, you don't need to create the partitions and file systems before you run the Ubuntu installation program, and in most cases it's easier to run the Ubuntu installer with free, unpartitioned, disk space.

I've never tried it, but I assume that whether or not a partition is primary or logical, (within an extended partition), most partition tools can shrink the partitions, IF they can shrink the file system. You need to check with your partition tool on what restrictions may exist. For example parted can't shrink my XFS file system partitions.

Yes. You can have all Linux partitions, including swap, as logical partitions. As long as you don't have any other requirement to have your Linux partition as a primary partition, it's fine to have them all be logical ones.

I pretty much ignore the "direct access" keys on my laptops, but you probably have read that some Dell users are successfully re-mapping the MediaDirect button on their laptops. This Ubuntu user forum post, from this thread, describes the process that one user was able to follow to get their laptop to boot Ubuntu when they press the MediaDirect button. In my reading of the post, it's not explained very clearly, and some of the information is misstated, (for example the following statement from the post is incorrect, "It seems that extended partitions have boot sectors, but they're just almost never used."), but if you can follow the steps, you may be able to achieve something similar with your laptop. Interesting that this is definitely one use case where you will need at least a /boot partition as a primary partition to make use of this method.

BEFORE YOU DO ANY OF THIS, PLEASE BACKUP YOUR COMPUTER.

Good Luck..

 

I guess! Thanks for all the help. You too Lemur. I'll read everything over. I'm not in a hurry and would rather have a better idea of what I'm doing rather than screwing up.