Kyonki laptop ke bhi din aaten hain...

[peeyush]

Director n producers: devendra_sm and peeyush
Starring: Laptop Compaq nx9010

Summary:
OS: XP, SuSe 9.1, Ubuntu 5.04 (In the order of installation).
Filesystem: NTFS, ReiserFS (Wanted to try out JFS. Left for next attempt (possibly this saturday))
Partitions: XP (One primary worth 10 GB, One in extended worth 4.8 GB in compressed), ReiserFS for SuSe (7.4 GB primary for /, 512 MB swap, 4 GB in extended volume for /home), ReiserFS for Ubuntu (7.3 GB primary for /, 512 MB swap reused, 3.8 GB in extended volume for /home)
Misc: Same swap partition is used by SuSe and Ubuntu. I am wondering if /home can be shared between SuSe and Ubuntu.


OS installation gatha: This whole exercise started last week. After series of failures in attempting resize of NTFS partition using qtparted courtesy knoppix and various win32 utilities, finally we ventured for reinstall of everything. Steps performed are:

1. Take permission from smdesai. Permission granted.
2. Data backup taken. Hope this relieves needlewoman and quickgun_kc.
3. Fresh install of XP started. Only one partition worth 10 GB is formatted in NTFS. After installation of drivers and bare necessary utilities, we create an extended volume worth 16 GB. We do not create any partition in it and I hand over lappy to devendra_sm.
4. He calls me for suggestion on partitions to be created. After some discussions and sar-fodi he accepts my suggestion of creating 8GB partition for /, and 4GB partition in extended volume for /home. Now Ubuntu doesn't recognize the extended volume earlier created by us. It identifies only that NTFS volume leaving the rest of space as it is. / is okay. /home is created in extended volume with 4GB. We believe that outta 16GB, we have managed 4GB for /home. Rest we leave so that if required other distros can be tried out too. For whatsoever reasons we do not find option to create swap. Ubuntu is installed. We started updating and installing packages using synaptic package manager. Proper grub entries are made and things look quite fine.
5. Something strikes me. I 'own' SuSe 9.1 professional DVD. And this lappy has DVD-CDRW combo. Lets give SuSe another try.
6. I insist on installing SuSe on lappy now. devendra_sm is not convinced. Besides, I am not in mood to convince anyone either. DVD is at home. Seek permission to take lappy home. Granted again.
7. _samurai_jack invites for watching The Bourne Supremacy. I agree. Am tempted but decline at last minute. Am back to lappy for installation.
8. SuSe prompts with yast screen to initiate installation. Everything goes proper except for partition. Ubuntu has created the extended volume worth 4 GB. And now SuSe can't create /home for itself in that extended volume. I mean, extended volume can't be resized now. I am trying but can't do. So I abort installation. Reboot in XP.
9. XP disk management shows a small green patch worth 4GB healthy partition. I try create another partition but can create only primary. Windows prove no good for solution I am looking for. Solution I am seeking is to increase or recreate extended volume. Reboot in Ubuntu.
10. Ubuntu hasn't installed qtparted. And I am not connecting to that dial up at home. No mood for any adventure leading to financial crisis. What do i do? What do i do? Okay, lemme try reinstall of ubuntu and when the partition activity comes I will recreate the extended volume properly this time. Rest will stay untouched. I will loose only /home. Hopefully this means that efforts of installing packages may not go waste. I delete the /home partition. Am about to create new /home partition in extended volume. I enter size 15GB for extended volume. Select /home and enter 4GB in the another screen presented to us. Ubuntu now has sized extended volume to 4GB. I am amused and confused. Partly irritated also. So I try repeat the steps and whatever size entered for the extended volume is given to /home and whatever given to /home is alloted to extended volume. Pathetic part is that other partition attempted is now treated as primary type. Primary I don't wanna waste. So am stuck. Darn! what do i do. Abort installation; Reboot.
11. This time I boot using SuSe DVD. SuSe identifies NTFS partition, ReiserFS partition (8GB) and ReiserFS partition(4GB). I delete that 4GB partition. I create extended volume worth 9GB. I create 'swap' partition worth 512MB; /home worth 4GB; / worth 7.8GB. I start installation. Clock is showing 0130 hrs. I am feeling sleepy. Installation is gonna take 4 hours. So I place lappy on table. I sleep. At around 0400 hrs I wake up to find SuSe installation is complete waiting for certain formalities me to furnish. Configured network, created users. Shutdown the machine. I fall asleep again. This time I wake up at 0715 hrs.
12. Back in office, on booting the machine we find that SuSe has replaced Ubuntu's grub in MBR. So Ubuntu needs reinstallation. Reboot in XP mode. Created an NTFS partition (compressed files and folder) worth 4GB in extended volume. Reboot.
13. Ubuntu fresh installation starts. When it came to partition, this time things got aligned quite well. Rest of the available space on primary partion was dedicated to / for ubuntu. Rest of the space on extended was dedicated to /home. And swap was detected to be swap by ubuntu again. The only scary part was that ubuntu reformatted swap during its installation. Grub entries are once again prepared by ubuntu and it replaces SuSe's variant by its own. It identifies SuSe, XP installations and adds them to boot list. Reboot.
14. Booted first in XP. Its working. No probs with partitions. Rebooted in SuSe. It is using partitions alloted to it properly. Home, swap is working fine. Rebooted in Ubuntu. Ubuntu is okay too. Using the same swap partition properly. Thought #2 strikes. Why the hell we didn't share /home between SuSe and Ubuntu. To be continued...

Sharing /home activity is scheduled for this weekend. The only disappointing issue is about the on board graphics support. ATI RS200 (IGP 340M) is giving problem when it comes to acceleration. So all the GL goodies are running quite slow. Yeah, certain solutions have been found but, now, applying them is next in schedule.

BTW, The Bourne Supremacy makes a good movie to watch. You know from whom to borrow the VCD, right? And whom should you thank for this?