how to set up linux as dual boot with windows? i mean the advance partiton method, well ive setup xubuntu?

Question

ive setup xubuntu as dual booting with xp but im bit confused as did do it right as some times i cannot get commands to work right , either i get a no usr or no path in terminal
this how i setup my dual boot

my harddisc is 80GB so i partioned 40GB for windows leaving 40GB free(where i set up linux)

i did as follows:
100mb as boot(primary/begining),
2000mb as swap,(logical)
15000mb as / (logical)and
15000 as home(logical) and yes i let the reamaing space free
and everything else as usual and its sure installed ok but when i use terminal and type commands i get no usr path or other things like no directory path

i see that most articles on this subject just say / and swap with no home or boot partitions and say do the rest installation and some says ,/. home/,swap and install

so im bit confused as whether im doing right or wrong so i need any professional linux user help in this and please be detail as i cant find a solid proof method of installing linux

regarding terminal ,commands i have no problem executing the sudo or get apt or any other commands , it when i execute commands like sudo root dir or any other commands that is used to change or modify root or directory files. i getsimply cannot find path or no directory exists or no permission
so i hope any linux guru here will giude me with step by step giude to installing linuc the correct way and pssibly tell why am i getting this problems,
for your information i used Xubuntu12.04LTS ,and i ve trie almost most distro out there but i still have these problem in all of them.

so please help , your answer is much apreciated

Answer 1

Linux partitioning varies a great deal with every user depending on how they will use the system: server, multiuser, high security, etc. Your partitioning system will work. You might run into disk space problems depending on how you use your system.

As you say "i see that most articles on this subject just say / and swap with no home or boot partitions and say do the rest installation and some says ,/. home/,swap and install": The minimum partitions that you need are / and swap; separate /home and /boot are o.k. but not required. /boot is useful for higher security. /home is useful for re-installations. You can reinstall linux with the old /home and keep all your personal files without having to reinstall them.

You have done it right. Depending on your use for your system you could have a different partitioning system. I personally use / swap and /home partitions.

I suspect your problem with commands is that you do not have the required directories listed in your PATH. I realize that is obtuse linux speak. The best that I could suggest is that you research how to set up and change the environment variables in linux. In your case, to fix the problem of 'path not found" you will have to edit the PATH variable. It would probably be best to do that from the command line.

The first link explains how to use environment variables and the second link how to change the PATH variable. You can google for "linux evironment variable" or "linux evnironment variable path" and get a lot of hits that explain how to set the variables.

The third link is an excellent source for many linux tutorials. Lowfatlinux (the first link) is also an excellent source for tutorials.

You can contact me through Yahoo answers for any follow up questions.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

40Gb sounds kind of small for a modern system, though probably still OK. df will tell you how much is used.

I would not bother myself with multiple partitions in that little space, just swap and /

You can add swapspace using a file, though a partition is slightly faster.

With more space, often I have /home separate as then you can reinstall or update and leave /home alone.



There is no "correct way" - everyone has their own ideas. RedHat seems to favour virtual disks and volume management, which are better for very big systems.



I don't understand your problems. If you've got everything partitioned and installed and you can boot the system and get a command prompt, that's most of the work apart from getting the network and sound system running. I assume you are in runlevel 3 (no graphics) otherwise you'd get a graphical login with Gnome or KDE.



I may have seen those kind of errors on a bad disk, now that I think about it, but not on a brand-new install - the install would surely have failed.

"mount" will show all mounted partitions and filesystems

"df" will show free space in all mounted partitions

"fsck" will check a filesystem for errors.

Usually you can boot an install disk in rescue mode, then check the hard disk and mount it and solve many problems, at least with Fedora/CENTOS etc.

Answer 3

as you are using a debian based system then there is / and swap



redhat based systems use /, /home and swap



there is really no need to do any manual partitioning as it will be done on install,



concerning sudo, this is a software package installed on some linux distro's,

but not all (i do not have sudo on my linux)



instead i have su with its own password - independent from my user password,

my / and root are not locked by default (i have read/write access to everything by using a root terminal)



and to the user that said 40gb is small - not in my opinion,

i have a 12gb / that uses 8gb, 4gb swap which i don't actually need at all because i have enough ram to never use swap, so its a waste of space,

swap is only needed if there is not enough ram - its not essential,

documents and pics do not take a lot of space, music and vids do - but there are cd's and dvd's for them, maybe an external storage drive,

so no need for a large /home (or integrated home as with ubuntu)



so i would suggest a clean install of one of the linux distro's, leaving all settings at default and installing grub to the mbr (remembering not to remove windows),

grub should automagically add windows to its boot menu giving you the choice of both,

if it doesn't then its easy to fix

Answer 4

twin boot is a important determination and the Linux installer promises this function and does each and all of the puzzling paintings for it. extra helpful may well be to acquire the stay cd version of a distribution offering this. this could do what you pronounced. it may additionally be used to run a twin boot or finished Linux deploy in case you like it.

Answer 5

There is this DIABOLICAL progamme called SUPER GRUB, which you load with a Boot Disk, and it finds all your Operating Systems, and gives you the option of choosing which one you want to boot into.



It's like... it's not supposed to be THAT easy...!