Debian & Ubuntu EMC

[pepperwood]

Have been working on a Dual HDD system using XP on the Master HDD & Debian & Ubuntu together on the secondary HDD.

This will be considered a new boot job, I guess you'd call it. One HD will be for XP and the other devoted to Debian & Ubuntu EMC. Just a newbie at this. Downloaded the Ubuntu 6.06, I believe it is, on CD. Also have the 4.51 version of Debian EMC.

So far have been able to install & boot XP on the Master HDD using NTFS File system. No big deal!

Have tried to install Debian & Ubuntu EMC on the secondary HDD. Debian EMC will install nicely to a partition. Ubuntu EMC comes along fine until I get to the partitioning section for it. It seems that Ubuntu requires reformatting the whole enchollata (HDD) after partitioning, stating that formatting will remove all the information on the HDD?? And it does remove Debian everytime.

I heard of others that are able to partition the HDD and use both the Debian & Ubuntu EMC. My guess is that I'm missing something?

Your assistance concerning this matter would be very much appreciated. Just an old senior newbie when it comes to Linux but I think you folks will be able to help. So go ahead and give me an early Christmas Present. Thank you very much & Merry Christmas to you all. Tis the season to be jolly!

Best wishes,
Pete

[cyclestart]

Hi Pete

I did something similar yesterday on my test rig. See the last post http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=49052
coincidence or not?

Most of my criticisms of BDI 4.51 relate to it's quality as a distribution. I haven't tested it's qualities as a machine control. Sarge is at the end of it's life cycle and is now oldstable, meaning official support ends in April. BDI is noticably "snappier" than Ubuntu, probably due to careful package selection by the developer.

It would make more sense to install Ubuntu before BDI. The BDI installer is much more versatile. Also more dangerous unfortunately. If you need a tool resize partitions this is fantastic http://www.partedmagic.com/.

You already have some linux knowledge so I won't go step-by-step. Here's how I did it with an existing Ubuntu install;
- Resized the existing Ubuntu
-deleted the swap
-created a new partition for BDI
-created a new swap partition at the end of the disk
-installed BDI on the new partition . Placed GRUB in root NOT MBR
- edited the fstab in Ubuntu to find the new swap
- edited /boot/grub/menu.lst in Ubuntu to chainload BDI

Now there may be a simpler way to do this. If the Ubuntu installer can be directed to a specific partition, just create the partitions before doing anything else. I can't remember if emc2 disk has this capability.

edit/
Pete
If old senior newbie means "an old guy who has reached senior newbie status" we're on equal footing.
Otoh if it means "senior citizen and new linux user" much of the above post is probably bafflegab. Let me know what parts give difficulty.