hi
so i am a noob to linux but not computers in general and have decided i want to give linux a go. because i like to make things hard for myself and because someone told me i wouldnt be able to figure it out iv decided to try arch
so iinstalled it last night and it installed fine and i got it working up ntil the point were i would have installed gnome or kde. i stooped shy of htis because i was not able to install it without partitioning my entire drive and erasing my osx install so i knew i would have to go back and start again anyway.
so osx is back installed and updated and everything back to how it was. now i want to install arch so it dosnt erase my osx install and i can choose on startup which os to use(refit is installed already)
so here are the steps to do this according to the arch wiki, the steps assume that you have already put a fresh install of osx one the machine(i have) and that you have partitioned your hardrive (i have 32gb for linux)
so the next step is described here
Quote:
Boot the Arch install CD and run parted
# parted
Delete the empty space partition and partition the space as you would for any other installation.
Note that MBR is limited to 4 primary partitions (including the efi partition).
That leaves 2 primary partitions for arch. One strategy is to have a system and home partition, and use a swap file (I haven't tried to use logical partitions).
Another is to dedicate one partition to a shared partition (see below).
At this point, if you are dual booting, you should reboot your computer and have rEFIt fix the partition tables on your hard drive. (If you don't do this, you may have to reinstall GRUB later on in order to have your Mac recognize the Linux partition.) When you are into the rEFIt menu, select update partition table, then press Y
now i dont know how to use parted, i tried, it seems fairly straightforward but i really dont know what im doing so my first question is how do i create the necessary partitions using parted without affecting the partition that osx is on?
once that is done the next step is to begin the installation and everything is fine until i get to the prepare harddrives section. in the original installation i did i used the first automatic option which worked fine but it deletes the entire drive
so according to the wiki to prevent this i need to use the ]set filesystems and mount points step but i dont understand what i have to do here or how to do it and the wiki isnt very straightforward
Quote:
Manually configure block devices, filesystems and mountpoints
In this menu all recognized partitions are listed. On top of these you can create new filesystems. You should be aware of three things:
All of this is just a model, everything will only be set up after you confirm.
Not all blockdevices support all filesystems (Eg you cannot put an LVM volumegroup on something other then a LVM physical volume). The installer will automatically filter the list of possible filesystems and even select the one automatically for you if there's only one option.
Some filesystems will cause new blockdevices to be created. This is the case for dm_crypt and lvm volumes. You will see them appear in the model and you can use them to put another filesystem on top of it.
When asked for (optional) options to mkfs tools, pass arguments which will literally be added when calling mkfs. For example, to disable the journal on ext filesystems:
don't do: ^has_journal
but rather: -O ^has_journal
When filesystems setup is complete, you can select 'Done'. At this point a check will be run which will tell you any critical errors (such as no root filesystem) and/or give you some warnings which you may ignore (like no swap). If anything is found, you can go back to fix these issues, or continue at which point everything will be setup the way you asked.
For example, if you want a setup that uses LVM on top of dm_crypt, you would:
make sure that you have a 2 partitions: a small one for the unencrypted boot (about 100M) and one for the rest of the (encrypted) system. (do this in "Manually partition hard drives")
on your /dev/sdX1, make an ext2 filesystem with mountpoint /boot
on your /dev/sdX2, make a dm_crypt volume, with label sdX2crypt (or whatever you want)
/dev/mapper/sdX2crypt will appear. Put a LVM physical volume on this
/dev/mapper/sdX2crypt+ appears. This is the representation of the physical volume. Put a volumegroup on this, with label cryptpool (or whatever you want)
/dev/mapper/cryptpool appears. On this volumegroup you are able to put multiple logical volumes. Make 2:
one with size 5G: label this cryptroot
one with size 10G: label this crypthome
2 new volumes appear:
/dev/mapper/cryptpool-cryptroot: on this blockdevice, you can put your root filesystem, with mountpoint /.
/dev/mapper/cryptpool-crypthome is the blockdevice on which you can put the filesystem with mountpoint /home.
If you want swapspace, make a logical volume for swap and put a swap volume on it.
That's it! If you select 'done' it should process the model and create your disk setup the way you specified. The cool part is that you can pick relatively small values for your volumes to start with, and if you need more space later you can grow the logical volume and the filesystem on top of it.
if someone is able to explain those two steps to me i would be eternally gratefull, stuff with commands and terminal i can ussually figure out but when it comes to the workings of the hard drive at that level i just dont have the knowledge to figure it out for myself
thanks, i know arch isnt for beginners but i want to give it a shot and learn as much as i can
mark
