Dual boot: Windows XP & openSuSE 10.2

Introduction:

By popular request I have finally sat down and actually completed this guide. At the end of this guide you will have a system that is dual booting Windows, just about any version will work, and Novell’s openSuSE 10.2. I have not tested on VISTA so do so at your own risk!

Disclaimer: testmy.net and its mods are not responsible for any damage to hardware, software, systems, or bodily harm if you decided to attempt this. I strongly recommend that you attempt this only if you are confident in your computer skills and have some time to troubleshoot.

Background:

So what is Linux? Basically it is an Operating System, much like Windows, that is Open Source. So what is Open Source? This is a more complex question but what it comes down to, basically, is that the physical code is not owned by anyone. This means that everyone is free to develop on the platform. This is excellent because for every Windows application that you can think of there is a free alternative in the Linux world!

What will be covered in this guide:

Partitioning the hard drive to add a Linux Distribution
Installation of openSuSE 10.2
Basic configuration
Removal of dual boot

A few notes before we begin… For this guide I am installing Windows XP Home SP2 and openSuSE 10.2 onto a HP Pavilion ze4430 notebook. The notebook is running Microsoft Server 2003 Enterprise and VMWare, so that all of the pretty little pictures can be captured. Therefore my hardware configuration, in the screenshots, may look a little funny but that is because everything is being installed on a virtual machine.

Let's get started!

The first thing that you are going to want to do is defragment the hard drive. This is really important!
After the defragmenter is finished, download GParted from sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=115843&package_id=173828 . This is the partition utility that will be used to create the space for the Linux distribution. It is a Linux based Live CD so you are going to need to burn the ISO onto a CD.
After GParted is finished downloading, burn it to a CD. Make sure that you burn an ISO CD and not a Data one. The reason that it needs to be an ISO CD is because it needs to be bootable.
Once the burning process is finished, reboot your computer with the GParted CD in the CD-ROM drive. Make sure that the system shuts down/reboots cleanly! If it does not GParted will not allow you to resize the disk.
At this point you want to make sure that your CD-ROM drive is the default boot device! If this means going into the BIOS and modifying the boot order, than do it.
Once the CD loads, you will see a GRUB screen. It has about 10 or so different configurations listed for GParted. Select the first one, the default, and press Enter.

Now the kernel starts to load some of the scripts needed to run the Live CD. These scripts are being put into memory so that, at this point, nothing is happening to your hard drive.
Once the first batch of scripts are finished running, you will be prompted for a keyboard layout style. I used 41 which was the US layout. I entered 41 and pressed Enter.

The next prompt was for the language settings. By just pressing Enter US English will be loaded. At this point more scripts are being run and some hardware detection is run against the machine that you are going to partition.
A couple of minutes into this process you will see a bunch of [ ok ] lines. This is when the init script is being run. This is the Linux equal to Services in Windows. After everything has started you will see a pretty little screen with GParted launched. It functions almost exactly the same as the old Partition Magic.
So the first step is to resize your Windows Partition. You shouldn’t need more than 10GB for the Linux partition for starters. If you are planning on making a change to Linux you might want to give yourself a little more room for some additional applications and files. The standard installation, with KDE, runs about 2.5GB. For this guide I am using a 20GB disk which I am going to partition into 2x 10GB partitions one for Windows and one for openSuSE.
Now click the /dev/hda1 bar located at the top of the screen. This will activate the options for GParted. Click Resize/Move and then select a new size for your partition.

Once the new size has been created, click Apply. This will run the commands to create the two partitions! This is when changes are being made to your hard drive.
A status window will appear and show the number of operation needed to complete the request. To resize a partition it should not take too long. Mine took about 1 minute. After the operation was complete a Success screen was displayed. Now, Close was clicked. GParted rescanned the hard drive and you should see your new partition scheme on the graphic.

At this point you can quit GParted, GParted | Quit, then double click the Exit icon. Select Eject & Reboot.
The system should reboot and allow Windows to reload. Windows will run a consistency check, as the partition scheme has changed. After the check is completed Window will reboot one more time.
After the second reboot you should have a working Windows installation. Check the partition layout in Windows to make sure that it is seeing the correct thing. This can be done from Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Computer Management | Disk Management from the left panel. As you can see the 10GB partition for Windows is still ‘Healthy’ and there is a 9.84GB partition for openSuSE.

Now with the partition scheme setup, it is time to get ready for openSuSE. You can obtain the OS from opensuse.org/download. I would highly recommend the DVD version via Bit Torrent. This reduces the number pieces of media involved and the ISO is very well seeded. I was able to download it in about 60 minutes.
After the download is completed, burn the ISO to a DVD. Again make sure that you are burning an ISO disk and not a Data disk. After the image is done writing leave it in your computer and reboot.

A little side note… I am going to be using the DVD version of openSuSE. If you decide to use the CD-Rom version the only big difference is you will be prompted to complete a media check at the beginning of the installation. I would highly recommend it! Also during the installation, after the first disk, you will have to reboot the computer. Leave the CD-Rom in the CD tray and just let the computer do its thing. It should come back up and then prompt you for CD 2.

Again if you need to make BIOS changes to get the DVD to boot then make them. Once the computer comes back up you should see a pretty little screen saying Welcome in about 10 different languages. This is quickly followed by a boot loader. The default selection is Boot from Hard Disk. You have about 15-20 seconds before this happens. What you need to do is hit the down arrow until Installation is highlighted. Press Enter.

You will then see a progress bar that shows the progress of the Linux Kernel being loaded. This is followed by an openSuSE graphic that covers what is going on in the background. If you press ESC you can watch the scripts run as drivers are being loaded and some basic hardware detection is occurring.

Another little note.. I was unable to get YAST, the graphics configuration tool for openSuSE, to load with anything less than 256mb of memory. I am not sure if this is a VMWare issue or what. 256 should not be that big of an issue if you are installing this on a modern system.

Once YAST loads the first screen deals with Language. Select one and click Next.

After Language is the License agreement. Click ‘Yes, I Agree to the License Agreement’, then click Next.
The next step is to select the type of installation. The only thing that should be highlighted is New Installation. Click Next. At this time a windows will appear with a progress bar. What is happening is YAST is setting up an installation source, the DVD, to be used during the rest of the installation.

This is followed by the Time Zone setup. Select the correct time zone then click Next.
The next screen deals with what type of Desktop to install. I am a fan of KDE, so that I what I will be installing in this guide. However, others might like Gnome. There is no ‘better’ one. It is all personal preference. After you select which desktop to use click Next.
Now the meat of the installation. openSuSE should automatically detect the presence of the Windows partition and use the unpartitioned space for it’s partitions. Click Accept to start the installation.

You will be prompted to accept some of the packages EULAs and then asked to confirm the installation. Click Install.
The installation process begins with the formatting of the partitions needed then the files are installed. The entire process can take anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours depending on system speed

After all of the files have been copied over, you are going to need to enter a password for root. This is the equal to the administrator account in Windows with on huge difference! You don’t log onto your system as root! Let me repeat that, You don’t log onto your system as root! The entire security architecture is based around having privileges to files. So if you are surfing around the Internet and get some spyware or a virus, yes it is possible, guess what the virus you just got now has root privileges. This means that it has free reign over your system and is much more difficult to remove. So set the password and make sure that you remember it.

After you set the Root Password, it is time to configure the host name and domain. If you are part of a domain, which some of you might be, just enter the name. If not you can leave it as site and it will not hurt anything. However, for hostname come up with something really clever. If you plan to use DHCP leave the DHCP option clicked.

The next screen deals with the Network Configuration. For the most part you should be set to go. The firewall will be activated by default and the SSH, remote access via command line, will be closed. Also if you have more than one interface you are going to need to configure it if you plan to use it. If this additional interface is wireless then don’t worry too much about it as most of the wireless adaptors don’t work straight out of the box.

Once everything is setup the Network Configuration will be saved and the devices activated. The next screen asks if you would like to test your connection. I would highly suggest this! The latest release notes will be downloaded. You should receive a Success display if it worked or an error message with a log report if it didn’t. As long as you are using a DHCP setup there really isn’t any way you can screw this up.

After the connection has been tested, it was then time to set up the Online Update. Since this is open source, updates and newer version come out quite often. So it is always good to keep your computer updated with the latest version. Use the default selections and click Next. This process can take a little bit of time depending on your connection speed.

After the Online stuff is configured, the next screen displayed was regarding running the Online Update. I chose to skip it. This way I am sure that the OS is working correctly before any fixes are applied. At this point there will also be a window that appear, after you click Next, asking whether or not to install/configure Additional Installation Sources. These are like virtual copies of the actual OS. I would highly recommend using the default selection when the window appears and clicking Yes. Again this may take some time for the source to be installed, as it is pulling data from the Internet.

On a side note… While the additional Installation Source is being configured, it may seem like the Installation wizard has frozen. It hasn’t so don’t keep clicking Next, just wait, I know it is hard, for the next screen to show up.

Once the next screen shows up, User Authentication Method, leave the selection like it is and click Next.
Finally it is time to add a user to the new machine. This is going to be the user account that you log onto the machine with. Remember you never log on as root! So set up an account. I disabled Automatic Login. This way the user has to provide the password that is set. Also don’t click receive system mail… What this does is every time an event occurs, a program bits the dust, or just because, an internal mail is dispatched. Click Next and the user is created and the configuration is written.

After this the System Configuration files will be created which basically wraps up the installation portion. However, there are still a few more configuration things that need to be completed before the system is ready for use.
After the System Configuration files are completed, about 2 minutes, the Release Notes will be displayed. You can read though them or just click Next.
The final screen deals with the Hardware Configuration. When you first get to this screen is may blink, turn off, go back to the command line, or all of the above. This is normal as it is detecting your monitor and video card. I have never had a problem with YAST not detecting the best setting for my hardware in this area. Click Next and the installation is complete.

The final screen is just a Congratulations screen and ties up/cleans up the system for the first use. Once this process is finished the system will go back to the command line and run a few scripts to bring the system up to the user interactive level. In about 30 seconds you should see a login screen. Enter your credentials and press Enter.

At this point the system should load and you will be able to interact with it. The layout is very similar to XP/Windows in the fact that all of the programs are located in a ‘start’ menu type utility. Click the little lizard on the lower left and select Applications from the menu. This is where all of your applications live. Select Internet | Web Browser | Firefox and that will load Firefox for you.

Now reboot the system, by clicking the lizard and selecting Leave | Reboot Computer. Click Confirm on the alert window. This will bring the entire system down and you should, on the reboot see the dual boot

As you can see there are multiple options. My Windows partition with XP Home is labeled Windows and openSuSE is also on there. To change which partition boots use the up/down arrows and then press Enter.

Removal of Linux:

Many people think that the only way to remove Linux from a dual boot situation is to reformat you entire computer. While this may happen when something goes seriously wrong, if you followed the steps above you should have no problems removing the Linux partition and restoring Windows as the only operating system.

The first step is to place your Windows install CD into the CD-Rom drive and boot from it like you would if you were going to perform a new installation.
When the Welcome screen comes up, enter into the Recovery Console. Here you are going to select your installation, and then type fixmbr. This will fix the Master Boot Record and remove Grub/Lilo, the openSuSE boot manager.
Once this command is run you will be able to reboot and Windows will automatically load.
Once Windows is back up your can reformat the partition that you installed Linux on, using GParted or using the Computer Management utility located in Control Panel. Delete the logical drives that openSuSE created, then create a new drive or boot GParted back up and added the space to the original partition.

Conclusion:

Overall the experience of running Linux can be a challenging one. With so many of us use to the friendly, yet restricting, Microsoft world, the change can be a daunting one. However, you are now on step closer to make that change and arguably through the most difficult and time consuming part of making the switch.

So what is next? I would recommend just playing with the system for a few days to get the hang of where things are located and how the operating system reacts. It is important that you learn the system and not be “guided/taught” the OS. That being said I plan to release some type of how-to tutorial each week for pretty much the entire summer of 2007. As always feel free to post in the newly created Linux Help section or just drop me a PM. I have also attached a .pdf version of this guide. Feel free to print it and reference it when you are setting up your dual boot machine.

~Swimmer