Installing /root and /home on the same partition
For : Mepis Linux
by : je.saist
| Installing Mepis is simple and straight forward, but there
are many types of installations that can be accomplished with a Linux
Operating System. This guide looks at the process of putting the /root and /home partitions on the same partition. The simplest reason to do this is space. If you have a small hard-drive there may not be the space to put a seperate /root and /home section. However, it must be stated that this is a risky type of installation. Problems that can affect the /root partition may damage or erase user data. Upgrading or changing data in the /root segment may cause the /home data to become unreachable or worse. 1: The first step is to click on the Install Me icon on the Mepis LiveCD  2: From here we have the Mepis OS Center and some of the tools for the Mepis version of Linux. Click on Install MEPIS on Hard Drive  3: At this point we should see the Mepis Linux Copyright. Click Next  4: We should now have up our primary installation screen. Currently the dot here is place on the Custom Install.  5: Click on Run QTParted  6: It may take a few moments for QTParted to load. We currently see three drives listed here. Our hard-drive, our CD, and the little flash drive from AMD. Currently our primary hard-drive is a little empty. Take note of the lower Left-Hand corner. This is where your drive information is located at. Currently this is a Samsun Hard-drive with about 30 gigs of space.  7: Right Click on the /dev/hda-1 You should have a Menu come up with Property and Create. Left Click on Create  8: The box before us is the parition creation dialog. Currently QTParted is set to format the entire drive as ext3. What we want to do is leave most everything here alone and shink the size of the partition just a bit. We can do that by changing the number in the Percent of unallocated space box.  9: Lets change that number to 95, which will leave 5% of the drive free. Once the amount is changed, Click OK.  10: We should now have our primary drive and some free space left over.  11: Right Click on the Free Space and select Create  12: Click the down arrow next to Partition type Left click on Linux-swap  13: Click OK and our Linux swap file is created.  14: And should now show in the right hand table.]  15: Hit the Commit icon in the upper left hand corner, it looks like a floppy.  16: Click Yes to format the drive.  17: When QTParted finishes, Click OK, then exit the program.  18: The Mepis install should bring us back to where we can select Auto-Install or Custom. Select Custom Install and click next.  19: We need to make sure that our selections are as follows:
Once that is accomplished, Click Next  20: Mepis will now ask if it can create the /root partition. Click Yes  21: Mepis will now ask if it can create the /swap partition. Click Yes  23: Visit Sluggy Freelance while you are waiting.  24: Eventually Mepis will ask about the Grub Bootloader. You can do a couple of things here. If everything works under Kernel 2.6, you might want to have Mepis install 2.6 only. It saves some space and simplifies the bootloader. Do make sure that Grub is installed in the MBR And also make sure that the system boot disk is HDA  25: Click Yes to install the bootloader  26: Click OK when the message comes up that Grub has installed fine. If it doesn't install... well, use the browser to get online and post a message containing the exact error.  27: Fill out the Username and Password. New to recent versions of Mepis is the requirement to specify a password. Mepis will not allow you to continue if no password is set. Click Next when the passwords have been entered.  28: Fill in with the network information. If you are not planning on running Mepis on a Local Area Network, you do not have to fill these in. If you do intend to run multiple computers on a network, make sure the Computer Name is different on each one. Click Next  29: This is where you can set services to turn on when the system boots up. Since this system uses XGI's volari, the option to install an accelerated driver isn't currently present. Although the Volari is an excellent choice for a Linux box. Click Next  30: If you have a non US keyboard, or want to change the system time, this can be done so from this dialog box. Click Next  31: Alright, Click Finish  32: And Click Yes to /reboot  Take me back to the Installation Blitz Take me back to the Guides  |