Installing Windows & Linux on new T105

[Paul M. Dyer]

I agree with Jeff that you can can the Diagnostics partition and all others.  I think Dell creates these partitions to run short diagnotic tests at the factory.  I also think it is rather irresponsible to leave this stuff around for sysadmins of the world to worry about.

Paul

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeff Larsen" <jlar310 at gmail.com>
To: linux-poweredge at dell.com
Sent: Sunday, March 2, 2008 4:13:00 PM (GMT-0600) America/Chicago
Subject: Re: Installing Windows & Linux on new T105

On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 10:28 PM, Timothy Murphy <gayleard at eircom.net> wrote:
> The PowerEdge T105 I bought just arrived,
>  and I've been looking at the contents of the first disk with Knoppix.
>  The system was bought without operating system,
>  but I have installed a copy of Windows XP to look at the system.
>  I would like to install Windows and Fedora Linux.
>
>  The first had 3 partitions originally:
>  /dev/sda1 50MB,
>  /dev/sda2 2GB
>  /dev/sda3 Extended partition, the rest of the 80GB disk
>
>  As far as I can see, the first partition contains Dell utilities.
>  I assume that it is intended for some kind of repair or rescue?
>  Under Windows this first partition is not listed in My Computer

Yes, that's the Dell utility partition. It gets booted if you press a
certain F-key during BIOS startup. Otherwise, it is not generally
available to any installed OS.

>  The second partition seems to be a kind of vestigial operating system.
>  Windows describes it as "OS (C:)".
>  It contains files (or directories) System Vol, AUTOEXEC,
>  boot.ini, bootsect,dos, CONFIG.SYS, IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS,
>  NTDETECT, ntdir, pagefile.scp .

Was this a used machine? If you bought new from Dell with no OS, I am
surprised at this. Though, your install of XP may have insisted on
putting some boot files on that partition.

>  Windows was installed on /dev/sda5, or LOCAL DISK (E:) according to Windows.
>
>  I want to know if I can safely delete /dev/sda2
>  or else copy it to the second 250GB disk?
>  Could I also move /dev/sda1 to the second disk?
>  Or must it remain where it is?

If you move the utility partition (sda1), I seriously doubt that the
BIOS would be able to boot it when you press the designated F-key.

>  Assuming /dev/sda1 must remain where it is,
>  I would like to delete /dev/sda2 and /dev/sda3,
>  and create 30GB Windows partition at /dev/sda2,
>  100MB Linux /boot partition at /dev/sda3,
>  and 30GB Linux / at /dev/sda5 .
>
>  Can I do that?
>  In particular can I safely delete of copy /dev/sda2?

Yes, if you intend to install your own operating system(s), you can
reconfigure the disk any way you like. In fact, I tend to delete the
Dell utility partition as well. I don't think there is much on it that
can not be replicated by downloading a diagnostic CD image from Dell
support. It may also have some bootstrap programs for assisting with
installing 'supported' operating systems, but that's not essential
either.

_______________________________________________
Linux-PowerEdge mailing list
Linux-PowerEdge at dell.com
http://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge
Please read the FAQ at http://lists.us.dell.com/faq