The difference between windows partition and linux partition

Your first question is "My machine has 16G, and I have a C drive with 4G, and two D and E drives with 6G each." I still want to keep the C drive

Windows, can I install Linux on the D drive or E drive? Haha, very good. You know that Linux is an operating system. You may want to get rid of Windows, but unfortunately your understanding of hard disks and partitions is wrong.

The next article will talk about hard disk partitioning.

OK, let’s talk about hard disk partitioning. Before talking about this issue, let me first talk about conceptual issues. What are conceptual issues? Do you still remember the first time, the absolute first time you heard the A: disk, B: disk, C disk?

Before that, I may have known that computers have a place to store data, because I saw tape drives on TV or in advertisements. A silly girl operating a tape device in front of a tape cabinet that seems to be garbage now will continue to become the default background of TV stations playing computer-themed programs

or hard drives image. But you don’t have a concept of how computers use these devices until you type dir a: for the first time or open explorer and see the directory tree with the words A: C: . If you still remember how it felt then, congratulations, it's back.

For ordinary people, they only need to know what computers can do, so for them, the simpler something

is, the better, and the less time they need to learn and understand. The better, so computers have evolved from punch-holes to keyboard screens, and now they are developing in the direction of voice input and intelligent interaction. This is good, and allows those who use computers as tools to focus more on their work (of course, they will pay us, the builders of computers, for this) due remuneration). It can be said that MS has done a good job in this regard, and no one will deny that Windows is a very "easy-to-use" operating system. This means that from a user's perspective, you don't need too much

to understand the knowledge inside the chassis, or in other words, you don't need to understand it as much as possible, so that the computer can work for you as quickly as possible

< p>Make. For example, the originally complicated hard disk can be transformed into something like C: D: E: drive through its intermediate operations, so that a secretary who only needs to be able to type can also know how to store files. (Of course there are also some who are hopelessly stupid). But one problem with this approach (MS takes care of everything for you) is also obvious: you have no chance, or no forced chance, to understand deeper knowledge. And when you only know "C: D: E:" in your mind, you have no choice but to follow Windows.

OK, let’s get down to business. Hard disk partition problem when installing Linux. This is an issue that every newbie to Linux, even those with a certain level of proficiency, dare not explain clearly or master (including myself). The hard disk

is a very weird thing. Its basic temperament is that if it is not messed up at all, a large piece of data will be lost, and

it will be lost completely. I've seen more than once someone's thesis or something like that get lost three days before the defense due to a hard drive problem and no backup! When installing Linux, you have to deal with the very low-level parts of the hard disk. It is not as safe as installing a program under win. So my first suggestion is that if there is important data on the hard disk, it is best not to install Linux rashly. A better way is to find an unimportant machine

The hard disk can be repartitioned and formatted, install Linux several times, and experiment with windows and

linux** *Various situations that exist. This way, I will have peace of mind in the future. If you really want to install it, be sure to

back up important data. Remember.

Let’s talk about Linux’s concept of hard drives. Only consider IDE hard drives. The operation of a hard disk is divided into many

layers. What we need to know is that the hard disk is composed of many 512-byte sectors. These sectors will be organized into "partitions". These are the same for every operating system. On top of this, each operating system manages its own partitions. For Windows, it will format these partitions and manage them as CDE disks. But Linux is different. Therefore, it is completely possible to divide a hard disk into multiple partitions and install multiple operating systems such as Windows, Linux, Solaris, etc. However, since

each operating system operates the partition differently, we can only install the operating system into the partition but not install the operating system into the CDE disk (UMSDOS method). Not to mention).

The 0th sector of each hard disk is a special sector and does not belong to any partition. It stores two things

: The first is a small program, which is run by the computer when it starts up. This program is usually brought with an operating system

A startup program, which after running will start an operating system or give the user the option to start an operating system. Windows' sector 0 boot program is very simple. It just starts Windows. So before this, you didn't have the concept of multiple operating systems being stored on one hard disk. Linux

comes with a startup program that allows you to choose which operating system to boot. It is called lilo. This is something we

will encounter frequently in the future. Sector 0 also stores another important data: partition information. As mentioned before,

The hard disk is partitioned, so how is it divided? This information exists in sector 0. The partition rules of the hard disk

are as follows: all sectors of a partition must be continuous. The hard disk can have up to four partitions, and these four partitions can be four primary partitions. Or three primary partitions plus one extended partition. In the extended partition, you can

continue to divide it into logical partitions. For example, a 10G hard disk with Windows installed has three disks: C: D: E:

. Then its partition situation can be as follows:

Partition 1: Primary partition 4G, formatted as C: drive

Partition 2: Extended partition 4G The extended partition cannot be formatted, it Can only be repartitioned into logical partitions

The remaining space (can be occupied by partitions three and four) 2G

In the extended partition, create two logical partitions of 2G each, format For D:E: drive.

So what does it look like in Linux? Note that I mentioned that partitions are the same for any operating system. Although Linux does not recognize C D E disks, these partitions are the same. So Linux

Looking down, it is also partition one, partition two and so on. But its signs and interpretations of these partitions are different.

Under Linux, the hard disk is a device. In fact, everything under Linux is a device. For IDE hard disks, Linux believes that there are four devices, corresponding to the devices connected to the four locations of the IDE. If you have installed the machine

We know that there are two slots on the motherboard, IDE0 and IDE1. Each slot can hold two devices, the master disk and the slave

disk. These disks can It can be a hard drive or a CD-ROM drive. So what does Linux think of these devices? Under

Linux, these devices are designated by /dev/hdx. The main disk on IDE0 is /dev/hda, the slave disk is

hdb, and so on. If there can be multiple IDE slots, it can be extended to hde hdf, etc. In short, every device connected to the hard disk

line is considered by Linux to be a /dev/hdx device.

If your machine is on the IDE0 slot and the main disk is a hard disk, then it is hda. If the main disk on the IDE1 slot is an optical drive, then it is hdc.

Under Windows, fdisk operates on "hard disk 1" and "hard disk 2", while under Linux, fdisk operates on /dev/hda, /dev/hdb, etc. Perform operations. This is very flexible and intuitive, isn't it?

So how do you view partitions under Linux? The concept of partitioning under Linux is that each partition on the hard disk is also a device (here it comes again). Their logo is /dev/hdxy, where the hdx root indicates which hard disk

is in front, and y indicates which partition. Take hda as an example. hda1 is the first partition, and hda4 is the fourth partition location.

The logical partition starts from hda5. So in the example just now, Linux seems to have hda

10G. hda1 is the primary partition and the format is windows. hda2 is an extended partition, hda5 and hda6 are drawn on it, and the format is windows. hda still has 2G of remaining space to continue creating hda3 and hda4. Note that because

the hda2 space has been divided, no more logical partitions can be created.

It is easy to get confused about these hard disks. It is recommended to practice more and summarize more. You can refer to some relevant books

. Early DOS books talked about some in the installation section. There are also many Linux installation parts now. In addition

There are also some introductory materials on the Internet.

Understand how Linux handles partitions. The next step is the partitioning strategy. When booting from the RH6.2 CD, press Enter and select the default settings to reach a partition interface. Here you need to tell the linux installation program where to install linux on the hard disk. You need to tell it some information, including creating a new Linux partition, how big it is, and where to mount it. Here we need to introduce the concept of mount.

We know that a hard disk can be divided into many partitions, and each partition is formatted by each operating system and then

can be used. But there has to be a way to use it. The approach for Windows or DOS is to mount (or mount) the formatted partition into the C: D: E: drive. The allocation of drive letters is determined by the operating system

(it can be specified by the user after arriving in NT). How to use a certain partition under Linux must be specified by the user.

Under Linux, partitions are not allocated according to C: D: E, but are mounted to a directory. The storage space structure of the entire UNIX

is a directory tree (rather than each C: D: E: having its own directory tree).

The top level is the root directory (indicated by /, note that it is not the backslash of Windows). There are other directories below the root

. First, you need to mount a partition as /, then create other directories under the root and mount the partition

to these directories. So overall, a Unix storage system is a directory tree, but

it can include many partitions and even other storage devices, such as optical drives, memory disks, or network disks

etc. .

In addition to /, there are several directories that are pre-created during Linux installation. What we need to know are

/usr, /home and /root. Regardless of what they do, generally speaking, we need to allocate a space, specify it as the Linux Native type, and then the mount point is one of these directories.

In addition

It should be noted that there are two types of Linux partitions. Native is the one that can store files and create directories.

There is also a linux swap, which is the memory swap of Linux. Partition, you must specify one when installing RH

. Therefore, during installation, you need to divide at least one partition, type linux native, mount to /

, and then a partition type linux swap, the swap area does not mount to any directory, the system performs it

Handle separately.

The next issue is the partition size. Generally speaking, 1G space is / when installing Linux. For the first installation,

For convenience, you can create a 2G partition with the mount point as /. Then a swap. The size of swap

Just make it as big as the memory, the maximum is 128M. When installing in the future, you can create other partitions to mount such as /home according to your own requirements for the hard disk

.

For machines that have Windows installed, you can delete a Windows partition in the Linux installation program

Generally speaking, it is a logical partition (you do not want to delete C: disk), and then create a Linux partition in its space.

Linux's / can be a primary partition or a logical partition. But what needs to be paid attention to is the problem of 8G. I miss you

Maybe you have heard of 8G. What is 8G? The specific problem is more complicated. To put it simply, the / partition of Linux

cannot be mounted to a partition of a hard disk larger than 8G. So if your hard drive has 16G, the first 6G has

been allocated to the C: drive, and there are two 5G D: E: drives in the back. I wonder, you have to delete the D drive partition and create a Linux partition< /p>

area instead of E drive, because E drive is already 8G or later. There is no problem installing Linux after 8G, but it cannot be started.

Of course, there is a solution to this, but as a novice, I still recommend following the simplest situation as much as possible, and then practice other things when you are familiar with it in the future.

After partitioning and continuing the installation, you will also be asked to configure some other things. Including root password, Lilo,

Configuring network, X and other things. Lilo is an important part of it. You will be asked to install lilo to

MBR, partition boot sector, or a floppy disk. You need to choose whether to install on MBR or

floppy. Generally speaking, it can be installed on the MBR. To be on the safe side, it can be done on a floppy disk. In this way, the machine can be booted from the hard disk or Windows. When entering Linux, it can be booted from the floppy disk. Note that you need to turn off Virus Warning in

BIOS, otherwise it will not be installed on the MBR.

If your machine configuration is relatively standard, and the network card, sound card, display card, etc. can be automatically detected,

Press Enter all the way, and then start up and you can enter Linux. If you are unlucky (most of the time) the network card

It doesn’t matter if the sound card is not configured at startup. Just like Windows, you can configure it again in the future. In short, these

will not affect your installation.

OK, the machine restarts. The difference is that Starting MS Windows 98 is not seen....

It is a Lilo: prompt. This shows that Lilo has been installed normally. You can now press Enter to enter

Linux. If you want to enter Windows, you can type DOS and press Enter. If you specified a different

windows partition boot identifier, use the [TAB] key to see what your options are.

This is a question that is often asked, let me talk about it here.

For some reason you want to delete Linux, you

know to boot from a DOS disk and then fdisk to delete the Linux partition or reinstall NT to delete the Linux partition. But

windows cannot start after you have installed everything. The Lilo: symbol is always there, and the machine

seems dead. No matter repartitioning or formatting is useless. Then someone with half a bottle of vinegar may tell you "It's hopeless, just keep it low". Remember, unless the hardware is damaged, the hard disk never needs to be downgraded. This situation is

Because other installation programs do not rewrite sector 0, that is, lilo caused by MBR cannot be deleted. The solution is very simple

Please keep it in mind: boot from a DOS disk and run DOS fdisk /MBR. This command is to rewrite the boot program of sector 0 into a standard MS program, which can start DOS, Windows, WindowsNT,

Windows 2000 without changing the hard disk. Partition any other information. So it's absolutely safe

absolutely safe, absolutely safe. When you encounter Lilo that cannot be deleted, remember to fdisk

/MBR.

OK, you have successfully started Linux and entered a graphical or character interface asking to log in. You'll

have tons of questions to ask when you get down there. Next I will talk about how to ask questions and how to find help.

"Doctor, I feel pain, tell me what to do"

"Don't worry, tell me where it hurts first"

"Oh, where The pain is different. I have a stomachache. Please tell me what to do. I'm very anxious."

"Don't be anxious. Tell me what you did yesterday."

"Why does it have anything to do with what I did yesterday? I did what I do every day yesterday. I think it's normal. Why don't you tell me what to do? If you don't want to say it, don't say it."

"Don't worry, think about it again, what did you do yesterday that was different from usual?"

"Different? There are many differences. I didn't take the bus to work yesterday. Yes, no one called me in the morning, which is weird..."

"That's not it, I'm asking you about eating, exercise, etc."

" Oh, this, I ate dumplings last night, they were delicious."

"Oh, how many dumplings did I eat?"

"Well, more than 80, I guess. Oh, by the way, my stomach hurts at night, and it continues to this day."

"Oh, you must have eaten too much."

The above is an article written by Teacher BOB in my memory. If you think this is a joke, I experience it almost

every day. A person will first ask "What's wrong with my Linux, what should I do?"

At the end, he will ask questions step by step until the answer is revealed. You will encounter a lot of questions when you come down, and you don't know where to find the answers. Do you think that the Internet is full of masters? You think that masters will know what problems you have as soon as you get there.

He knows everything and will tell you a "trick" to solve your problem in one go. So you

don’t need to say anything more, just add a “no content” content to the one-sentence title. Just wait for the master to give you the "perfect move".

It’s a pity that such a thing has never happened.

As mentioned before, Linux has many new concepts

compared to the Windows system that you may be familiar with. It's like calculus to someone who only knows simple algebra. In this case, it is obviously difficult for you to use your own thinking to get the answer. To give an example, the graphical interface X configuration under Linux has always been a question that novices must ask. You have installed Linux but the screen is 300X200,

16 colors, and you want to know what to do.

From the experience gained from Windows, you think there should be a way to find a menu like "Display Properties" and change the resolution, color depth, or even scanning frequency

That’s it. So your question is probably "My Menu

", and then you can change the screen resolution just like in Windows. What's

wrong here? What's wrong is that X under Linux is not windows, and its display resolution is not adjusted in the graphical interface at all, but before entering X. More importantly, it can be changed to a higher resolution. The prerequisite for the rate

is that the display card driver must be configured. And this is related to the release and version of Linux.

There are so many situations you don’t know, and experts definitely don’t have any “tricks” to tell you. Contrast the previous joke

There are many causes of abdominal distension. If patients can all know and judge it, what use is the doctor

?

So what should you do when you have a problem? First, it’s best not to ask questions. Linux installation

Configuration itself is a learning process. Solving a problem by yourself may be much slower than others telling you

but solving the problem itself will help you deepen your knowledge. Understanding of Linux concepts. At the same time, in order to understand

Solving one problem may bring up many other problems. I remember that when I first learned Linux, I installed Linux and win98 many times on a

broken machine, and finally understood the Linux partition DOS partition ***storage,

Lilo There are many problems with the configuration. Of course, it takes too much time to explore some key areas by yourself and is meaningless. More communication can also achieve the effect of everyone improving together. I will talk about how to take the initiative to find answers to questions

I will talk about it later, but here we assume that you need to go to the BBS to ask a question that you cannot solve.

You have encountered a problem. Lilo does not start, it displays 010101 or LI crashes, or you don’t know why.

Your X screen is only 300X200, or you don’t know how to configure the network card, or you don’t know why. Do you know why the cd /usr/src/linux;make config mentioned in the book returns an error message, or compiles a test program

gcc -o test test.c and then runs test There is no output. You are at a loss. You want to go online

ask "prawns" to get the answer.

The first point when asking questions is to understand that two words can explain the problem and solve the problem.

A hero may behave very coolly. But when you ask questions, you can only show ignorance,

Just like the patient who said "I am in pain". You must describe several issues in detail: what do you have, what have you done, what results do you hope to achieve, what problems have you discovered, and the specific problem description

narrate. For example, if your network is unavailable, you need to first tell us what Linux release and version you have, how you installed it, how you configured the network, down to the specific commands, your network conditions, and the LAN width.

Domain network, etc. You may talk a lot of nonsense, but you must understand that you are here to ask a question, and you will not know exactly

where the problem lies, so you must say everything you can think of that is related to the problem. It is possible to include

the specific problem areas. You are not a hero here, and it has nothing to do with whether you are cool or not. Our goal

is to solve your problems and improve ourselves by solving them, nothing else.

The second point is not to make any judgments yourself. It's like the one who thinks that Linux should also be rooted in Windows.

There is a place where you can right-click and get "Display Properties".

You define your own questions in advance based on your

experience on other systems and limit the possibilities for answering the questions to a small range.

Doing so not only limits your own thinking, but also affects your ability to correctly describe the problem. The fact is that most of your mistakes

are conceptual errors, and you are going in the wrong direction at the beginning. Instead of doing this, it is better to put aside the specious things that you understand

and study carefully. Write those questions clearly (what do you have, what have you done...) and see how others will judge.

The third point is that you are here to ask questions and you think you should be helped. Wait a minute, teachers are no longer here to answer questions. You are no longer a college student who has the right to receive education. The person answering the questions is no longer your

teacher or teaching assistant. They have no responsibility to you. Everyone is just communicating with each other and improving together in one place.

If someone answers you, they are definitely trying to help others and help you. And when no one answers your question

, it is probably because your description is not detailed enough. Others are not doctors, so there is no need to ask questions

one by one. So when your question is not answered, first refer to the previous point and then modify the description of the question. This is also a thinking process. If it doesn’t work, just rely on your own efforts and read the article below.

I think an important role of Linux is to cultivate people's ability to explore on their own. Think back to our learning process, from primary school to university. There are too few environments for people to explore on their own. All questions

have a standard answer, either from the teacher or in a reference book. Even something as unquantifiable as a composition

has an unfortunate "central idea." The so-called "self-study" is nothing more than guessing what the standard answer is. If you want to do a larger class project, it will also be defined in great detail.

The teacher would like to block up all the details that you can create by yourself, so that it will be easier for him to mark the papers. People who have been educated in such an environment will often feel at a loss when they come to Linux - indeed, there is no standard answer from the teacher. Only you know whether you are doing the right thing or not. .

So when learning Linux, it is very important to have the ability to search for knowledge yourself and break through the limitations of your own thinking

. When encountering a problem, the first step is not to think "Who has the standard answer" and then ask others, but to first think "How can I

solve it?" If not, then find a solution yourself, and then consider this solution. Why can't I figure out the solution?

What direction should I go in when encountering similar problems in the future? Finally, consider whether you can make improvements in this direction. After experiencing this many times, people's creativity will be greatly improved

And for people who rely on technology to make a living, this is the difference between 100,000 and 2,000.

OK, you have a problem and you don’t know how to solve it. How do you find the answer and how do you improve yourself

? When you have a question, you must first think about it, you are a novice, there have been countless novices before you, so you are not a special novice. The only difference is that your knowledge is different from others, not how special your problem is. For example, you have a D-LINK 220 network card that cannot be configured and you feel confused. The actual situation is that many people have been confused. They have asked this question and got the answer. So

your first step should be to understand that "this question has been asked by someone like me and the answer is

somewhere."

So, how to find the answer? On BBS, you can go to the Linux version and think "There is already an answer

, where is it?" First of all, you can find it in previous articles. This can be done by searching the title.

First think about what keywords you would use as the title if you wanted to ask this question, and then search for this keyword.

To search on the BBS, enter the number ? and then enter the keyword and press Enter. It is very important to use keywords in the search.

For example, if you are looking for information about the DLINK 530-TX card, then you have to think about what others will ask. I'm sure the title

contains the network card model, but how would others write it? Maybe 530TX, maybe 530 TX, maybe

530-TX. So it definitely includes 530, so you can search for the keyword 530, and then read all the searched articles, and you will basically have the answer. Similar searchable questions include DE, especially

220, 810 (Intel 810 motherboard built-in graphics driver), etc.

In fact, BBS is just a small place, and the latest and most complete knowledge is on the Internet. Almost all

Linux-related programs and frequently asked questions will be compiled and posted online. It should be noted that, first,

Linux is not Microsoft, there is a specialized company that maintains documentation. Linux documentation is available everywhere, of varying quality, and as Linux continues to be upgraded, there will be various versions. For example, IPMASQ is updated quickly with the Linux kernel

upgrade version, so its help (faq) is also frequently updated. Reading old faqs will make you more

confused. So when looking for a document, don't blindly follow it when you see it. Make sure it is actually useful. Maybe what you found is an old version? You must know that some articles about Linux were written 5 or 6 years ago, when CDROM was still a rare commodity. You want to get information about how to install Linux using CDROM, but you find that they are all about Why

installing with a floppy disk is not good. In addition, some documents about kernel compilation all talk about make

config, and the options in it are also very old. In fact, now the kernel compilation uses the menu-based make

menuconfig. . Therefore, the newness of the document is something that needs to be paid attention to. The second point is that you cannot escape using

English, you must force yourself to understand English documents. There are indeed Chinese documents, but the common problem with those is lack of maintenance and being too old.

Come down and please write this URL on the back of your hand: www.google.com. If you have questions about Linux in the future,

just search it above. Google is the best search engine I know, especially when it comes to Linux knowledge.

I can find almost anything I want to know, from network card drivers to parallel computer configurations. I hope

you will search here before asking questions in the future. The main skill in searching is to choose the correct keywords. Refer to

As mentioned earlier, it is best to enter the words Linux 530 driver when searching for the 530-TX driver. About search techniques

If I have time, I can write something alone.