Help on Fedora install on T60 leaving HPA intact

[moosport]

I have a T60 with the HPA intact and WIN XP installed just like from factory.

I like to keep the HPA area intact. I want to install Fedora Core 6 with Xen on the remaining disk space outside of HPA.

Finally, have WIN XP install from the Rescue and Recovery disks that I had made.

Has anyone tried this method before?

My alternative solution is to install VMware and install both Fedora and XP as guest OS.

My least favorite option is to dual boot Fedora and XP.

The reason is I want to be able to host multiple instances of OS on the machine. At the same time, I want to maintain the ability to restore it to factory settings.

Any information are welcome. Thanks!

[pjain]

I have a T60 with the HPA intact and WIN XP installed just like from factory.

I like to keep the HPA area intact. I want to install Fedora Core 6 with Xen on the remaining disk space outside of HPA.

Finally, have WIN XP install from the Rescue and Recovery disks that I had made.

Has anyone tried this method before?

My alternative solution is to install VMware and install both Fedora and XP as guest OS.

My least favorite option is to dual boot Fedora and XP.

The reason is I want to be able to host multiple instances of OS on the machine. At the same time, I want to maintain the ability to restore it to factory settings.

Any information are welcome. Thanks!

Correct me if I'm wrong but it sounds like you want to keep the HPA intact, and use the remaining hard drive for Fedora (7, I presume) with Xen. I'm not sure if your question is primarily asking for steps related to partitioning your drive to install Fedora or is it around configuring Xen. Can you please clarify.

[moosport]

Correct me if I'm wrong but it sounds like you want to keep the HPA intact, and use the remaining hard drive for Fedora (7, I presume) with Xen. I'm not sure if your question is primarily asking for steps related to partitioning your drive to install Fedora or is it around configuring Xen. Can you please clarify.[/quote]

there is 2 things I like to know. if I were to delete the XP partition and install Xen. would I be able to reinstall the XP as a guest OS using the recovery disks without losing the Xen?

[Volker]

Sorry for being pedantic, but I just want to point out that the T60 does not have a HPA. It sports a Rescue&Recovery partition, which is an ordinary partition. Just don't delete it

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Rescue_and_Recovery

[whizkid]

Yes, keep your R&R partition. Also, to keep the ThinkVantage button working at startup, be sure you don't overwrite the MBR. Make a copy of that and put it in a safe place, or many safe places.

You will not be able to use your recovery media to install to a guest OS. The virtual machine doesn't look like a ThinkPad, so the installer will refuse to work.

[moosport]

Yes, keep your R&R partition. Also, to keep the ThinkVantage button working at startup, be sure you don't overwrite the MBR. Make a copy of that and put it in a safe place, or many safe places.

You will not be able to use your recovery media to install to a guest OS. The virtual machine doesn't look like a ThinkPad, so the installer will refuse to work.

So I just have to install everything in the 2nd partition and install GRUB in 2nd partition.

Will IBM provide a copy of the Win XP? I believe there is a cost associated with it?

[whizkid]

You can make your own R&R media.

You'll also need to modify the boot.ini file, which will allow XP to boot Linux.

[moosport]

You can make your own R&R media.

You'll also need to modify the boot.ini file, which will allow XP to boot Linux.

I intend to host XP as a guest OS not the other way around.

[pjain]

You can make your own R&R media.

You'll also need to modify the boot.ini file, which will allow XP to boot Linux.

I intend to host XP as a guest OS not the other way around.

As whizkid noted previously, I am 99% sure you will not be able to install Windows XP as a guest OS in Vmware or Xen or any other virtual machine because the R&R discs look for specific ThinkPad hardware. There's no way that I've heard of, where you can emulate ThinkPad hardware in the VM. What I've done in the past is use Windows 2000 discs to install into a VM or you can pay M$ another bounty and go buy a boxed version of XP to install.

VMWare recently came out with a cool tool that will take an existing Windows XP installation and turn it into a VMWare VM. I did this with my XP partition and it works like a charm under Ubuntu (host). The only problem is memory. I need to get at least another 2GB RAM into this T60 to be able to run XP under a VM. It's unusable with 1GB RAM.

[moosport]

I intend to host XP as a guest OS not the other way around.

As whizkid noted previously, I am 99% sure you will not be able to install Windows XP as a guest OS in Vmware or Xen or any other virtual machine because the R&R discs look for specific ThinkPad hardware. There's no way that I've heard of, where you can emulate ThinkPad hardware in the VM. What I've done in the past is use Windows 2000 discs to install into a VM or you can pay M$ another bounty and go buy a boxed version of XP to install.

VMWare recently came out with a cool tool that will take an existing Windows XP installation and turn it into a VMWare VM. I did this with my XP partition and it works like a charm under Ubuntu (host). The only problem is memory. I need to get at least another 2GB RAM into this T60 to be able to run XP under a VM. It's unusable with 1GB RAM.

Can you explain to me how did you install Ubuntu, VMware and how you convert the existing installed XP onto VMware?

I have 2 GB of memory and do intend to upgrade to 3GB. I have no problem getting another copy of XP to run in virtual environment.

I just like to be able to return to factory specs if needed.

[pjain]

As whizkid noted previously, I am 99% sure you will not be able to install Windows XP as a guest OS in Vmware or Xen or any other virtual machine because the R&R discs look for specific ThinkPad hardware. There's no way that I've heard of, where you can emulate ThinkPad hardware in the VM. What I've done in the past is use Windows 2000 discs to install into a VM or you can pay M$ another bounty and go buy a boxed version of XP to install.

VMWare recently came out with a cool tool that will take an existing Windows XP installation and turn it into a VMWare VM. I did this with my XP partition and it works like a charm under Ubuntu (host). The only problem is memory. I need to get at least another 2GB RAM into this T60 to be able to run XP under a VM. It's unusable with 1GB RAM.

Can you explain to me how did you install Ubuntu, VMware and how you convert the existing installed XP onto VMware?

I have 2 GB of memory and do intend to upgrade to 3GB. I have no problem getting another copy of XP to run in virtual environment.

I just like to be able to return to factory specs if needed.

I did this back in November 2006 so I'm going off my rusty memory. Apologies in advance if I forgot something.


1) Boot up into R&R
2) Resize your hard drive to create a Primary Partition that is on the front of the disk and size it to 15 or 20GB, depending on your requirements for Windows XP (I would go as small as possible).
3) Go through the R&R process (a reboot might be required after creating the partitions).
4) Use R&R to install Windows XP back onto the Primary Partition (multiple reboots are required). I would suggest NOT to install anything other than the base operating system. Avoid all ThinkPad specific items.
5) Once XP is installed, boot up into it, download your updates and configure it to your liking.
6) Go to http://www.vmware.com/download/ and download the VMWare Converter and the VMWare Player or VMWare Server (for Linux). Using VMWare Player gives limited functionality and you'll need to use other third party tools to create virtual disks for other VMs. There are plenty of resources on the Web on how to do this. However, if you're only planning to run XP in a VM, then Player is enough. Otherwise, you might want to consider Server.
7) Install the VMWare Converter, launch it and go through converting your XP install into a VMWare VM (make sure you have plenty of disk space or an external disk to write the VM to).
8) Boot off Fedora 7 or Ubuntu 7.04 LiveCDs and install Linux on the free partition(s). Make sure you don't write to the XP or hidden partition.
8a) I created multiple partitions to use with Linux but you can create only one if you feel it's sufficient. I have /home, /, and /data defined on different partitions of different sizes. There are many reasons to do this but it's not really important on a laptop. I just did it so that I can mount my /home drive on any other possible linux distros I might install.
9) Once your Linux install is completed, login, configure, and update it.
10) Install VMWare Server or Player and go through the config for your specific distro. There might be additional packages on Fedora or Ubuntu that you need to install like the linux development headers.
11) After VMPlayer/Server is installed, you'll have to reboot so that the module gets loaded into the kernel.
12) Launch the player/server and copy your XP VM from the external drive onto the appropriate place on your Linux filesystem and there you go. XP running under Linux.

Let me know how it goes and if I left out anything.
Cheers

[moosport]

Thanks for the detail instructions. Have you ever tried using Xen?

I'll give both a try and see how it turns out. I'll report back when I'm done.

BTW, I just realized that your T60 setup is the same as mine except for the memory.

[egalvan]

[]
.
8a) I created multiple partitions to use with Linux but you can create only one if you feel it's sufficient. I have /home, /, and /data defined on different partitions of different sizes. There are many reasons to do this but it's not really important on a laptop. I just did it so that I can mount my /home drive on any other possible linux distros I might install.

Cheers

Could you post your partition map? Mount points & sizes?

I'm playing with dual-booting xp & feisty, and want to see what others are using. I'm trying to optimize disk usage.

I want to have a separate /home to be able to save my info if (when) I change distros.
I also run a separate /date, and have it mounted in xp using the excellent "Ext2 for Windows" driver.
http://www.fs-driver.org/

I run a t60p, with 120g drive.

thanks

[pjain]

Thanks for the detail instructions. Have you ever tried using Xen?

I played with Xen under Fedora Core 5 and briefly Fedora Core 6. I can't say i really used it for anything more than just running it because most of my VMs were created under VMWare.

[pjain]

Could you post your partition map? Mount points & sizes?

I'm playing with dual-booting xp & feisty, and want to see what others are using. I'm trying to optimize disk usage.

I want to have a separate /home to be able to save my info if (when) I change distros.
I also run a separate /date, and have it mounted in xp using the excellent "Ext2 for Windows" driver.
http://www.fs-driver.org/

I run a t60p, with 120g drive.

thanks

I'm running the T60 with a 120g hd so I hope this space allocation helps.

sda3 is the R&R partition.
Mountpoints:

Code: Select all

Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda8             62816648  18832972  40792768  32% /
/dev/sda7             15116836  14228064    120868 100% /home
/dev/sda1             15354328  13955924   1398404  91% /media/windows
/dev/sda5             15116836   7725988   6622944  54% /data

and partition map

Code: Select all

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        1912    15354328+   7  HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2            1913       14008    97161120    5  Extended
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda3           14009       14593     4694760   12  Compaq diagnostics
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda5            1913        3824    15358108+  83  Linux
/dev/sda6            3825        4151     2626596   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7            4152        6063    15358108+  83  Linux
/dev/sda8   *        6064       14008    63818181   83  Linux

[moosport]

Maybe I'm missing something here. When I go into R&R using the F11 key, I was unable to find the option to delete and create a new primary partition. I'm using R&R version 4.0

[pjain]

Maybe I'm missing something here. When I go into R&R using the F11 key, I was unable to find the option to delete and create a new primary partition. I'm using R&R version 4.0

As I mentioned, I was going off my memory from last November. It's possible that I used Windows XP itself to resize the partition and then boot up into R&R to reinstall XP to the smaller partition. Sorry, I can't remember fully. However, I can't see why using Windows XP to delete and create a new partition would be a problem.

Anyone else have any thoughts?

[moosport]

I used Gparted to resize the partition but I could not get it down to smaller than 40 GB. There are files located near the 40GB borderline.

Delete the partition and the R&R partition was deleted as a result. So I placed a call to Lenovo this morning to get the Recovery Disk.
It should be here in the next few days.

[egalvan]

Could you post your partition map? Mount points & sizes?

I run a t60p, with 120g drive.

thanks

I'm running the T60 with a 120g hd so I hope this space allocation helps.

EXCELLENT!!

Thanks for the information! It will help a LOT!


ErnestG