Partitioning & Installation
 

Hey guys please help me. I am broke and exhausted.

I have reinstalled Linux Mint 17 Qiana Cinnamon three times in a month now. I tried to customize according to my needs by finding information on Google. The result was B[lack]SOD, and some error messages that are Greek & Latin to me. And again my system is dead now.

Now I am starting all over again. The fourth re-installation of LM17!

Kindly help me.

I want to install Linux Mint 17 Qiana Cinnamon on my Samsung RV509, i3, 3GB RAM, 300GB HDD Laptop for dual booting with Windows 7.

I already have;

1. A Primary partition of 50 GB for Windows.
2. Another Primary partition of ntfs with 150 GB for keeping Documents, Photos and other files of me/our [family].

My problems/requirements [they are a bit too much or nasty I suppose]

1. I want to create another primary partition of 20 GB preferably in ntfs file system, for the Documents, Photos and other files of my children that they create in LM 17, such that they should have access to that partition without requiring the admin password.

2. An Extended Partition of 56 GB, comprising of;

a] 30 GB for '/root'.

b] 20 GB for '/home'.

c] 6 GB for 'swap'.

3. I would like to keep the remaining space as unallocated, like a 'pool' in such a place and in such a way that I could add to it and take from it the required 'disk-space' to and from all the other drives.

I tried to do these things in the 'Terminal', 'Gparted', 'Disks' and during Installation with Live USB and even on windows with 'Mini Partition Tool' but my efforts went in vain. It was really nerve wreaking for me.

Are the things possible at all?

Or should I cut down my requirements?

I would greatly appreciate any help in this regard.

Thank you & regards.

Anil

NTFS data partitions don't have to be primary, but shouldn't matter.

Mint17 should install easily, but we can't help if you don't provide real data; show us what you did, and what happened. All error messages. From a Linux liveCD run this and post all the ouput

I doubt this is possible. Partitions cannot dip into a pool of unallocated space anywhere on the drive. If there is a single sector of unallocated space, the adjacent partition to the left can be expanded by reducing the empty space. An adjacent partition to the right can also be expanded into the empty space to the left, but if there are files on that partition, it may result in lost data. Your best bet would be to make each partition the maximum size you think it may need to be in the future. I also recommend that you consider using an external hard-drive to store files. That way, you would not need to worry about partitions filling up. And the children would not need the password to access the drive.

syg00

Thanks for coming.

Here below is the output;

Model: ATA SAMSUNG HM321HI (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 320GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32.3kB 53.7GB 53.7GB primary ntfs boot
53.7GB 53.7GB 689kB Free Space
2 53.7GB 215GB 161GB primary ntfs
3 215GB 236GB 21.5GB primary ext4
236GB 238GB 2245MB Free Space
4 238GB 320GB 81.6GB extended
5 238GB 249GB 10.7GB logical ext4
6 249GB 260GB 10.7GB logical ext4
7 260GB 281GB 21.5GB logical ext4
8 281GB 314GB 32.2GB logical ext4
9 314GB 320GB 6445MB logical linux-swap(v1)
320GB 320GB 352kB Free Space

During my earlier two Installation attempts, I did only three logical partitions i.e. root, swap & home. Then everytime my children logged on they would require the admin pswrd if they had to open some file placed in the '150 gb ntfs primary partition-Local disk'. Then in order to avoid that I tried to change the permissions of that drive and also do some other things in the terminal mentioned on google that hinted at changing the fstab. And all of a sudden the system blacked out and refused to boot.

Then during the second install, I found that I had to change the mount points. I tried to that in the Gparted & Disks. But then again the system started presenting an error during startup that said 'Continue to wait; or Press S to skip mounting or M for manual recovery'. And I waited for 30-40 minutes twice but nothing happened and the issue of me giving the admin pswrd remained. Then I thought, I would create two different admin user accounts and give other users the passwrd of one account. But the very purpose of keeping the admin status away from everyone is nullified. I tried to get arroud that with help of Terminal with suggestions found on the web and I don't know what happened really; to my surprise I was not able to 'open as root'. So I gave a restart and the system blacked out.

I re-installed again. This time I went through the Linux Filesystem Hierarchy and decided I should create two new logical partitions namely:- /home/<my son's user name> and /home/<my daughter's user name>. I did that and installed. I created the user accounts with the same names that I had given to partitions. However I could not logon into those accounts.

So I then felt that I really need to take some guidance on the forum, before installing again. I want do a fresh install. I would be very greatful, if you could guide me through solving my issues mentioned in my first post.

I need a seperate partition, preferably a primary ntfs partition for my children, and they should be able to access that without the need for the admin passwrd. And I would like to keep an unallocated space as a reserve pool like a savings bank account where I would be able to 'add free space collected from other partitions and/or I would give extra space to other partitions from this pool'. Can this be accomplished?

Please do the needful.

Thanks & Regards

Anil

Randicus Draco Albus,

Thanks for the concern.

I understand there are some limitations in maintaining a pool like that.

So then I would compromise on that and be happy with whatever is possible regarding that.

However is it not possible to create a 'primary ntfs drive', that is accessible to all the users without the need for admin psswrd?

Thanks

Anil

This is a case where sudo can be used for the purpose it was designed for. I believe Mint uses Ubuntu's system of sudo abuse, so you would not need to enable it. It already is. All you need to do is create a user account for the children and give them sudo access to only the storage partition. They would their user password, not root's.

Do you mean adding other users to the sudo group? Will they be able to access 'any' partition by giving their own user passwords?

Can they be restricted to get access to only a particular partition?

If so, what I need to do ? And what is the command that they need to enter in the terminal? Will that mount the partition and give access?

Can these things be accomplished by using any GUI?

Thank you

Anil

I do not use sudo, so am not very knowledgeable about configuring it. What I do know is that is not only possible to give individual users root privilege for specific applications or processes, that is actually its purpose. It involves editing the sudoers file. Man pages and an internet search should provide the details.

Oh! I am afraid of going by unspecified mentions on the internet, after all that I went through. I think I would wait some more for help on my specific issue and specific guidance.

Thanks

Anil

Can you please reiterate what you require (or think you require)

Clear and concise please

Part of the skill of searching is learning where to look and where not to look. Examples of information sources that can be trusted are your distribution's documentation and sites like The Linux Documentations project. Joe Blow's blog is an example of where not to look. As well, man sudo has 611 lines of (technical) information. It may or may not be difficult to understand, but worth a look.

You don't need to create one partition for each user, but simply a /home partition that will keep the users' configurations and files.

Regarding the common partition for files and documents, you can perfectly create it in NTFS (like you said you wanted to do in your first post), create the mount point for it inside /mnt (something like /mnt/data, /mnt/shared, or any other name you want for the mount point) and edit /etc/fstab in order to have it mounted automatically at boot and ready to access for users in your system.

Keep in mind though that NTFS doesn't support permissions, so if you need some directories to be inaccessible for some users you won't be able to accomplish this using NTFS. In this case you'd either need to create two data partitions (one for you and other for your children), or use ext4 instead of NTFS. The downside of using ext4 is that Windows won't be able to read it. Do you need the data to be accessible from your Windows install too?

Regarding ext4 via windows


I've had success with http://www.ext2fsd.com/

Personally i'd only use for read, performance may not be great, but it 'works'

Thanks for coming Firerat,

My main requirement is; I want to have a Primary-partition that can be accessed by Standard-users, mounted already when logged in, without requiring the admin password, where they can store their files.

Regards

Anil

It can be accomplished by adding a line at the end of /etc/fstab for that particular partition. In my case, I have this for my NTFS partition (in which I save my data):

You'd need to change the bits in red to use your partition's UUID, the mount point you create for it and the file system used by the partition.

edit: forgot to mention that Mint might use device names of the '/dev/sdX' type instead of UUIDs. In that case you'd need the device name of this partition.