dual booting - accessible partition resizers and some other questions

[Willem van der Walt]

> So I could do that from my ubuntu 7.04 livecd?
yes.
> 
> > > Do I need to run a disk defrag or something?
> > yes, to make sure you have your blank space at the end of the win
> > partition.
> 
> So that is done before or after the resizing?
Before the resizing.

> And do I run defrag in linux or windows?
in Windows.
> If its in linux, what tool can do this?
I do not really know of a tool that can do this, but what might be an 
option is to create a file that fills up the win partition and then 
afterwards delete it again.
Do a df -h on the mounted partition to see more or less how much free 
space is available and then use a command like:
dd if=/dev/zero of=bigfile count=1000M to create a 1 gb file.
Then simply rm bigfile.
I am not sure how much it would actually help with defragmentation, but I 
often use it when I want to compress a image of a partition.
By the way, if you have another linux box connected over a local ethernet 
or so with enough space, you can first image the windows partition into a 
file on the other box for a backup.
> 

> > >
> > > Once resizing is done then how do I tell linux to install to its own new
> > > partition and make a swap and leave windows alone?
> > Run the linux installer.  I have never worked with a Linux installer that
> > distroys things without asking you.
> > What most does, is to tell you about the empty space on the disk and then
> > suggest that it will install itself there.
> 
> Good!
> So do I select manually do the partitions?
> Or automatically handle them?
> (in the installer)
I think you should be safe to select automaticly handle them, just read 
any questions the system might ask you to make sure that things will 
happen as you want. If you are asked no questions, the installer had 
enough info to do the correct thing by itself.
The correct thing is not to remove the windows partition without asking.
 > 
> > Its up to you, but Ubuntu is easier for accessibility.
> Is its repo as big as debian's?
I have never had any problems.  Ubuntu is a debian-based distribution, so 
I would think so.
I have found some packages in the Ubuntu repo which I could not find for 
Debian.

> 
> > You might afterwards want to change your /boot/grub/grub.lst file to
> > change the timeout setting, but after the install you would normally get a
> > grub menu from where you can press enter for linux and down-arrow then
> > enter for Windows.
> 
> Good. Do you mean menu.lst?
> Or is that for something else?
These things differ, but yes, I ment menu.lst.
I quickly checked on an Ubuntu box and there is also a file called 
grub.conf where the timeout setting can be changed.  menu.lst is the 
generic grub filename.
 > 
> http://members.iinet.net.au/~ddalton/
> d.dalton at iinet.net.au
> 
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