On 09/24/2012 10:25 AM, Robbie Smith wrote:

Managed to get it all up and running, and added to the Laptops which run Arch thread on the forums. Should I add a section on the wiki on the steps I used? I haven't got an account there yet, but I guess it wouldn't hurt to have one.

Yes, get an account and update the wiki. The wiki is one of the best among all distros precisely because people take the time to add information like this to it. The wiki is mediawiki, so syntax is simple with many good references to go by. Arch uses some helpful macros (ie. {{Note|blah blah}} and {{Warning| blah blah}} ) that really help emphasize the critical info. Good work on the HP box. Nothing worse than hardware that is impossible to use the way you want to... -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.

On 19/09/12 07:02, Guus Snijders wrote:

2012/9/18 Robbie Smith :

...

Hi everyone

TL;DR: I've just bought a new HP Pavilion g6-2103ax, and I'm having difficulties trying to figure out how I can dual-boot it with Windows 7 (which was preinstalled).

Windows *still* defaults to using MBR partitions, and even though the system is UEFI, HP have used some trickery somewhere to make it boot from BIOS. To make matters worse, the disk table already has four partitions:

SYSTEM: 199 MB NTFS Windows C drive: ~ 450 GB NTFS HP Recovery partition: 18.5 GB NTFS HP_TOOLS: 99 MB FAT32 [...]

Hmm, i'd guess that the recovery partition is bootable, so it's best not to modify it too much. The HP_Tools partition is probably just a data partition (and not a very interesting one, but ymmv). First of; do you have (or can you create) a recovery disk in case all goes wrong?

There might be a way to repartition the drive without losing features:

1. Resize the Windows "C" partition to free up space. Either defragment first or use windows's diskpart utitility. 2. move (don't delete!) the recovery partition next to the resized Windows partition. Now the tricky part: 3. either create an image of the tools partition or write down the *exact* sectors it's using and the partition type number. 4. create a new extended partition in the free space, size: all available. 5a. create a logical partition using the type and sectors written down at step 3 OR 5b. create a logical partition of the same type and size as written down at step 3 and restore the image to this part. 6. If you used step 5a, move this (new!) logical partition to the beginning of the free space. This is important for Windows drive letters (not sure). 7. Use the rest of the extended partition to create your Linux partitions.

I'm not sure where the bootloader fits in best in the scenario, but that shouldn't be too hard.

When you boot up Windows after all this, you might want to delete the driveletters it will probably create for the Linux partitions to avoid accidentally formatting them ;).

Hope that helps. Note: this is just theoretical. It might work or it might not work...

mvg, Gus

I can delete the recovery partition, as I've got the "recovery" (AKA factory reset) disks from HP under warranty. The HP_TOOLS partition is at the end of the disk, so in theory I can't add an extended partition before it, as extended partitions are meant to be the last in the table. Although on this Samsung netbook I've got an extended partition as the third (marked with *) of four primaries, so it seems to work: # parted GNU Parted 3.1 Using /dev/sda Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands. (parted) p Model: ATA Hitachi HTS54323 (scsi) Disk /dev/sda: 320GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: msdos Disk Flags: Number Start End Size Type File system Flags 1 1049kB 106MB 105MB primary ntfs 2 106MB 98.9GB 98.8GB primary ntfs * 3 98.9GB 303GB 205GB extended * 5 98.9GB 233GB 134GB logical ntfs * 6 233GB 233GB 57.5MB logical ext2 boot * 7 233GB 303GB 70.0GB logical lvm 4 303GB 320GB 16.6GB primary ntfs diag Using that as a guide I could set up the new laptop in a similar way. It's a shame HP and Microsoft made it so difficult, and after this little episode I'm beginning to suspect that the real reason Microsoft is pushing Secure Boot is because UEFI+GPT makes it much easier to install multiple operating systems on a machine without conflicts, but Secure Boot will require an authorised and signed key, and guess who will control the key distribution…

2012/9/19 Robbie Smith :

On 19/09/12 07:02, Guus Snijders wrote:

...

2012/9/18 Robbie Smith :

...

Hi everyone

TL;DR: I've just bought a new HP Pavilion g6-2103ax, and I'm having difficulties trying to figure out how I can dual-boot it with Windows 7 (which was preinstalled).

Windows *still* defaults to using MBR partitions, and even though the system is UEFI, HP have used some trickery somewhere to make it boot from BIOS. To make matters worse, the disk table already has four partitions:

SYSTEM: 199 MB NTFS Windows C drive: ~ 450 GB NTFS HP Recovery partition: 18.5 GB NTFS HP_TOOLS: 99 MB FAT32

[...]

Hmm, i'd guess that the recovery partition is bootable, so it's best not to modify it too much. The HP_Tools partition is probably just a data partition (and not a very interesting one, but ymmv). First of; do you have (or can you create) a recovery disk in case all goes wrong?

[moving and deleting partitions]

...

I'm not sure where the bootloader fits in best in the scenario, but that shouldn't be too hard.

[...] I can delete the recovery partition, as I've got the "recovery" (AKA factory reset) disks from HP under warranty. The HP_TOOLS partition is at the end of the disk, so in theory I can't add an extended partition before it, as extended partitions are meant to be the last in the table. Although on this Samsung netbook I've got an extended partition as the third (marked with *) of four primaries, so it seems to work: [...] Using that as a guide I could set up the new laptop in a similar way.

Indeed. In fact an extended partition is just a "special" primary partition. In theory a single (MBR) harddisk could just as easily have 4 extended partitions.

It's a shame HP and Microsoft made it so difficult, and after this little episode I'm beginning to suspect that the real reason Microsoft is pushing Secure Boot is because UEFI+GPT makes it much easier to install multiple operating systems on a machine without conflicts, but Secure Boot will require an authorised and signed key, and guess who will control the key distribution…

I'm still not entirely sure what the real benefits of GPT are, but that's another discussion. That they made a it a bit more difficult; no argument there. I guess they assume users never touch the partition table anyway. As for secure boot: Redhead/Fedora were working (or perhaps already having) a secure bootloader. It would't be too hard to install that and use it to boot ArchLinux. ;) mvg, Guus