Dual Boot Win 10 & Manjaro - Sony Vaio TT Laptop MBR

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1

Hi,

Hope someone can please advise regarding installing Manjaro to dual boot with Win 10 on my old Sony Vaio VGN-TT laptop.

I shrunk Windows ‘C’ partition to have free space to install Manjaro.

In Manjaro installer, in Partitions section, when I try to use the free space for Manjaro install, get message that I can’t have more than 4 primary partitions, so, created extended partition…

I would prefer to avoid doing this if possible.

Here’s output from parted -l in terminal:

Model: ATA PLEXTOR PX-128M5 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 128GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: msdos Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
1      1049kB  11.0GB  11.0GB  primary  ntfs         msftres
2      11.0GB  11.1GB  105MB   primary  ntfs         boot
3      11.1GB  89.8GB  78.7GB  primary  ntfs
4      128GB   128GB   502MB   primary  ntfs         msftres

Number 1 above is shown in installer partition table as ‘Windows Recovery Partition’.

Number 2 as ‘Windows 10’.

Number 3 as ‘sda3’.

Number 4 as ’ sda4’.

Not listed in table above are two ‘Free Space’ items shown in installer ‘Partitions’:

Name             File System     Mount Point          Size

Free Space     unknown                                      35.1 GiB

Free Space    unknown                                        1.4 MiB

Would it be OK to delete ‘sda4’ and combine that space with the 35.1GiB free space as a new primary partition to install Manjaro in?

Or is it better to do something else ?

Thank you.

Mark

2

:+1: That’s exactly what can be done for an easy installation. You only need one partition to install Manjaro in BIOS mode. Only, consider using a swap file then later-on.

You should place the bootloader into MBR. After executing

sudo update-grub

in your freshly installed Manjaro OS you can boot into Windoze from your grub menu. If your grub menu is not appearing you might need to modifiy the /etc/default/grub file a bit, but one step after another, see here:

3

THANKS for your help, Wollie!

Will do as you suggest.

If any further questions, will post again.

4

Deleted ‘sda4’…

Now in ‘Create Partition’ screen…

‘File System’ is selected as ‘ext4’ which makes sense.

Next is ‘Mount Point’, which shows ‘(no mount point’) now.

What mount point should I select ? ( /, /boot, /home, etc…)

Thanks!

5
6

Thanks for the link, linux-aarhus, but that guide is aimed at UEFI systems…

If I follow the partition instructions, after creating the swap partition, and clicking on ‘Create’ button again, I get the you already have 4 primary partitions message. This message is why I posted my original post…

Also, since I have 8GB RAM, do I really need a swap partition?

So, given situation, I can just create a root partition and call it good, correct?

If I can just use ‘/’ mount point, would I need to check any of the boxes under heading ‘Flags’ ?

Thanks!

7

Correct - it was initially targeted efi boot but has been amended with info where mbr and uefi differ.

You don’t need to bother with the flags - but for info the flags primarily sets different partition type UUIDs e.g. 0x8304 for x86_64 root and 0x8302 for /home. Those flags make the partitions discoverable by systemd without entries in fstab.

8

@ArchiMark, don’t follow that link, it’s not much helpful in your case!

Simply, use the manual partitioning mode in Calamares to let it format your / partition and make sure the bootloader is placed in MBR, that’s all what you need to consider. I have done exactly the same when first installing Manjaro as dual boot with Windoze and still use this install.

Only /

No, you can use a swap file as indicated already. Not having swap would be possible but not recommendable.

No, you don’t need any flags for the / partition.

9

Got Manjaro installed and running now…and Win 10 boots up OK too.

THANK YOU, Wollie and linux-aarhus for your help!

Greatly appreciate it!

Mark

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