The Linux Distro Thread (maybe)

[ej-solutions]

Thought I'd start this one off, rather than continue on another thread.

As a quick catch up for others:

Have a look at Unetbootin, as a means to try out different versions of Linux, without producing numerous coasters (unwanted CDs).
I haven't tried the method of installing to hard drive, only the USB flash drive method (so far).

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[otherego]

Thanks for that, EJ. I've transferred all my files and things to an external hard drive just in case, and will now clear some space for the new partition and give it a go.

You're right about lubricating the cogs, though - a quick trip to the 'fridge first, I think.

[ej-solutions]

Otherego: just as a point of clarity....
As a starting point, I decided to try resizing a partition using gparted within a hard disc installed Linux (Mint 6). due to the partitions being 'live' they were locked and unable to be manipulated, hence the live-CD/live-USB method.

[In the past (on UNIX SVR4), I've managed to relocate partitions/mount points from a command prompt on the live system. That was quite some time ago, though and the above seemed slightly easier to cope with. I'm sure someone else would come up with another method.]

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[otherego]

I'm still at a stage where "command line" tends to mean "google," followed by "cut and paste."

Yes, I've encountered the inability to do anything to mounted partitions before - quite a good safety-net, to be honest.

Still - I've printed out your instructions, opened a can of something cooling and will see how far I get. Thanks again for all your help.

I may be gone some time...

[trufflington]

Mike

Not tried it that way but I don't think you could do that - with some possible exceptions.

There are a few Windows progs -mostly either older - almost DOS vintage stuff -or very simple basic progs (Such as my favorite screen grabber FSScreen) which do run in a Linux environment by just finding the start icon in (Windows)C\Prog files\whatever program.

As I say - this is just an opinion - maybe EJ or someone else can tell you more .


UB 9.04......had a look but I think for the moment I'll pass until I can find out just what problems there may (or may not) be with the Nvidia drivers regards twin monitors...it took long enough to get things just right before - don't want to blow it now.

I'll see what the UB forum has to say about this before I attempt an update.

[repairexpert]

Thanks for the info chaps. :)

[otherego]

ej - should you still be around.

I'm typing this from the the Mint live CD.

I ended up using the GParted CD to re-do the partition (successful, I think), as the other live CDs for some reason couldn't find it.

I then launched the Mint 6 live CD, and have run into difficulties with the terminal command. Once I got the spaces in the right place (my fault), the first line was accepted. The second, however, didn't work:

udo mount /dev/hda1/mnt/temp1
mount: can't find /dev/hda1/mnt/temp1 in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab

Any suggestions? I'll take a quick coffee break and check back shortly - hoping you're in night-owl mode!

[otherego]

And now :

sudo mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/temp1
mount: special device /dev/hda1 does not exist

I do tend to get the spaces wrong (despite over 300 quid worth of specs) - but this doesn't look encouraging...

[ej-solutions]

Spacing is paramount!

In a terminal using the live-CD:
mount (do you see your hard disk as /dev/sda or /dev/hda ?)
I suspect from the above it's /dev/sda

Every time that you start up the live CD you will require to remake both the temporary directories and mount points:

Assuming that you only had one partition to start off with:
You probably now have sda1 and sda2 (or sda3)
The caret (^) denotes a space....

sudo^ mkdir^ /mnt/temp1^ /mnt/temp2
sudo^ mount^ /dev/sda1^ /mnt/temp1 (original Linux partition)
sudo^ mount^ /dev/sda2^ /mnt/temp2 (new Home partition)

etc.

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[ej-solutions]

Truff: you could always explore an alternative to Ubuntu (and derivatives) - OpenSuse, Mandriva etc. :-)

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[otherego]

Hi, EJ, sorry about the delay.

I got around the spacing bits - what actually confused the issue was that although the GParted live CD saw the partitions as hda1 and hda3, the same program in the Mint CD saw sda1 and sda3.

That helped until Stage 3. If I might request a couple of quick clarifications:

I labelled the new partition Ubuntu Home - should I have used this instead of "home" wherever that occurs?

After the gedit /mnt/temp1 and so on toward the end - I probably blew things here. Confirm that I should move the cursor to the end of the last line, enter normally to start a new line, then type:

/dev/sda3/home ext3 relatime 0 2
Newline

Then File, quit, save.

Think I may have misunderstood this stage of the proceedings! Might also have been confused by the use of the tab key - sorry, to space out which elements, precisely?

Then (and I should've realised earlier that I didn't understand this), how does one boot in Failsafe mode?

This is a dual-boot of Ubuntu and Mint, and one is offered the usual three boot options each (embarrassed to say I can't remember them but will restart to find out if necessary)

Finally -enter the following in "both places" - please specify these - and then do I type mount Ubuntu Home, start a new line and type sudo chown -R user /home/user?

Forgive all the questions - but I guess I'll only ever learn the art of the command-line when I stop avoiding it.

The new partition seems to be there; poor old Ubuntu now has one and a half gigs of spare space in its present partition!

Thanks for ploughing through this...

[ej-solutions]

I'll try to break down into manageable chunks:
Old skool terminology for hard disc partitions went something like /dev/c0t1d0s0 (you don't wanna know! though some might figure it out - clue: scsi hard disc example ;-))

Then came 'hd' to denote hard disc, with the number corresponding to the partition. Primary partitions numbered 1st, followed by extended, followed by logical. Hence I can't guess at your actual partition numbers - depends if you have multiple primary partitions (as I do).

Latterly, 'sd' (standard disc?) started to be used but not by all distros/derivatives. I think this was to cater for USB devices - wikipedia anyone?

Most recently UUID is being used (I hate it!) - so ignore where I can 😉

That's disc naming conventions kinda explained?
------------------------------------------------------------
The name of the partition in GParted has no bearing on any other bit, mostly - just to identify whilst partitioning.
You have a Home partition (whatever you call it) and within this the contents of the home (lower case) directory.
------------------------------------------------------------
To give exact commands I need to know the layout of your disc partitions - which ones are Ubuntu and which Mint.
------------------------------------------------------------
gedit: I wasn't too clear. sorry - merged two lines of thought badly. All I meant was to add a new line of text to the end of the file.
Your spacing is gone to pot again!
/dev/sda3 is the 3rd partition (as an example) and should match the partition number of your new home partition.
/home is what is termed the mount point (where to find the files in the partition)
ext3 is your chosen file system type and don't worry about the other three parameters. Suffice to say there are 6 parameters, which should be separated by tabs - spaces will do but stick with tabs (convention).

So, if your new "Ubuntu Home" partition resides in the 3rd partition then you need to enter the following on its' own on the last line....

/dev/sda3 [Tab] /home [Tab] ext3 [Tab] reatime [Tab] 0 [Tab] 2 [Enter]

---------------------------------------------------------------
If you use auto-login for Mint (as I do) then failsafe terminal mode won't be obvious. Otherwise, it's in the Sessions tab when your asked for your login details. If you use autologin, press Ctrl+Alt+Backspace to kill the X Windows and return to the login screen.
---------------------------------------------------------------
chown:
When you copied the files over using the live-CD, the ownership of the files/directories in the new home will be wrong. We need to change ownership (chown).
If you normally login to Mint as a user called 'user' then you need to enter...
sudo^ chown^ -R^ user^ /home/user
If you normally login to Mint as a user called 'otherego' then you need to enter...
sudo^ chown^ -R^ otherego^ /home/otherego
(Once again a caret denoting spaces).
---------------------------------------------------------------
Drat the G&T has evaporated! :_|

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[otherego]

Thanks for that - one more try before bed.

Actually - I MAY have nuked it with my messing around - all sorts of error messages and it doesn't want to start up - but will bore you with the details tomorrow if it refuses to start working again. Saved all the data, fortunately, so reinstalling will not be the end of the world.

But I'll mess around a little more first.

Can too much T hasten the evaporation of the G?

[otherego]

ej - you, sir, are a genius!

Reason I thought I'd nuked it was that it wouldn't let me log in - various error messages about owner and permission - and when I actually looked at them, the penny finally dropped.

Everything had actually gone as planned - I was merely ******ing up the last bit. My only excuse is that I'd never looked at the options bit in the lower left of the sign-in screen - which leads one neatly to such options as failsafe terminal.

Once that had been established in my tiny mind, your instructions worked perfectly - and I now have a separate home partition for my Ubuntu installation.

MIGHT summon up the courage to repeat the process with the Mint partitions. And then, I'd like to install a larger hard drive - which will mean coming to grips with Clonezilla.

But now - late or not - I think a little celebratory nightcap.

Many thanks again!

[ej-solutions]

Genius, no - (too) well seasoned IT Support person, likely ;-)

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[ej-solutions]

For users of netbooks, an interesting development?:|:

http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS3565871714.html
http://moblin.org/downloads

They're hoping to get a 2 second startup!

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[*_munchkin_*]

I see MS are putting the squeeze on Linux distros for unsubstantiated claims of patent infringement.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39646144,00.htm

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[*_munchkin_*]

And another:

"In this case, as so often, it involves Linux. Brother uses Linux in some of its printers. Microsoft claims Linux infringes its patents. It won't say in public which ones,"

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/leader/0,1000002982,39612309,00.htm

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[ej-solutions]

Bit of a hard neck considering their 'stealing' of the WIMP environment, amongst other technologies, including at the files system level 😉 Being able to extend volumes onto another physical disk wasn't their idea, for only one (rather stupid) example - hello, Novell.
Software on demand?... oh, don't get me started! :o

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[ej-solutions]

There's always BSD, which pre-dates them all by a fair bit, AFAIK ;-)

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[otherego]

I'm posting this with a certain trepidation - promise it's both eBay and Linux related!

Can anybody recommend a good place to buy USB flash drives? Those I find on eBay are simply not bargains, and one or two seem to be of somewhat uncertain provenance. Much as I like to support eBay sellers, this doesn't seem the right area in which to do so.

I've used P***.com, a Jersey-based seller, in the past, but am frankly horrified at their prices. I bought an 8gb Sandisk flash drive from them for £9.99 in October - the same thing is offered today for £13.99 - a mere 40% increase.

Although I bought a couple of smaller Sandisks from them this week (and it took a while for them to get here - three days just to get them posted), I think I need to look elsewhere. The Large River's not much help, either.

I find flash drives immensely useful in my Linux experiments - both for a quick back-up before trying anything that might toast the installation, and for the sheer interest of trying to install distros to flash drives (very mixed success so far and probably worthy of a thread of its own.) They're also useful for moving files among the several old computers I HAVE bought off eBay for a total cost of - erm - not very much.

Don't answer if doing so risks bringing down the wrath of eBay - but if anyone COULD legally point me towards an affordable source of USB flash drives, I'd be grateful.