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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[repairexpert]

If you look around the high street stores and supermarkets you can usually find one on offer.

I got an 8Gb Sandisk too for £8.99 a few weeks back in Tesc*s.

They even had some external USB hard drives for around £40 at one stage, was very tempted. ;)

[grumpy-cook]

Or shop around with the big online suppliers - they often have specials on. Outfits like Novatech, Scan, Dabs, even eBuyer.

Some examples -

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/products/a547x1y0z1p1s0n0m0

http://www.ebuyer.com/search?sort=pricelow&cat=36&subcat=405&q=usb%2Bflash&limit=10&page=1

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[otherego]

Thanks - I'll re-check those.

Interesting - one often encounters the remark that flash drives are really cheap nowadays.

My distinct impression is that they're actually increasing in price (as are laptop computers on eBay - the old Thinkpads will be getting no new company in the foreseeable future!)

Thanks again!

[ej-solutions]

Try 7dayshop - I've actually been fine getting so-called flashdrives from feeBay, apart from real cheapo non-branded ones that only last a few hundred writes.
Sticking with UK companies, I've picked up 2Gb (primary rescue 'saviour') & 4Gb Sandisk Cruzer Micro Skins (touchy, feely ;-)), a 2Gb Kingston Traveler (backup rescue 'saviour'), 8Gb Integral (big but slow) and a now sadly discontinued Toshiba 2Gb U3 (quality enclosure). All very reliable.
[The 4Gb Skin is being used for the Unetbootin experiments].

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[otherego]

I'd not heard of that shop - will give it a try.

I really like the Cruzer Micro Skins - they take up no space and more importantly, don't protrude as far from the computer as some of the others - making them less vulnerable. Of course, U3 software would be wasted, but seems to be installed more often than not.

It's also useful to be able to write (small) labels and slide them under the skin, changing them with each distro/backup. And they cope pretty happily with being sat on.

Unetbootin's great for live flashdrives, or for making it possible to install FROM flashdrives, but I'm currently trying to install distros TO flash drives - still haven't figured out why this should be different from installing to an ordinary hard drive (as long as the "host" computer can boot from USB). But it evidently is.

And it's awfully easy to mess up GRUB on the host computer while trying to install to a flash drive. Super Grub Disk to the rescue - so far...

[ej-solutions]

It's better to use distros that are specifically geared towards installing on USB (as opposed to Live CD on USB, which as you're aware is different). They are configured not to write to the USB device anywhere like as much as 'normal' hard disk installs.

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[otherego]

Still great fun trying, though. If a little hard on the chosen USB drive.

[otherego]

Now this looks like fun - multibooting from a flash drive.

Whether I'm ready for it remains to be seen!

http://tazbuntu.blogspot.com/2009_05_01_archive.html

The writer speaks of installing both Puppy and Mint to a 1 gb drive - need to read that at a more civilised hour when I'm awake, I think.I'd have thought Mint would have needed over 2gb all to itself.

I've ordered a few cheapo 2gb drives from 7 Day Shop - at £3 each, I don't mind experimenting - if they're up to it! If anyone else succeeds with this, it'll be interesting to hear the details - would be most useful if the installations could be made persistent.

(And yes, a little pointless perhaps - but could be great fun and distinctly educational - for instance, all that stuff with syslinux, which, together with GRUB and the MBR, remain a serious mystery to me.)

[ej-solutions]

I've actually got a directory set up with 9 Distros (called USB-Multi-Distro) and had begun to multiboot using Unetbootin. It's pretty straightforward to do but I've lost track on how far I've got - sidetracked 😞 Not all distros seem amenable to this, however, though I'm sure I had three booting fine (including MintFlux). 🙂
If using LiveCD versions then you'll squeeze quite a few into 2Gb, especially smaller distros like Puppy, DSL etc.

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[ej-solutions]

Have taken the plunge and replaced Mint 6 with Mint 7 (released yesterday). I had a brief look at the RC1 version that came out a few weeks ago and could see a few smal improvements.
[Just to compare with another thread: Firefox c/w add-ons loads in about 2 seconds].
My continued problems with XP trashing hard drives (continual polling) has really forced the issue to use Linux as my primary OS. About time! 😉 The only thing that I should need to revert to XP for, is likely to be Adobe PS Elements.
I'm going to revisit Virtualbox/Qemu to see if it's practical to run XP/PSE in a virtual machine. A bit ambitious given a Centrino 1.6GHz and 1Gb RAM 🙂

There have been a few freshen ups of distros lately:

For netbook users, Moblin is now out of Alpha stage and v2 Beta might be worth a look for the adventurous.

Puppy Linux has also been recently updated.

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[otherego]

Greetings, all. I'm seeking advice again, if I might. This might merit a new thread - but since it's directly related to my Adventures in Linux, I thought I'd start here.

I've been dual-booting Windows 2000 and Mepis on a Thinkpad T23 (40 gb HDD split between them; alleged 1.13ghz CPU and 256mb RAM).

Having concentrated on Linux lately, I thought I'd do a little maintenance on the Windows side, and experimented with such things as a PCTools firewall (nice) and Threatfire (couldn't get it working.) For no very urgent reason, I defragged the Windows partition. Out of curiosity, I did this in safe mode, following a bit of reading around.

It went fine, and I rebooted. No more Windows.

The GRUB menu still shows Windows 2000 but, when I click it, all I get is a depressing black screen with the message : rootnoverify (hd0.0)
chainloader +1

and a blinking cursor.

So far, I've found nothing that matches this in my googling - although it is quite common for Linux to stop booting, it seems.

I assume that the defragging has somehow moved or destroyed the Windows MBR - or something? As usual, I'm on very shaky ground here. The Windows partition still SEEMS to be there (GRUB seems to see it, as does SuperGrubDisk), but I can't get at it to boot it. I've messed about with SuperGrubDisk, but to no avail (except when I also managed to lose the Linux boot in my tinkering - not sure how - SGD restored it easily, thankfully, and the Mepis/GRUB menu is back.)

Mepis, touch wood, is booting and running fine.

After all my recent work, I'd hate to lose poor old Windows 2000, even if that DID give me another partition to play with another Linux distro.

So - dual boot W2K/Mepis, defragged W2K (in Safe mode, if that's relevant), can no longer boot Windows.

Any suggestions to cure this, please? - if POSSIBLE, without anything complicated command-line wise, though I'm getting better at copying the commands exactly. I have a SuperGrubDisk to hand, if that helps, plus the Mepis CD.

Not super-urgent, but would be nice to get it fixed. I'll look in from time to time before bed, and again from about lunch-time tomorrow. Thanks for reading!

[ej-solutions]

Can't remember whether you can boot w2k from CD into a recovery console and type 'fixboot'
Immediately prior to Grub trying to load w2k, have you tried pressing F8?
I haven't used SuperGrubDisk but it may have taken a copy of the w2k boot records.
If you boot mepis, check on the w2k partition for NTLDR in the root directory - it may have been corrupted during the defrag. Copy over from w2k CD.

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[otherego]

I'll have to see if I can borrow a W2K CD from someone - and will experiment further as per your suggestions.

Thanks for that - I'll let you know how things go!

[otherego]

Still no joy getting my Windows 2000 partition working.

I have:

tried pressing f8 - no joy (didn't really expect much, as the rootnoverify message appears almost as soon as I press Windows in the GRUB menu);

tried to run fixboot from an ancient copy of w2k (a back-up disk borrowed from somebody else);

reinstalled MEPIS (as with Mint, one can do this while retaining the original home folder), telling it to reinstall GRUB

No joy. I keep getting the

rootnoverify (hd0.0)
chainloader +1

and a blinking cursor

when I click Windows on the GRUB menu.

The Windows disc also offers the fixmbr option, but I'm a little wary of this. When "fixmbr" is typed, one is asked to confirm whether one really wants to do this - dire warnings of the possible destruction of existing partitions on the hard drive.

I tried to look at the Windows partition from Mepis but, although it acknowledges that it is there, there seems no way (that I have found) of mounting the W2K partition and reading its files. Mint would simply show the window partition as a mountable volume, I think. As a result, I've not been able to check NTDLR in the root directory of the Windows partition.

Any more suggestions? And what exactly does the "rootnoverify" and so on message mean? Must be a clue here somewhere - but it means nothing to me - I assume the hda0,0 is the first partition of the hard drive, which is in fact where Windows is located.

[ej-solutions]

You're pretty close to understanding a bit more 🙂

rootnoverify (hd0.0)
chainloader +1

This tells you that the disk has boot up to Grub and is attempting to run NTLDR (loading a boot loader from another boot loaded, a 'chain').

Fixmbr does the same as fdisk /mbr in that it re-write the Master Boot Record. In other words it will clear the Grub bootloader and return you to the Win2k default one (actually it recovers the MBR from a saved copy). If you're happy enough to reboot a Linux distro. & re-instate Grub, then fine.

IMO it is the lack of a 'target' for Grub (NTLDR) that is the issue. Hence, trying to run fixboot. I presume that you ran Win2k from the CD - choosing the recovery option also re-writes the MBR (if I remember rightly).

I'm in Mint at the mo' so can't double check but there's another command to scan Win partitions for an OS and add it into boot.ini (mental blank:-(). I suspect that isn't the problem, however.

Various NTLDR versions are available online, including for win2k (match the service pack, to be certain).
Another member here (that uses Win2k) might be able to tell you which files are needed in the 'root' directory.

Right-clicking on the w2k partition should have a mount option.
Or...
In a Terminal and assuming Win2k is using NTFS and that it is in the 1st primary partition (normally is):
sudo mkdir /media/win2000
sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /media/win2000
That should mount the partition and allow you to browse.

EJ

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[otherego]

Thanks, ej, I'll give those commands a try.

Might it be worth running fixmbr?

If it gets W2K running again, that will be a start. If Mepis no longer boots, then it might be possible to reinstall GRUB using either the MEPIS live CD (a little bit of a mission time-wise, but already proved practicable), or from SuperGrubDisk?

Or is there a risk of fixmbr doing something more drastic?

[otherego]

And sorry, yes - I did run fixboot from teh W2K CD

[ej-solutions]

First port of call is to try to sort the NTLDR side of things (with the mount) IMO. However...

fixmbr does exactly what it says on the tin - well, nearly.
You'll be fine but still reckon you'll need fixboot. 😉
[Probably wrong, I often am]

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[otherego]

Hmmm.

sudo mkdir /media/win2000
mkdir: cannot create directory `/media/win2000': File exists

then:

sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/hda1 /media/win2000
ntfs-3g-mount: mount failed: Device or resource busy

Fate seems determined to prevent my getting to the bottom of this NTDLR business...

A break for a beer and a bite, I think, then I'll try again.

I've already run fixboot -sorry, didn't make that clear. I still suspect I'm going to have to try fixmbr first - just a little concerned about all the warnings. Still, nothing ventured and all that!

[ej-solutions]

Ahh, the mountpoint already exists (fine) & filesystem is already mounted... try

sudo umount /media/win2000
sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/hda1 /media/win2000

If that fails.. Plan B: fixmbr
:-)

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