Hello Forums,
Background:
I a few months ago I found a Dell Latitude D420 in a box of office things on the street. It was accompanied by its (19.5V 4.62A) [UNGROUNDED?!] power adapter and a docking station.
I'm most familiar with Ubuntu so for convenience/functionality sake I'm going to have Ubuntu 12.04 installed. I intend this laptop to be available to my family for browsing and playback of music from Pandora (via Pithos) and over our home network. In an attempt to extend the battery life of the laptop I hope to keep puppy (undecided version) on either an SD card (4 GB) or micro SD card (16 GB)(in adapter) inside the laptop's card reader. I would like to install GRUB2 to the first partition of the HDD (This is what I need help with!). Then an Extended partition to hold Linux SWAP partition (will puppy try to use this?), and partition for Ubuntu (leaving some extra unalocated space). Then a partition for Storage, and one for Backups.
(Please help me out if this doesn't make sense in anyway. I want Grub2 on its own mostly to keep it safe and independent of Ubuntu. I want Puppy on the SD/MicroSD so that after picking Puppy at boot the laptop wont need to access the HDD unless accessing the Storage or Backup partitions. I'm hoping that accessing the RAM requires less power than accessing the HDD, This is mostly a guess so if anyone wants to poke a whole in that theory or recommend an even more power efficient OS please do)
How I proceeded:
Once home, after checking for moister, I plugged it in for a few minutes and then turned it on, Went into the BIOS (version AO3) and looked around...
Processor Type...Intel core duo
Video Controller...Intel 945GSM Graphics
RAM...................1536 MB (Installed)
HDD....................80 GB
Modem...............Conexant HDA D110 MDC
Wi-Fi..................Intel Wireless
Cellular...............None
Bluetooth............None
Battery...............6 Cell (Healthy)
Can BOOT from:
HDD
CD/DVD
USB (I'm familiar with these 3)
Diskette Drive (floppy?)
Onboard NIC
Cardbus NIC
D/Dock PCI slot NIC (I'm NOT familiar with these 3)
Power it on (booting from HDD) I'm presented with XP pro preparing me a new user.
XP was useful for updating the BOIS to version AO6 (X3 faster than AO3!)
BOOT off Ubuntu 12.04 x86 live CD.
Checked (most) hardware to ensure compatibility with Ubuntu. (I can't remember If i used a badblocks command or the GUI way to check HDD health, but I don't believe the HDD is failing in any way)
Everything worked so the laptop earned its keep, and a bath. (screen looked sneezed on, company stickers and scotch tape on the shell, keyboard was pretty clean, but some wires below it weren't in place creating uneven keys, no obvious spills or broken parts though!)
Launched Gparted, erased everything.
...I'm unsure if this is relevant because I don't think I broke anything, but I read this forums Code of Conduct before writing this so I'm being trying to be clear and take responsibility for my actions. I tried to setup the laptop as described above armed with my knowledge, a few how to's, some live cd's and flash memory. Unfortunately I couldn't get GRUB2 Installed on Sda1, so I decided it would be good to start over with some help...
Launched Gparted, erased everything.
Reboot.
Launched Gparted, format as described above.
Opened a Terminal and executed:
The terminal returned:
Code:
Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders, total 156301488 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000f2e97
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 1026047 512000 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 1026048 42958847 20966400 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 42958848 103872511 30456832 5 Extended
/dev/sda4 103872512 156301487 26214488 83 Linux
/dev/sda5 42960896 51357695 4198400 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 51359744 72407039 10523648 83 Linux
Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 15.9 GB, 15931539456 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1936 cylinders, total 31116288 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0006b7b1
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/mmcblk0p1 * 2048 31115263 15556608 83 Linux
Disk /dev/sdb: 64 MB, 64225280 bytes
198 heads, 62 sectors/track, 10 cylinders, total 125440 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00090ede
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 2048 124927 61440 b W95 FAT32
Disk /dev/sdc: 16.0 GB, 16013852672 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 15272 cylinders, total 31277056 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000c9ef6
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 * 32 31277055 15638512 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
This is my 1st post so I hope I didn't step on any toes, this forum has been massively helpful over the years.
Thanks for your time!
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