grub reinstall and now no cd/dvd drive

[John Galt]

Hi guys, had to reinstall winxp, used boot repair to reinstall grub. Ued the option to reinstall grub on all devices except usb. Later in ubuntu changed it to install grub in first HDD. Now the drive in which x is installed has to loaded using ntfs config manually (previously auto mount). Have to use skip option at startup to skip auto mount of ntfs drive. Please advise if somthing can be done auto mount xp drive in ntfs and to make the cd/dvd drive visible. Does it have something to do with FSTAB? Thanks for the patient ear.

[ajgreeny]

Hi guys, had to reinstall winxp, used boot repair to reinstall grub. Ued the option to reinstall grub on all devices except usb. Later in ubuntu changed it to install grub in first HDD. Now the drive in which x is installed has to loaded using ntfs config manually (previously auto mount). Have to use skip option at startup to skip auto mount of ntfs drive. Please advise if somthing can be done auto mount xp drive in ntfs and to make the cd/dvd drive visible. Does it have something to do with FSTAB? Thanks for the patient ear.
Yes it does.

The reinstall of WinXP has given that partition a different UUID so your system can not now find the windows partition. That means that error message pops up each time you boot.

Let's see the output from
sudo blkid
cat /etc/fstab and an simple edit can put things right again.

[John Galt]

sudo blkid

/dev/sda1: UUID="14FC3625FC360192" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda3: UUID="eac23ce8-ba48-4be7-8ce5-0f904c312f28" TYPE="swap"
/dev/sda5: UUID="6825ba8e-0641-47dc-abac-e938d691beda" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/sda6: UUID="c40ba82a-ad24-4aa8-9c3c-8fc1855dd34d" TYPE="swap"
/dev/sda7: UUID="43a969ba-64f2-43a3-90cd-ef659e201320" TYPE="swap"
/dev/sda8: UUID="9a3922c6-5a78-4546-afe1-9b3981d92694" TYPE="swap"
/dev/sda9: UUID="cee9d139-8310-4c18-bdfa-4c450726af7f" TYPE="swap"
/dev/sda10: UUID="5a1ba186-be9b-4fa9-9a13-9b5d0c3e6653" TYPE="swap"
/dev/sda11: UUID="aee0eff0-f4c0-4741-bbbd-b343886eded1" TYPE="swap"
/dev/sdb5: UUID="EC64FF5A64FF264C" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sdb6: LABEL=" Local Disk" UUID="94B40A20B40A0588" TYPE="ntfs"

~$ cat /etc/fstab

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>

proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0
#Entry for /dev/sda5 :
UUID=6825ba8e-0641-47dc-abac-e938d691beda / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
#Entry for /dev/sdb6 :
UUID=94B40A20B40A0588 /media/_Local_Disk ntfs-3g defaults,locale=en_IN 00
#Entry for /dev/sda1 :
UUID=14FC3625FC360192 /media/sda1 ntfs-3g defaults,locale=en_IN 0 0
#Entry for /dev/sdb5 :
UUID=EC64FF5A64FF264C /media/sdb5 ntfs-3g defaults,locale=en_IN 0 0
UUID=2A207CBA207C8F17 /media/sda1 ntfs-3g defaults,locale=en_IN 0 0
#Entry for /dev/sda6 :
UUID=c40ba82a-ad24-4aa8-9c3c-8fc1855dd34d none swap sw 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0

[John Galt]

The above post lists the output of the commands. My apologies, not a regular user of forums and a bit slow with computers. Having a great time with Ubuntu 11.10 and think that this is the os for me.

Your help with this mater at hand is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[oldfred]

You seem to have one or two extra swaps.:) You should be able to delete all swaps but sda6 which is used by fstab.

You normally do not mount a partition by its device which may cause all sorts of confusion. You have to create a mount point and mount the device to that mount point.

Ownership and permissions of vfat / ntfs are set at the time of mounting. This is often a source of confusion.
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/mountwindowsfstab
HOWTO: Mount NTFS partitions with specific ownership/permissions - WorMzy
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1604251

This is my entry:

# in terminal
mkdir /mnt/shared
# then in fstab:
# Entry for /dev/sdc2 :"
UUID=44332FD360AA9657 /mnt/shared ntfs-3g defaults 0 0
I purposely mount in /mnt so it is not seen in Nautilus but then link it or folders from shared into /home.
# from home so default location will be /home/fred
ln -s /mnt/shared
or
Shared /data (NTFS)-see post #3 oldfred
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1772620
Mount, hide & link windows partition
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1397508
Mount NTFS partition:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1927504

Another useful option in mounting a Windows partition:
Window_names prevents the use of invalid windows characters:
(which are the nine characters ” * / : < > ? \ | and those whose code is less than 0×20)
UUID=66E4DC83E4DC56C1 /media/Data ntfs defaults,uid=1000,windows_names,umask=000 0 0

[John Galt]

Wow, all this info is very confusing. Too much info......

Now there seems to be a new problem at hand. As soon as i select skip option to skip ubuntu from mounting sda1 (winxp partition), a screen with a list of services starting pops up and statys there. This happens every time you select ubuntu 11.10 at startup. Just before his problem also while downloading a few apps through torrents my drive were popping up as full but they still showed lots up sapce in properties menu.

Please help....what is going on...

[oldfred]

Check sizes of partitions.

Partition sizes
df -Th | sort

#check for large files:
sudo du -h --max-depth=1 / | grep '[0-9]G\>' # folders larger than 1GB
sudo find / -name '*' -size +1G # files larger than 1GB
find . -maxdepth 1 -type d ! -name . -exec du -sh '{}' \; | sort -h


HOWTO: Recover Lost Disk Space - drs305
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1122670
HOWTO: Cleaning up all those unnecessary junk files...
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=140920
Caution deborphan will delete anything you manually installed. See comment:
Better to use Synaptic to select the ones you no longer want. Also you get notified about dependencies to be removed and can reconsider, if need be.
http://lifehacker.com/5817282/what-kind-of-maintenance-do-i-need-to-do-on-my-linux-pc

[John Galt]

my apologies but this is too confusing for me. i think i will settle for a reinstall.

Please advise how to copy my downloads folder to the windows drive. This is where all my data is and i want to save this. What command should i put in the terminal ( alt+f2 does give me a command prompt).

Is there a way to rebuild your fstab so that you just mount your root and swap? This way no reinstall would be required and i can do away with muc data damage.

[oldfred]

You can put a # in front of any lines you do not want. That converts it to a comment.

sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.backup
gksudo gedit /etc/fstab
# Anytime you edit fstab always do this before rebooting. If no errors it just remounts everything, but if errors you have to fix before rebooting or you may not be able to:
sudo mount -a

You should just be able to use Nautilus to copy any files you want from one partition to another.