12.04 over win7 partition, but not my Fedora!

[LumbeeNDN]

Hey folks, on my laptop I currently have a dual boot setup of ******* 7 and Fedora 14. Time to move away from Fedora, so I want to move on to Ubuntu 12.04. I don't use the windows partition so I would like to leave the fedora in place and replace windows with Ubuntu.

When I start the installation on the 'Installation Type' screen I have the option to 'Install along side windows 7'...nope, don't want that. 'Replace Win7 with Ubuntu'...this sounds good, but when I choose that and 'continue' it tells me the entire disk with be used, which does not give me a warm fuzzy.

When I choose 'Something else' and 'continue' here is what I am seeing...

sda1(fat16) 41mb
sda2(ntfs) 15gb
sda3(ntfs) 167gb
sda5(ext4) 524mb
sda6(unknown) 136gb

I *think* the sda2&3 are the windows partitions. So if I want to install Ubuntu on top of windows (and not harm Fedora) should I choose/check sda3 to install to?

On the 'Device for boot loader installation' option what should I choose?

Any info appreciated...thanx in advance!

[gordintoronto]

What does Windows show as C: and D:? (and any more...)

How big is the Fedora partition?

One possibility is that C: is 15 GB and D: is 167 GB. If you have no useful data on C: or D: the natural setup for Ubuntu would be / (root) on the 15 GB partition, and /home on the 167 GB partition, and the boot loader on sda1.

The troubling part is the "unknown" for the 136 GB partition. Do you have an unusual file system in Fedora?

A 524 MB partition is useless unless it's for swap, but that would not say ext4. Even as swap, it's too small.

[sudodus]

Check from Fedora with root privileges:

fdisk -lu
blkid
df
and post the result, if you need help to decide which partitions belong to Windows.

[oldfred]

Fedora often installs with LVM. From Ubuntu you have to add the lvm2 drivers to see into it. And then Fedora has a separate /boot partition. With Ubuntu & grub2 you do not need the separate /boot partition.

You install the grub2 boot loader to the MBR if you want Ubuntu's grub2 to be in charge, and install it anywhere but the MBR (it does not have an option not to install) as a throwaway, if you want Fedora's boot loader to be in charge.

If you install the lvm2 driver and mount the Fedora partition, then grub2's os-prober will find the Fedora install.

Always a good idea to use boot info script to document system before & after an install.

Boot Info Script courtesy of forum members meierfra & Gert Hulselmans
Boot Info Script 0.61 is released April 2, 2012
boot_info_script.sh" file renamed to "bootinfoscript
http://sourceforge.net/projects/bootinfoscript/files/bootinfoscript/0.61/
Page with instructions and link to above new download:
http://bootinfoscript.sourceforge.net/
Paste contents of results.txt in a New Reply, then highlight entire file and click on # in edit panel(code tags) to make it easier to read.
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Install these before running script:
sudo apt-get install gawk
sudo apt-get install xz-utils

Is able to search LVM partitions if the LVM2 package is install, Fedora needs to be mounted to see it with os-prober
# ("apt-get install lvm2" in debian based distros)
# Is able to search Linux Software Raid partitions (MD Raids) if
# the "mdadm" package is installed.
sudo apt-get install lvm2
sudo apt-get install mdadm
sudo apt-get install gawk
sudo apt-get install xz-utils
# unlzma is equivalent to xz --format=lzma --decompress.

[efflandt]

With my Dell computer, the first 3 partitions are related to Win7, sda1 is Dell Utility, sda2 is Recovery (originally marked as boot partition, which actually boots Win7), and sda3 is Win7.

But the last RedHat related versions I ran were RH 6.2 and Mandrake 7.0 which probably still used LILO then, so I am not familiar with how they do things lately.

[LumbeeNDN]

..me thinks this will be more difficult than I had hoped...:shock:

Here is the output from the boot script info...http://pastie.org/4192699

[oldfred]

Are you sure you want to do away with Windows. Many come back later and decide there is one application they have to have that only really works in Windows. It took me 5 years and I still very occasionally boot XP. IF so back it up.

You can also back up the Dell utilities FAT16 partition if you want and then just use gparted to delete sda1, sda2 & sda3.

Then you can create new partitions for Ubuntu. If you just want basic, you can use auto install and it will install into the unallocated automatically with just / (root) & swap. Otherwise you have to use Something else and manually partition, format and create & choose, / (root), /home & swap partitions.

[LumbeeNDN]

Nope, I don't use windows any...never have, it was just what came on the laptop, so I thought I would keep it around.

[LumbeeNDN]

OK, I said to hell with it, and went for it. I choose the manual installation at the beginning of the Ubuntu install. I then deleted the fat16 (dell utils), and both the ntfs partions. So my new partions look like this http://pastie.org/4195045

So I know my Fedora is in sda5/6, so how do I configure the grub loader to give the option to boot to it?

[oldfred]

If you install the lvm2 driver and mount the Fedora partition, then grub2's os-prober will find the Fedora install.

sudo apt-get install lvm2
# mount Fedora partition(s)
sudo update-grub

[LumbeeNDN]

...thanx fred, that worked. Did not work immediately after I added lvm2, but after doing a system update, and another reboot, I could choose my Fedora. L8r!