Why do I have two versions of Ubuntu on one partition?

[justin53]

tl;dr: I currently have 12.10 and 14.04 on the same partition, but I only want 14.04

I originally just had Windows 7 on my computer, but a while back I created a new partition and installed Ubuntu 12.10. At some point, I tried repeatedly to install Matlab, but something got screwed up and Ubuntu was always kind of weird after that. I never did get Matlab working on Ubuntu, but it wasn't a big deal since I had it on Windows.
Fast-forward to today. I burned a disc of Ubuntu 14.04 and during the installation I formatted the old Ubuntu partition and turned it into swap space. Then I created a new partition from the Windows partition and installed 14.04. When it finally booted up, I saw my old Ubuntu background and 12.10 at the bottom of the screen. After restarting, I have found that at startup I have the choice of loading either 12.10 or 14.04. When I look at my hard drive, I only have four partitions: Windows recovery, Windows 7, swap space, and Ubuntu. So both versions must be on the same partition, right?
What did I do wrong and how do I remove 12.10 and replace it with 14.04? I thought I had axed 12.10 when I turned that partition into swap space.

[ajgreeny]

Let's check what you really have on the disk rather than what you think you have, as you can't have more than one version of ubuntu on a single partition.

Can you show the output in terminal of command
sudo fdisk -lI suspect that after attempting to use the old partition as swap without deleting it or its contents first, you may still have everything on that partition that was there previously, but I am a bit baffled about where your new 14.04 has gone.

Can you boot into your ubuntu (I assume you only have one in the grub menu)and again show the outputy of command
lsb_release -dc && echo "Desktop: $DESKTOP_SESSION" && uname -mrnIf you have more than one ubuntu version in grub please boot to both and run that last command in both OSs.

Let's also see the output of
freeto see if you actually have a working swap partition in both OSs

[justin53]

OK, I'm in 14.04 right now. The output of fdisk is:

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 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: 0x71b92b11

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 2459647 1228800 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 2459648 874069022 435804687+ 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3 952195072 976771071 12288000 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda4 874070014 952195071 39062529 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 874070016 952195071 39062528 83 Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

The output of lsb_release is:

Description: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
Codename: trusty
Desktop: ubuntu
justin-ThinkPad-E520 3.13.0-24-generic x86_64


And the output of free is:

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3956612 1835924 2120688 183052 36396 905816
-/+ buffers/cache: 893712 3062900
Swap: 12287996 0 12287996

[justin53]

OK, I'm in 12.10 13.10 (I guess I was wrong on that one). Here is the output of lsb_release:

Description: Ubuntu 13.10
Codename: saucy
Desktop: ubuntu
ubuntu 3.11.0-23-generic x86_64



and the output of free is:

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3956940 2812796 1144144 0 980868 1170620
-/+ buffers/cache: 661308 3295632
Swap: 262140 0 262140

[grahammechanical]

Could you also run from both Ubuntus


df -h

This is what I see when I run that command from one of my Ubuntu installations


Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb8 35G 8.7G 24G 27% /
none 4.0K 0 4.0K 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
udev 486M 4.0K 486M 1% /dev
tmpfs 100M 1.3M 98M 2% /run
none 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock
none 497M 13M 484M 3% /run/shm
none 100M 60K 100M 1% /run/user

It shows that the Ubuntu I am running that command from is on sdb8 - partition 8 on the second sata hard drive. I have a question. How did you install Ubuntu 13.10? did you use Wubi.exe and install it inside Windows 7? I am just making wild guesses.

[justin53]

From 14.04, I'm getting:

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda5 37G 5.2G 30G 15% /
none 4.0K 0 4.0K 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
udev 1.9G 12K 1.9G 1% /dev
tmpfs 387M 1.1M 386M 1% /run
none 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock
none 1.9G 268K 1.9G 1% /run/shm
none 100M 60K 100M 1% /run/user

[justin53]

and in 13.10, I'm getting:

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/loop0 17G 14G 3.3G 81% /
none 4.0K 0 4.0K 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
udev 1.9G 4.0K 1.9G 1% /dev
tmpfs 387M 1.1M 386M 1% /run
none 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock
none 1.9G 152K 1.9G 1% /run/shm
none 100M 40K 100M 1% /run/user
/dev/sda2 416G 247G 169G 60% /host
/dev/sda1 1.2G 331M 870M 28% /media/justin/SYSTEM_DRV

[steeldriver]

So I would guess your original 13.10 system is a wubi install inside the Windows system

[justin53]

So I would guess your original 13.10 system is a wubi install inside the Windows system

I'm not sure. When I installed it, I booted from the cd and inserted a separate partition for the install. That 13.10 partition is now formatted and being used for swap space.

If I can't delete the 13.10 install, can I at least remove it from the grub screen? When I select Ubuntu at startup, I'd like it to go straight to 14.04.

[coffeecat]

I'm not sure. When I installed it, I booted from the cd and inserted a separate partition for the install. That 13.10 partition is now formatted and being used for swap space.

No, you did not and do not have a separate 13.10 partition. The output you posted in post #7 is unequivocal. Your 13.10 is a wubi system inside your Windows partition, sda2.

[justin53]

No, you did not and do not have a separate 13.10 partition. The output you posted in post #7 is unequivocal. Your 13.10 is a wubi system inside your Windows partition, sda2.

Well, it was on sda3 when I installed 14.04. It looked like a separate partition to me, but I'm just a novice.


At any rate, how do I remove 13.10?

[oldfred]

Back up or copy any data in wubi that you may want in your partitioned install.

It should be just like any Windows software that you uninstall.
If you have to manually uninstall, you can just delete root.disk and edit BCD to remove the wubi entry.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WubiGuide
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wubi

[justin53]

Back up or copy any data in wubi that you may want in your partitioned install.

It should be just like any Windows software that you uninstall.
If you have to manually uninstall, you can just delete root.disk and edit BCD to remove the wubi entry.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WubiGuide
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wubi

I uninstalled "Ubuntu" from the control panel in Windows and now I can't access any of my Ubuntu installations. What happened? At startup, I used to have the option of Windows 7 and Ubuntu, but now it just goes straight into Windows.
The program uninstalled so quickly that I don't think it deleted anything from my installations. Is there a way to get it back? I tried the system restore tool in Windows, but that was useless.

[oldfred]

With wubi you boot with the Windows boot loader in the MBR. And the BCD or boot.ini shows both Windows and Ubuntu.
With a full partitioned install, you install grub to the MBR and grub's menu has both Windows and Ubuntu as boot options.
It sounds like you have the Windows boot loader in the MBR and need to install the Ubuntu/grub boot loader.

How to restore the Ubuntu/XP/Vista/7 bootloader
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestoreUbuntu/XP/Vista/7Bootloader
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/Installing#Fixing_a_Broken_System