jarvis1023
June 12th, 2008, 03:39 AM
TRIAL BY FIRE
I am an experienced computer user. I work as a network administrator for a windows network. I decided I wanted to learn about Linux. This is the story of my experiences with my first Ubuntu installation.
I have a 40 gig hard drive on a laptop. I downloaded the live CD from the Ubuntu website. This CD essentially did nothing when I booted from it. I would get to the menu but any of the installation options did nothing.
Then I went back into Windows XP on the harddrive and found the program called WUBI. I read about how it was used and installed a 15 gig section for Ubuntu using WUBI. Everything worked fine except now I was left with a 15 gig installation of Ubuntu.
Next I wanted to make the laptop Ubuntu only. I leared of LVPM and partition manager. partition manager was supposed to be able to break up my partition. It was not able to do so. I then went back into windows, erased many of the files after offloading htem to and external USB. I ran Partition Manager but made a fatal mistake in creating the ex3 and linux-sap partitons as logical partitions.
I reloaded the computer into Ubuntu and decided to removed the windows partition. I was going to then resize the linux partiton to fill the remaining space but when I rebooted the computer I realized what I had done and was left with essentially no operating system.
Luckily I have other computers and I was able to obtain 2 other pieces of software GPARTED and SUPERGRUB. I burned both of these to CDs as bootable CDS. I first used GPARTED to copy the LVPM copy of linux that was in the logical partition to the unallocated area at the begining of the HD. This made a copy of my Ubuntu in sda1. I then erased the logical partitions I had created. I then resized the partition to fill all but hte last 2 gigs of the HD where I created a second partition for the linux-swap.
With fingers crossed I rebooted the laptop. Nope there was now no Grub at all and I was gettign the error 22. Fortunately I had anticipated this problem and loaded SuperGrub on its bootable CD. This program was able to recreate a grub for me. This was not the end of my problems as I'm sure the experienced users are already seeing.
The next thing is the fact that when I choose and of hte options it gave me an error and dropped to a bustbox command prompt. Once again I surfed for answers and found that the problem was in the fact that the UUID had changed sinceI had messed with the partitions. I found htat there is an older way of summoning hte kernal portion and replaced the UUID information with /dev/sda1. This was gettign closer but still didnt work because there was alot of extra parameters left over from the WUBI install. I removed the extra information on the root hd(0,0) and took out the loop portion in the kernal line as well as the splash so I could see what was going on. This didn't happen all at once as I tried different variations until Ubuntu came back up.
Of course this is only a temporary solution so I still neded to use the gksudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst file to make my alterations permanent. I then rebooted and downloaded a few updates. I'm not sure if my jorney is over but I'm writing this in the text editor in Ubuntu so everything appears to be working correctly.
I was at times frustrated and at times angry but I learned alot and its a great feelign of accomplishment to make something work like this. I have the highest of hopes for Ubuntu and its features as I learn more and dig into the many and varied aspects of the OS.
I am an experienced computer user. I work as a network administrator for a windows network. I decided I wanted to learn about Linux. This is the story of my experiences with my first Ubuntu installation.
I have a 40 gig hard drive on a laptop. I downloaded the live CD from the Ubuntu website. This CD essentially did nothing when I booted from it. I would get to the menu but any of the installation options did nothing.
Then I went back into Windows XP on the harddrive and found the program called WUBI. I read about how it was used and installed a 15 gig section for Ubuntu using WUBI. Everything worked fine except now I was left with a 15 gig installation of Ubuntu.
Next I wanted to make the laptop Ubuntu only. I leared of LVPM and partition manager. partition manager was supposed to be able to break up my partition. It was not able to do so. I then went back into windows, erased many of the files after offloading htem to and external USB. I ran Partition Manager but made a fatal mistake in creating the ex3 and linux-sap partitons as logical partitions.
I reloaded the computer into Ubuntu and decided to removed the windows partition. I was going to then resize the linux partiton to fill the remaining space but when I rebooted the computer I realized what I had done and was left with essentially no operating system.
Luckily I have other computers and I was able to obtain 2 other pieces of software GPARTED and SUPERGRUB. I burned both of these to CDs as bootable CDS. I first used GPARTED to copy the LVPM copy of linux that was in the logical partition to the unallocated area at the begining of the HD. This made a copy of my Ubuntu in sda1. I then erased the logical partitions I had created. I then resized the partition to fill all but hte last 2 gigs of the HD where I created a second partition for the linux-swap.
With fingers crossed I rebooted the laptop. Nope there was now no Grub at all and I was gettign the error 22. Fortunately I had anticipated this problem and loaded SuperGrub on its bootable CD. This program was able to recreate a grub for me. This was not the end of my problems as I'm sure the experienced users are already seeing.
The next thing is the fact that when I choose and of hte options it gave me an error and dropped to a bustbox command prompt. Once again I surfed for answers and found that the problem was in the fact that the UUID had changed sinceI had messed with the partitions. I found htat there is an older way of summoning hte kernal portion and replaced the UUID information with /dev/sda1. This was gettign closer but still didnt work because there was alot of extra parameters left over from the WUBI install. I removed the extra information on the root hd(0,0) and took out the loop portion in the kernal line as well as the splash so I could see what was going on. This didn't happen all at once as I tried different variations until Ubuntu came back up.
Of course this is only a temporary solution so I still neded to use the gksudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst file to make my alterations permanent. I then rebooted and downloaded a few updates. I'm not sure if my jorney is over but I'm writing this in the text editor in Ubuntu so everything appears to be working correctly.
I was at times frustrated and at times angry but I learned alot and its a great feelign of accomplishment to make something work like this. I have the highest of hopes for Ubuntu and its features as I learn more and dig into the many and varied aspects of the OS.