BusyBox built in shell (ash)

**presence1960** · April 1st, 2009

sorry I was in work and tonight is one of my daughter's TaeKwon Do nights. just got back home. I wish I was here, all you needed to do when trying to install Ubuntu was select a mount point. "/" is the root partition mount point. When you selected the partition to install Ubuntu you chose ext 3 as file system. At the bottom should have been mount point option. If you don't choose a mount point that's why you get that message about no root file system. Like the rest of us you live and learn. You can still get this set up so don't worry about it

Ok you have Ubuntu installed but have written over your XP install by installing Ubuntu to the entire disk correct? If that is correct you need to boot the Live CD and run gparted from the CD. System > Administration > Partition Editor. You want to resize the Ubuntu partition to create a partition for XP. Right click the Ubuntu partition and choose resize. You can use your mouse to grab the end of the partition graphic and slide it across to resize or use the numeric sizer. Once you have the size set click apply. This may take some time depending on how much you want to give XP, so be patient. Again do not have your external drives connected to insure there is no data loss on them. Almost always the partitioner works well, but whenever working with partitions there is the possibility something can happen to make you lose data. Don't chance it. Have everything backed up and your back up drive(s) unplugged. After the resize is complete format the new partition to NTFS for XP. Then install XP to the NTFS partition. Unfortunately this will overwrite GRUB. But it is a simple procedure to restore GRUB from the Ubuntu Live CD after XP is installed. But we'll cross that bridge when we arrive there.

To double check I understand what you did: 1) you installed Ubuntu to the entire disk overwriting your XP install. 2) you now have the whole disk allocated to Ubuntu, but want to install XP. If this is correct follow the directions. Any questions just shoot them over to this thread or PM me.

I know we work different shifts so be patient. There are a lot of people who can help you here if need be.

**jcm1107** · April 2nd, 2009

I have xp installed on the second partition now. Now I can not boot Ubuntu as you said xp overwrote it. How do I get Ubuntu back now? also my xp installation is giving me problems installing everything! I can't get on the internet on it because the eather net driver will not update. Alot of stuff I try to open says not a valid win 32 aplication. I am sure it is because it needs updated but I cant get it on the internet to update. I have the cd that came with the motherboard and it fails when I use it to update the eather net and I manually selected the file to use that I need to. Xp has always been dificult with new hardware, I was amased how well Ubuntu worked the only thing that did not work automatically was my graphics because I couldn't change my screen resolution any higher than 400x 600 but everything else WORKED no install needed! I was amased! thats what I thought I would need windows for was all my hardware like printers and things but it seems Ubuntu is more compatible with windows hardware than windows is!!

**presence1960** · April 2nd, 2009

Do this to restore GRUB from the Live CD:

1. Boot your computer up with Ubuntu CD
2. Open a terminal window or switch to a tty.
3. Go SuperUser (that is, type "sudo -s"). Enter root passwords as
necessary.
4. Type "grub"
5. Type "find /boot/grub/stage1". You'll get a response like "(hd0,1)".
Use whatever your computer spits out for the following lines.
6. Type "root (hd0,1)", or whatever your hard disk + boot partition
numbers are for Ubuntu.
7. Type "setup (hd0)", to install GRUB to MBR, or "setup (hd0,1)" or
whatever your hard disk + partition # is, to install GRUB to a
partition.
8. Quit grub by typing "quit".
9. Reboot and remove the bootable CD.

in #7 I would use setup (hd0). Give that a whirl to get grub restored. Once you get it restored boot into Ubuntu and go to System > Administration > Hardware Drivers. See if there are restricted drivers for your vid card. If so enable them.

**jcm1107** · April 2nd, 2009

Ok now I have Ubuntu Back but it boots automatically how do I get it to where I have a choice of which OS I want when I first boot my system? Now I can't boot to XP. I got my resolution changed, I had to go to nvidia and download an xconfig tool and figure out how to run that. I finally got it. That was the only hardware problem I had with Ubuntu so far! I am amased because xp when I was in it is not wanting to install alot of things I need. I had that problem when I installed my motherboard but when I first installed my motherboard it recognized my wireless adapter and connected to the internet and I was able to get updates. Now after totaly reformating my hard disk it isn't recognizing anything. I know it just needs all the windows updates but I can't get it on the internet. Well help me get the option to get into xp and then I will go from there. So far I am loving Ubuntu anyway I will probably use it 95%-99% of the time, it seems way better than windows.

**presence1960** · April 3rd, 2009

Originally Posted by jcm1107

Ok now I have Ubuntu Back but it boots automatically how do I get it to where I have a choice of which OS I want when I first boot my system? Now I can't boot to XP. I got my resolution changed, I had to go to nvidia and download an xconfig tool and figure out how to run that. I finally got it. That was the only hardware problem I had with Ubuntu so far! I am amased because xp when I was in it is not wanting to install alot of things I need. I had that problem when I installed my motherboard but when I first installed my motherboard it recognized my wireless adapter and connected to the internet and I was able to get updates. Now after totaly reformating my hard disk it isn't recognizing anything. I know it just needs all the windows updates but I can't get it on the internet. Well help me get the option to get into xp and then I will go from there. So far I am loving Ubuntu anyway I will probably use it 95%-99% of the time, it seems way better than windows.

You can hit ESC when it says loading Grub 1.5 to get the menu. Also you can install startupmanager which will allow you to customize settings for "startup" hence the name. You want to set a delay of x seconds and choose a default OS in startupmanager. It is a GUI program. Install it from terminal

Code:

sudo apt-get install startupmanager

you can then open it from System > Administration > Startup Manager.

After you get that done see if you get a GRUB menu and try to boot to windows. If it won't boot to windows...relax. Sometimes it is just a case of editing the windows entry in menu.lst file. Let me know. I am off to my daughter's TaeKwon Do class will be back on here around 9:30pm Eastern Time.Good Luck!

**jcm1107** · April 3rd, 2009

Ok I have startup manager installed windows xp is not on the list, just 7 different Ubuntu startups that says Ubuntu 8.04.2, kernal 2.6.24-23-generic
and the only thing different on them is the numbers after kernal and one says mem test. Also you said I would need to set a delay of x amount of seconds is this the time out? and how many seconds should I use I used 3 seconds for now in timeout. going to reboot and see but I think xp won't boot. I tried to hit esc before to get the option and it only showed the different ubuntu options.

**jcm1107** · April 3rd, 2009

Originally Posted by presence1960

You can hit ESC when it says loading Grub 1.5 to get the menu. Also you can install start upmanager which will allow you to customize settings for "startup" hence the name. You want to set a delay of x seconds and choose a default OS in startupmanager. It is a GUI program. Install it from terminal

Code:

sudo apt-get install start upmanager

you can then open it from System > Administration > Startup Manager.

After you get that done see if you get a GRUB menu and try to boot to windows. If it won't boot to windows...relax. Sometimes it is just a case of editing the windows entry in menu.lst file. Let me know. I am off to my daughter's TaeKwon Do class will be back on here around 9:30pm Eastern Time.Good Luck!

I rebooted and it did not give an option to boot windows. Only the different Ubuntu options. So what do I have to do to get
windows to boot? And thanks for getting me this far I really appreciate all your help!

**jcm1107** · April 3rd, 2009

hey I got my computer to let me select xp in the grub menu. I had to edit the menu.lst I found the information on here. before tonight I didn't even know what a menu.lst was, or anything about grub other than it was the boot loader. But anyway I got it and thanks presence for your help!!!!!!

**presence1960** · April 3rd, 2009

Originally Posted by jcm1107

hey I got my computer to let me select xp in the grub menu. I had to edit the menu.lst I found the information on here. before tonight I didn't even know what a menu.lst was, or anything about grub other than it was the boot loader. But anyway I got it and thanks presence for your help!!!!!!

Glad to be able to help you get it all up & running. I see on other threads you are sharing what you know about this area. Don't be intimidated because you are fairly new. Because of the problem you had and the work you did to solve the problem you now have valuable info that some may not possess. Pass it on! I'll be seeing you in here. Stay in touch with PM or my email.

P.S. Why don't you rename the title of this thread by adding [solved] to the title since the solved button no longer works.

**jcm1107** · April 4th, 2009

I found my problem that caused the busy box!! so I wanted to put it here!!! The problem was in my bios settings, I tried putting them like I thought they should be, and then I tried both failsafe and optimized settings none of that worked!! so here is what worked. I found out that ubuntu does not work with udma on the cdrom drive, mine was on auto. Well here is a list of what I had to change in my bios and then I booted the cd and just went down to install without changing anything and it went perfect.Here is the list:

1:in the bios main page hit enter on my dvdrom drive it then give me options for TYPE and DMA MODE

2: Change type from auto to CD/DVD

3: Change DMA from auto to swdma2 (I don't know what this is but it worked for me) I do know it can't be UDMA mode and mine didn't work on auto

4: I went to floppy and put not installed (I have herd that Ubuntu sometimes keeps trying to find a floppy and won't install, so I unplugged mine)

5:turned acpi off ( I keep reading to turn it off at the installation screen so I thought I would in the bios, I didn't turn it off at the install screen)

and thats it, I didn't have to do anything except hit install to get it to install after changing my bios!!!