ubuntu installed twice

[philippe75]

Hi,

Ok it sounds weird, but I first installed Ubuntu few days ago but without enough memory - so I tried to re-install it because nothing had been done on the first install so I thought this would be easier.
I also thought I had deleted the old ubuntu partition with the partition manager of the live CD, but actually I did not! so now I have two ubuntu OS at start up (and XP)

I am more than a newb (this explains the situation I guess) so if someone could explain me how to remove the 'old' ubuntu and give the space to the one?

Thanks a lot

Phil

Just in case if it helps, here is the result of df -h:

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda8 17G 2.5G 14G 16% /
tmpfs 501M 0 501M 0% /lib/init/rw
varrun 501M 132K 501M 1% /var/run
varlock 501M 0 501M 0% /var/lock
udev 501M 168K 501M 1% /dev
tmpfs 501M 76K 501M 1% /dev/shm
lrm 501M 2.4M 499M 1% /lib/modules/2.6.28-11-generic/volatile
tmpfs 501M 2.2M 499M 1% /lib/modules/2.6.28-14-generic/volatile

and fdisk -l shows:

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 912 7325608+ 12 Compaq diagnostics
/dev/sda2 * 913 6991 48829567+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 6992 12161 41528025 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 6992 9552 20571201 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 11836 12139 2441848+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 12140 12161 176683+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda8 9553 11734 17526883+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda9 11735 11835 811251 82 Linux swap / Solaris

from my understanding, I should get rid of /sda6 and /sda7...

[s3MA00RRNY]

You may see something like this

Ubuntu 9.04, linux-2.6.28-14-generic
Ubuntu 9.04, linux-2.6.28-14-generic (recovery mode)
Ubuntu 9.04, linux-2.6.28-11-generic
Ubuntu 9.04, linux-2.6.28-11-generic
Other Operating Systems:
Windows Vista/Longhorn

If this is what you are getting, you do not have two Ubuntu OSes installed. You have two kernels installed. Ubuntu gets frequent kernel updates. The newest one is at the top. The idea is that if the new kernel backfires, you can still boot the old one. They are not very large, only over 100MB, so you don't really need to remove the old one.

[philippe75]

thanks for the reply pcdude2143.

well, from my understanding, I have several partitions for ubuntu, of the exactly same version of the system (same install disk, two instal within 24 hours, just one has more memory than the other, the one I would like to remove).
there is nothing like a recovery kernel etc on my laptop (yet)

so how can I remove what is useless?

I agree, this is not a lot of memory, but still... I'd like to clean my mess!

thanks again

[colau]

thanks for the reply pcdude2143.

well, from my understanding, I have several partitions for ubuntu, of the exactly same version of the system (same install disk, two instal within 24 hours, just one has more memory than the other, the one I would like to remove).
there is nothing like a recovery kernel etc on my laptop (yet)

so how can I remove what is useless?

I agree, this is not a lot of memory, but still... I'd like to clean my mess!

thanks again

Does this help?
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...ighlight=linux
See post #17.

[harry2006]

find the one that got installed later, modify the grub to remove the entry for others...done!!! get back those partitions and use them under the current ubuntu...

[raymondh]

I hope I understood your post.... which is to do partitioning work to delete partitions and enlarge some to take up the vacated space.

You can use gparted from the liveCD to work on partition (deleting, resizing, moving).

A live gparted ought to unmount the partitions. Just to be sure, right click on the intended partition and if given the option to unmount, do so. Also, rt. click on swap and select swap-off. You'll know that it is mounted if it either has a key sign of you have greyed-out options to resize, etc.

Back up your files. Know which partition to delete. You may have to recover or reinstall grub but that is easy to do.

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/larry...es/gparted.htm
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/larry...e/resizing.htm
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=224351

If I understood wrong, my apologies.

[philippe75]

Thanks for all the replies!

I tried colau's commands, without sucess.
I did not really understand harry's solution, I will have to think about it.

I tried the gparted stuff, boot, from thier cd etc.
I saw the partition I wanted to deleted, I tried to delete them, but for reason there are still here!!

The thing is, I try to do that from a broken screen laptop and I use my TV if I can - with the boot CD of gparted, the vga mode failed, and I had to guess what was on the broken screen (depending on the angle, I may see something, but it is really really dark) so maybe I forgot an 'OK' or something...

Anyway, thanks again for the replies, I wil definitively retry later on!

Phil

[stlsaint]

hey i dont know what everyone else was saying becuz it looks like you just need to remove the kernel which is easy: SYSTEM>STARTUP MANAGER!!!
from there you will be able to set how many kernels you see at boot up and if you absolutely want to get rid of the kernels and you cant find how to do them from there than post here again and we will try via terminal!!

[raymondh]

kindly confirm ...

are you trying to remove kernels from your boot up screen or ... are you trying to delete a partitioned ubuntu installation?

If it is kernel ..... see what stlsaint says. Install startupmanager and set defaults, etc. from there. See attached screenshots. It will also write to the menu.lst.

If delete a partitioned install (because you installed it twice) ... then see the links provided on how to.

[philippe75]

First of all, thanks a lot, I managed to do most of the changes I wanted. I think my problem was close to what raymondhenson suggested - delete a partition.

So I got gparted work in a safe graphics mode finally - then, I deleted the partitions that I did not want anymore, resize the others, got an error grub error 22 at the following reboot, but the last link given by raymondhensonsolve solved everything.

And now, fdisk -l return this:

Disk /dev/sda: 100.0 GB, 100030242816 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 12161 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xf82bc96a

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 912 7325608+ 12 Compaq diagnostics
/dev/sda2 * 913 6991 48829567+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 6992 12161 41528025 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 6992 9552 20571201 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 9553 12058 20129413+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 12059 12161 827316 82 Linux swap / Solaris

which is fine for me.

But when I reboot, I still see 2 linux in the list of possible OS's to start with, and I don't want to try the old one for now - any idea on how edit this list and keep only OS's alive?

I hope this is clear.

Thanks again,

Philippe