Noob Linux DualBoot

fskmh said:
10GB will probably be too much for /, unless you plan to install some big 3rd party apps like IDL, Matlab etc. If you aren't ever going to compile big things that need a few 100MBs in /tmp or mess around with different kernels then you could get by with less. You want the bulk of the space available for /home. (I am assuming this is a desktop test installation and not an ftp server.)

How much is "the rest of the space"?
The old rule of 2 x the physical RAM for the swap partition doesn't really apply anymore. On a modern machine with >=512MB of RAM you'll probably be fine by making swap the same size as the physical RAM, unless you have some specific reason for making it larger.
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Well I tried that way and it didn't work either :(

Had like 900MB for swap file I think, maybe less.

Now I am back on Vista and it does not see the 20GB drive with the partial Ubuntu install on it at all...

Trying to shrink my Vista partition on Vista only yield 3.5GB. Do you think this will be enough? Also, should the install crash again, what will become of that partition? Will I never be able to see it under Vista? Just don't want to bugger things up too much because I am happy with my Vista install the way it is. Just keen to try some opensource for a change...
 
I've not had any experience with Vista but in XP all the Linux partitions show as "Unknown" in the computer management tool (control panel).

I've done many dual-boots on the same physical drive but I've always had the data backed up first. I think you should consider sitting on your hands until you have a functioning spare drive :).

P.S. To access files (read-only) from Windows I've been using Total Commander with the ext2 plugin (also reads Reiser3):
http://en.totalcmd.pl/download/wfx/dsk/ext2_Filesystem

I see there's an ext2rw plugin as well, never tried that. I see it doesn't do Reiser and I'd rather not have my lusers screw up the Linux partition because that's normally the one that still works when they break Winblowz :D.
 
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fskmh said:
I've not had any experience with Vista but in XP all the Linux partitions show as "Unknown" in the computer management tool (control panel).

I've done many dual-boots on the same physical drive but I've always had the data backed up first. I think you should consider sitting on your hands until you have a functioning spare drive :).
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Indeed, that seems to be the best thing right now, sadly. Can't say I am feeling any happier with Linux, after what I have seen of it so far but I guess it just takes some getting used to :p
 
Determined to get this bugger to work.

Have formatted the 20GB drive in Vista in NTFS format, checked it for errors(there were none). Now I am letting the Ubuntu installer do its thing automatically installing it on the drive...

34% so far....Fingers crossed.
 
hj2k_x said:
Determined to get this bugger to work.

Have formatted the 20GB drive in Vista in NTFS format, checked it for errors(there were none). Now I am letting the Ubuntu installer do its thing automatically installing it on the drive...

34% so far....Fingers crossed.
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I hope you're disconnecting the HDD with Vista installed before installing Ubuntu? - both as a precaution against formatting & installing over a Vista partition, as well as having the Ubuntu HDD setup as HDD0 [first IDE drive - primary & master], and then editing grub.conf to virtually swap HDDs when you want to boot Vista [e.g. physically connected as secondary & master IDE drive].
 
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ic said:
I hope you're disconnecting the HDD with Vista installed before installing Ubuntu? - both as a precaution against formatting & installing over a Vista partition, as well as having the Ubuntu HDD setup as HDD0 [first IDE drive - primary & master].
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Well it has bombed out again at exactly the same spot. I was not connecting the hdd with Vista on it at all. I thought that it had to be there during the install so that Ubuntu could 'see' it and include it in the boot options upon startup?

If i specify that I want to install it on the 20GB hdd which has nothing on it, is there still a danger to my Vista install??

Anyway, none of this is working either way...The 20GB drive clearly is quite old, but it is NTFS formatted and has no errors on it and works fine in Vista...

I am not sure how to progress from here really because the iso I downloaded has been checked and is fine and I burnt the CD at only 8x. I cannot make it go any slower than that.

Short of always running Ubuntu off the CD which is ridiculous, I am not sure what to try...

Edit: Gonna call it a night I think. In the morn, I will shrink my Vista partition and stick Ubuntu on the 3.5GB partition that comes from there.
 
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hj2k_x said:
I am not sure how to progress from here really because the iso I downloaded has been checked and is fine and I burnt the CD at only 8x. I cannot make it go any slower than that.
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Did you only check the ISO or did you also check the CD itself?
 
hj2k_x said:
Well it has bombed out again at exactly the same spot. I was not connecting the hdd with Vista on it at all. I thought that it had to be there during the install so that Ubuntu could 'see' it and include it in the boot options upon startup?

If i specify that I want to install it on the 20GB hdd which has nothing on it, is there still a danger to my Vista install??

Anyway, none of this is working either way...The 20GB drive clearly is quite old, but it is NTFS formatted and has no errors on it and works fine in Vista...

I am not sure how to progress from here really because the iso I downloaded has been checked and is fine and I burnt the CD at only 8x. I cannot make it go any slower than that.

Short of always running Ubuntu off the CD which is ridiculous, I am not sure what to try...

Edit: Gonna call it a night I think. In the morn, I will shrink my Vista partition and stick Ubuntu on the 3.5GB partition that comes from there.
Click to expand...
The only danger to your Vista HDD partitions, would be Vista itself and human error - considering that it is easy to make a horrible mistake when one is tired.

IMO you should disconnect the Vista HDD, and connect up the 20GB [NTFS formatted] HDD as the primary master, then retry the Ubuntu installation. Assuming all goes well, you can manually edit grub.conf later on to include the necessary dual-boot stuff for your Vista HDD.
 
Burn another CD and try install again, CD's/DVD's get the odd dud burn. Could also be your ISO. Make sure your CD is nice and new/clean. Good to get that out the way before you suspect hardware, especially on a machine that has a running install of an OS(vista). You could also be going wrong in the resizing part, it's generally better to do fresh installs.
So you need to establish the point of error pretty much.
About that extra hard drive, you can use it to your advantage and pull out the Vista one and test on the 20gig as IC said, this time using the "entire disk" option. See if you still get an error, then should be the CD or heat generated in the boxen during install causing a part failure/read-write IO errors.
 
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One other thing, check the BIOS settings for that 20GB HDD, could be that the BIOS is set to give the very old HDD super powers which the HDD cannot do anything with.
 
Thanks for all the feedback guys. I am determined to get this working today!

@ginglung, I have not checked the CD itself. The first one I burned wouldn't get me past the boot screen so I burnt this one at only 8x. It runs Linux fine off the CD, without install, so I figured it was not that. I shall purchase some new CD's today though cos mine are kinda old now and give that a try first.

Odd, cos my Windows proggies are not so sensitive- they work fine on these CD's.

@ic I see what you are saying as well. I just figured that doing it the way I was, was the Vista drive still in place, was basically the same thing, but I see what you mean about the primary master thing.

@Beta, I did try the 'entire disk' option last night on the blank 20GB drive and it still bombed out at the same place. It could be the CD or heat in my box i suppose. Has never been an issue up till trying out Linux. But I will try an eliminate both of these problems one at a time so I can know what the actual cause was.

Gotto go out now, but will try this all when I get back. :)
 
I had this problem as well.. for some reason the one cd i burnt just kept messing out. So I deleted the file I had downloaded, redownloaded it... and it worked fine.
 
Well, the Ubuntu/Kubuntu CDs I have all have a menu at the start where one of the options is to check the CD for defects.

I suspect that linux is a lot more sensitive i.t.o. Hardware issues than the M$ OSs. Yesterday, I got a warning that the BIOS on the laptop I'm using contains a known bug. Works nonetheless, but at less I now know about it.
 
I am back after a power outage, armed with brand new Verbatim CDs. Gonna burn a new CD and see if that solves the problem at all and then go from there. Have put on the huge 25cm side fan in my box as well, in case heat is causing issues...
 
Still no joy! New CD bombs out after 37% only with the same error, which is weird.

Checked the CD for errors using Linux and it found none. It is not the iso as I checked that already.

Formatted and error-checked the hdd in Vista and it found nothing there either. The case is nice and cool.

I am losing my keenness to get this to work :(

I haven't tried removing the Vista hdd before installing it, but I cannot see how that can be the problem here...

Have not checked in the BIOS, but I also don't understand why the install would sometimes get to 59% and now to 37% and then bomb out for the same reason?

Haven't tried redownloading the iso either, because I cannot see what could be wrong with it.

I thought this Ubuntu was meant to be user-friendly and easy to install? :p :(
 
Seems to be a problem with that particular release: http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-600126.html

Lots of guys here complaining about it. :(

Add that it works for some and not for others...Does anyone think that downloading the latest DVD would help or would that just be a waste of 4GB of bandwidth?

If not, what is the release just before 7.10 that is know to work the best? Maybe I can try that one...
 
@hj2k_x, for the dual-boot method to work, where GRUB tricks Vista into believing that it is installed on the primary master HDD, for simplicity, you must physically connect up your 20GB HDD as the primary master, and once installed add a few lines to grub.conf for dual-booting into Vista.

What version of Ubuntu are you trying to install? - I did scan through your posts, but couldn't find the answer.

Also, are you sure that you have the correct iso for your PC's architecture, i.e. i386|AMD, and are you trying to install the 32bit or 64bit version?

You could try downloading [or get it from a [searchforum]FreedomToaster[/searchforum]] the latest Ubuntu 7.10 DVD, but it probably would not solve the problem you're seeing, and then you will be :mad: about having wasted 4GB downloading it.

Check the BIOS settings once you have physically connected up the 20GB as the primary master HDD.

Also, try a different CDROM drive - I once had a problem with installing a Linux distro, where it booted but install just hanged using an old CDROM drive, could be something similar that you're experiencing.
 
ic said:
@hj2k_x, for the dual-boot method to work, where GRUB tricks Vista into believing that it is installed on the primary master HDD, for simplicity, you must physically connect up your 20GB HDD as the primary master, and once installed add a few lines to grub.conf for dual-booting into Vista.

What version of Ubuntu are you trying to install? - I did scan through your posts, but couldn't find the answer.

Also, are you sure that you have the correct iso for your PC's architecture, i.e. i386|AMD, and are you trying to install the 32bit or 64bit version?

You could try downloading [or get it from a [searchforum]FreedomToaster[/searchforum]] the latest Ubuntu 7.10 DVD, but it probably would not solve the problem you're seeing, and then you will be :mad: about having wasted 4GB downloading it.

Check the BIOS settings once you have physically connected up the 20GB as the primary master HDD.

Also, try a different CDROM drive - I once had a problem with installing a Linux distro, where it booted but install just hanged using an old CDROM drive, could be something similar that you're experiencing.
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Thanks for the detailed feedback.

The iso that I downloaded was the 7.10 gutsy gibbon one here: http://ubuntu.mirror.ac.za/ubuntu-release/gutsy/ubuntu-7.10-desktop-i386.iso

It it the x86 one. I am running an AMD XP5200+ processor which is 32 bit as far as I am aware....I am using the 32 bit install of Vista anyway...

A bit of googling tells me that there is a 64 after the XP5200+. Does this stand for 64 bit? If it does, then I will really feel a complete noob :o

That would surely mean I need the other iso and also could run Vista in its 64 bit glory?? :o
 
That's the one you want, that is currently running on my AMD Opteron 165, although mine can run both.
I'm also waiting to see how this pans out. The ISO in the link is only 700 MB so it's not that bad.
Awaiting to see if you error out again, I doubt it after the new ISO.
 
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hj2k_x said:
It it the x86 one. I am running an AMD XP5200+ processor which is 32 bit as far as I am aware....I am using the 32 bit install of Vista anyway...

A bit of googling tells me that there is a 64 after the XP5200+. Does this stand for 64 bit? If it does, then I will really feel a complete noob :o

That would surely mean I need the other iso and also could run Vista in its 64 bit glory?? :o
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Hmmm, I think you should be using the AMD Ubuntu iso image, a quick Google suggests that your AMD XP5200+ is dual-core Athlon64 [bit], I'm not sure, but I think ubuntu-7.10-dvd-amd64.iso might give you the option of installing using 32 bit compatibility mode - but it has been a while since I installed Ubuntu on my AMD64 PC, and I did the 64 bit install anyway.

PS: Installing 64 bit Ubuntu would not turn 32 bit Vista into 64 bit Vista - not sure if that's what you meant above.
 
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