Multi-booting Linux & XP

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/99222

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/72253

an inexpensive way of doing away with the hassle of dual booting. I have fancier ali ones
(http://www.ebuyer.com/product/124169) that cost me a bit more but I just swap now

[Alien]

Originally Posted by Cobbydaler

If you're on a liveCD setup then:

su -c "cat /union/boot/grub/device.map"

including quotes, that will prompt you for whatever the root password for the liveCD is set as...

No idea what it's set as; tried both root & ubuntu.

Originally Posted by zinglebarb

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/99222

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/72253

an inexpensive way of doing away with the hassle of dual booting. I have fancier ali ones
(http://www.ebuyer.com/product/124169) that cost me a bit more but I just swap now

You do have a point, however that would require setting aside an entire HDD for Linux, rather than just 24GB [10GB /, 4GB swap, 10GB /home] on my 500GB drive, which is what I'm trying to do.

[Cobbydaler]

Maybe it doesn't have one, just try

cat /union/boot/grub/device.map

[Alien]

Originally Posted by Cobbydaler

Maybe it doesn't have one, just try

cat /union/boot/grub/device.map

I've returned to XP for the moment, partly because I needed to do some stuff in Windows, & partly because I was getting a bit frustrated with Linux. I'll give it another go later.

On the subject of root & passwords with Ubuntu, I just found this:

There’s no default root password, so by default, root can’t login, you’re supposed to use “sudo� instead, after logging in as a regular user. Well, I thought I had mistyped my password once I found myself unable to login. So, I booted again from the CD. Then I found out that I was not root, but user 999, or “ubuntu�. How to become root? “su� didn’t seem to work, wanted a password, which I had no idea. Luckily, the network was working, and there’s a browser in the live-cd environment, so I was able to google around and find the solution. The deal is, by default, in the live-CD environment, there is no root password that allows a login. However, you can do

$ sudo passwd root

And that will let you set a root password from the live-CD environment.

Then, I could become root via “sudo su -�, and mount my real root partition on /tmpmnt, and then chroot into there, and it was then, when I tried to “passwd scameron� to change what I had thought was a botched password, it told me “scameron: no such user.� Then, by “cat /etc/passwd� I found out I had mistyped my own name. “/sbin/init 6?, and login with my misspelled username, and here I am, typing this.

So, the magic words to remember for using a debian based (e.g. ubuntu) live CD as a rescue CD are these:

sudo passwd root

Linkage

[xpod]

I've had a bunch of probs trying to get Kubuntu to install, so much that I'm now trying Ubuntu. The problem I've got at the moment is different ways of referring to HDDs. In the partitioning bit of the installer, & in GParted, it refers to drives as hda, sda, & sdb, but in the advanced options to choose which drive to put the bootloader on, it has hd0 as the default option, so would sdb be hd2?

On a different note - why is it that GParted & the installer's partitioning section take an eternity to get the partition info from the drives, when it takes less than 10 seconds in XP, either in XP's own applet or Partition Manager?

It can be a little confusing at first,especially after plain old C`s & D`s eh.
The grub bootloader will always offer to install the grub to the mbr of the first drive(hd0?) unless you tell it otherwise.
If you have Windows on the drive then you would obviously need to repair the MBR if you ever decided to remove *buntu again.
It`s easy enough to do with your recovery console or a 98 bootdisk even.
Just going with those defaults for Grub to the MBR is fine though imho.

This confusion(i`m getting confused myself here just thinking about drives) is one of the reasons why i always suggest a nice unallocated partition and letting the installer use the "largest continuous free space".Especially when it`s possibly the first time/s installing.
Manual partitioning & creating the extra partitions is all well & good.... once you get your head round the various terms etc.
Gparted can be slow & even problemtic from the Ubuntu cd at times but i always use the Gparted live cd for any manual partitioning jobs.
I`ve never had problems with Gparted on it`s own cd although i have with the one on the Ubuntu cd itself.

You do have a point, however that would require setting aside an entire HDD for Linux, rather than just 24GB [10GB /, 4GB swap, 10GB /home] on my 500GB drive, which is what I'm trying to do.

You could get a few *buntus on that thing eh,all of them in fact,plus the other top 99 distros over on distrowatch probably

cat /union/boot/grub/device.map

The only thing that will result in from a live Ubuntu cd is...

cat: /union/boot/grub/device.map: NO such file or directory

Not too sure about the "union part"??
Even without the union part though there is no "/boot/grub/device.map" in the live cd environments file system.It wont exist until after grub is actually installed it seems.

Normal sudo commands will not ask for a password in the live environment but trying to be root will of course.
Not sure why you would want to become root in a live cd though...unless you mabey doing some rescue work of some sort

[Cobbydaler]

Originally Posted by xpod

The only thing that will result in from a live Ubuntu cd is...

cat: /union/boot/grub/device.map: NO such file or directory

Not too sure about the "union part"??
Even without the union part though there is no "/boot/grub/device.map" in the live cd environments file system.It wont exist until after grub is actually installed it seems.

Well it appears in my Mandriva 2008 liveCD file system? I would have thought it would have to work out the relationship between the hardware & the device names allocated before installation? Unless 'buntu doesn't bother doing that until you actually choose to install?

/union/ is an overarching directory created by unionfs that allows the normal / directory to be combined with the memory resident tmpfs file system.

Maybe 'buntu uses aufs instead of unionfs?

[dragon]

Originally Posted by xpod

Gparted can be slow & even problemtic from the Ubuntu cd at times but i always use the Gparted live cd for any manual partitioning jobs.
I`ve never had problems with Gparted on it`s own cd although i have with the one on the Ubuntu cd itself.

Does the one on the gparted cd resize ext3 ok?
The ubuntu cd didn't offer me the ablity to do that.

At the moment I have 2 x250gb drives
first is 85gb (k)ubuntu 7.10 x64
150gb vista x64
and a small dell utility partition

2nd is completely formatted to ext3 but I might want to resize that and drop in another NTFS partition for my games

[xpod]

Well it appears in my Mandriva 2008 liveCD file system? I would have thought it would have to work out the relationship between the hardware & the device names allocated before installation? Unless 'buntu doesn't bother doing that until you actually choose to install?

/union/ is an overarching directory created by unionfs that allows the normal / directory to be combined with the memory resident tmpfs file system.

Maybe 'buntu uses aufs instead of unionfs?

I know both the auf-tools & unionfs-tools packages are available in the repos but thats all i know about them it seems.
I`ve had to throw an Ubuntu cd in just to be sure but theres definetely no device.map...or even a grub directory itself come to that.

It`s got me wondering how the Ubuntu live cd does this now too though.
I always use alternate cd`s for installing so i`ve never really spent toooo much time in the Ubuntu live environment thinking about this...none in fact.
Not worrying about device.mapping anyway.
I use Puppy if i need a live environment for most other reasons, besides installing our own setups.

All this kinda stuff can be soooo off-putting for the potential new user though eh, which is why i always suggest the more straightforward methods for the first time installers.
Once people(not meaning you in particular alien) start getting bogged down in the potential complexities of manual partitioning for the very first time it`s so easy to end up losing the plot.......especially if they lose Windows along the way.Worse when they aint backed up too of course

"Ubuntu ate my XP" is an all too familiar thread title in some places.
Let Ubuntu take control i say.....it`s not as stupid us as newbs can be.

Not as often anyway

---------- Post added at 13:13 ---------- Previous post was at 13:11 ----------

Does the one on the gparted cd resize ext3 ok?
The ubuntu cd didn't offer me the ablity to do that.

At the moment I have 2 x250gb drives
first is 85gb (k)ubuntu 7.10 x64
150gb vista x64
and a small dell utility partition

2nd is completely formatted to ext3 but I might want to resize that and drop in another NTFS partition for my games

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/features.php

[Cobbydaler]

As it happens, I've just downloaded Marauding Marmoset 7.3333 & had a play with the liveCD...

No sign of a device.map file anywhere, although grub has to generate one when installing.

When you specify the option --device-map, the grub shell creates the device map file automatically unless it already exists. The file name /boot/grub/device.map is preferred.
If the device map file exists, the grub shell reads it to map BIOS drives to OS devices. This file consists of lines like this:
device file
device is a drive specified in the GRUB syntax, and file is an OS file, which is normally a device file.
The reason why the grub shell gives you the device map file is that it cannot guess the map between BIOS drives and OS devices correctly in some environments. For example, if you exchange the boot sequence between IDE and SCSI in your BIOS, it gets the order wrong.

Anyway, the liveCD nearly gave me a dicky fit, as the disk manager thingy told me it was using my PC-BSD partition for tmpfs! Luckily it wasn't actually.

I may try installing the KDE version to see how everything works...

[xpod]

As it happens, I've just downloaded Marauding Marmoset 7.3333 & had a play with the liveCD...

No sign of a device.map file anywhere, although grub has to generate one when installing.

Quote:When you specify the option --device-map, the grub shell creates the device map file automatically unless it already exists. The file name /boot/grub/device.map is preferred.
If the device map file exists, the grub shell reads it to map BIOS drives to OS devices. This file consists of lines like this:
device file
device is a drive specified in the GRUB syntax, and file is an OS file, which is normally a device file.
The reason why the grub shell gives you the device map file is that it cannot guess the map between BIOS drives and OS devices correctly in some environments. For example, if you exchange the boot sequence between IDE and SCSI in your BIOS, it gets the order wrong.

Anyway, the liveCD nearly gave me a dicky fit, as the disk manager thingy told me it was using my PC-BSD partition for tmpfs! Luckily it wasn't actually.

I may try installing the KDE version to see how everything works...

To hell with the device.map......whats the best way to clean Tetley off a keyboard??

[Alien]

Originally Posted by xpod

It can be a little confusing at first,especially after plain old C's & D's eh.

"... and the winner of this year's Understatement of the Year award goes to... XPOD!"

Originally Posted by xpod

The grub bootloader will always offer to install the grub to the mbr of the first drive(hd0?) unless you tell it otherwise.

I was thinking it would be better to put it on the same drive as I have the OS, as that's the newest & biggest 1, & the least likely to be removed for any reason any time soon.

Originally Posted by xpod

If you have Windows on the drive then you would obviously need to repair the MBR if you ever decided to remove *buntu again.
It's easy enough to do with your recovery console or a 98 bootdisk even.

Or a Partition Manager bootable CD.

Originally Posted by xpod

Just going with those defaults for Grub to the MBR is fine though imho.

I think I'll try telling it to put it on hd2, as like I said, I'd prefer it on the same drive as the OS.

Originally Posted by xpod

This confusion(i'm getting confused myself here just thinking about drives) is one of the reasons why i always suggest a nice unallocated partition and letting the installer use the "largest continuous free space".Especially when it's possibly the first time/s installing.
Manual partitioning & creating the extra partitions is all well & good.... once you get your head round the various terms etc.

What can I say? I guess I'm just used to having my computer setup the way I want it, rather than some arbitrary decision made by the software I'm installing, that's why I always choose the custom install option when it's available with Windows software.

Originally Posted by xpod

Gparted can be slow & even problemtic from the Ubuntu cd at times but i always use the Gparted live cd for any manual partitioning jobs.
I've never had problems with Gparted on it's own cd although i have with the one on the Ubuntu cd itself.

The version on the Kubuntu CD wouldn't even complete loading, just started scanning for devices then crashed, every time.

Originally Posted by xpod

You could get a few *buntus on that thing eh,all of them in fact,plus the other top 99 distros over on distrowatch probably

If it were empty to begin with, perhaps.

Originally Posted by xpod

Normal sudo commands will not ask for a password in the live environment but trying to be root will of course.
Not sure why you would want to become root in a live cd though...unless you mabey doing some rescue work of some sort

Blame Cobby, he's the 1 that told me I needed to do that command as root.

Originally Posted by xpod

I've had to throw an Ubuntu cd in just to be sure but theres definetely no device.map...or even a grub directory itself come to that.

Well, as I said above, I'll try telling it to put it on hd2 next time I try, which won't be until at least tonight, or maybe tomorrow.

Originally Posted by xpod

All this kinda stuff can be soooo off-putting for the potential new user though eh, which is why i always suggest the more straightforward methods for the first time installers.

True. The problem is, there's no need for it to be this awkward, it's not like GUI design is difficult [as in actually figuring out how to lay things out, etc; not including the coding of the GUI in that statement]. Sometimes I wonder if some linux programmers feel that their software has to be awkward to use & unintuitive, or else they'd be "selling out" or something.

Originally Posted by xpod

Once people(not meaning you in particular alien) start getting bogged down in the potential complexities of manual partitioning for the very first time it's so easy to end up losing the plot.......especially if they lose Windows along the way.Worse when they aint backed up too of course

I think [hope] I understand partitioning enough, even under Linux, not to risk FUBARing my XP installs, but I do take your point. The Kubuntu installer told me it failed when trying to format the first partition of the 3 [/] as ext3, so I rebooted into XP, created & formatted 3 partitions [ext3, swap, & ext3] in Partition Manager, then rebooted with the Kubuntu CD. This time when I get to the parititoning bit I simply assigned the partitions to what I want them to be & carry on. Then it tells me that the partition designated as / isn't set to be formatted [even though it's a cleanly formatted partition], & that I must set it to be formatted, except it wouldn't let me. I tried clicking in the formatting checkbox to set it to be formatted but it wouldn't change state. At that point I gave up with Kubuntu & decided to try Ubuntu [well, it was that & the fact that I'd had Kubuntu's KDE toolbar crash on me for no apparent reason!].

Originally Posted by Cobbydaler

As it happens, I've just downloaded Marauding Marmoset 7.3333 & had a play with the liveCD...

Originally Posted by Cobbydaler

I may try installing the KDE version to see how everything works...

See my experiences with Kubuntu above. It may behave differently for you, but it made me less inclined to go with KDE, which is a shame, as I much prefer the look of KDE to Gnome.

Originally Posted by xpod

To hell with the device.map......whats the best way to clean Tetley off a keyboard??

Bounty kitchen roll is fairly good. Slide it edge-wise down between the keys to get any liquid that's gone beyond the key tops.

[xpod]

I should have started earlier with a "dont quote me on this"

"... and the winner of this year's Understatement of the Year award goes to... XPOD!"

I said "a little confusing" now

I was thinking it would be better to put it on the same drive as I have the OS, as that's the newest & biggest 1, & the least likely to be removed for any reason any time soon.

I think I'll try telling it to put it on hd2, as like I said, I'd prefer it on the same drive as the OS

Sounds good.Keeping everything seperate is great but i just dont like seeing people trying linux & possibly getting peeved off just becuse of any needless complexity(unfamiliarity)...not on first outings anyway.
I know there are people who actually take their Windows drives out(disconnect) when installing Linux on second drives.Then they just use their f12(or similar?) at start up for choosing which drive to actually boot.

What can I say? I guess I'm just used to having my computer setup the way I want it, rather than some arbitrary decision made by the software I'm installing, that's why I always choose the custom install option when it's available with Windows software.

Quite right too,The whole point of Linux is the freedom to do what you want. All i meant though was that if someone is finding it a bit difficult to get the head round all the manual partitioning terms etc then there are much simpler ways to go about it.
If people installing for the first times are going to go down the more complicated roads to start out then good luck to them.It`s all good education....as long as they know there are easier ways usually...EDIT:And as long as they dont let it put them off

True. The problem is, there's no need for it to be this awkward, it's not like GUI design is difficult [as in actually figuring out how to lay things out, etc; not including the coding of the GUI in that statement]. Sometimes I wonder if some linux programmers feel that their software has to be awkward to use & unintuitive, or else they'd be "selling out" or something.

It`s only awkward when it`s not familiar m8.(more understatements eh)
Your just used of doing things a certain way,with certain terms.
If you ever find yourself having "used" linux for anywhere near as long as you`ve used Windows(?) then i`m sure those hd0`s & sda`s will be just as easy to understand as those familair ole C`s & `Ds.

I think [hope] I understand partitioning enough, even under Linux, not to risk FUBARing my XP installs, but I do take your point. The Kubuntu installer told me it failed when trying to format the first partition of the 3 [/] as ext3, so I rebooted into XP, created & formatted 3 partitions [ext3, swap, & ext3] in Partition Manager, then rebooted with the Kubuntu CD. This time when I get to the parititoning bit I simply assigned the partitions to what I want them to be & carry on. Then it tells me that the partition designated as / isn't set to be formatted [even though it's a cleanly formatted partition], & that I must set it to be formatted, except it wouldn't let me. I tried clicking in the formatting checkbox to set it to be formatted but it wouldn't change state. At that point I gave up with Kubuntu & decided to try Ubuntu [well, it was that & the fact that I'd had Kubuntu's KDE toolbar crash on me for no apparent reason!].

You could always install KDE once your up & running if you want but either way never be put off by looks.Any Linux can be made to look any way you want really.

[dragon]

Originally Posted by xpod

I should have started earlier with a "dont quote me on this"

It`s only awkward when it`s not familiar m8.(more understatements eh)
Your just used of doing things a certain way,with certain terms.
If you ever find yourself having "used" linux for anywhere near as long as you`ve used Windows(?) then i`m sure those hd0`s & sda`s will be just as easy to understand as those familair ole C`s & `Ds.

from how I understand it.

hda1 IDE harddrive 1 (partition 1)
hda2 IDE drive 1 (partition2)
hdb1 IDE drive 2 (parition1)

or

sda1 scsi/sata drive 1 (partiton 1)
sda2 Scsi/sata drive 1 (partition2)
sdb1 Scsi/sata drive2 (partiton1)

and so forth.

although some sata drives show up as IDE depending on the controller making them hd(x) enteries rather than sd(x) entries

Hd(0,1) is drive 0 partition 2 (system counts from 0), so the first drive on the first controller.

hd(1,5) would be harddrive 2 partition 6 .

I may be wrong with the hd(0,1) etc since i've only had to deal with them in grub a couple times and am still learning

Its actually very logical when I think about it, makes the windows way of doing things seem silly.

[Cobbydaler]

You've gt it spot on there...

I've just installed Kubuntu & ended up downloading the alternative CD. The graphical install one wanted GRUB to take over my MBR, with no other option...

Going to try & configure the wireless now...

[dragon]

Originally Posted by Cobbydaler

You've gt it spot on there...

I've just installed Kubuntu & ended up downloading the alternative CD. The graphical install one wanted GRUB to take over my MBR, with no other option...

Going to try & configure the wireless now...

its easier than it used to be...
and theres a lot of friendly folks over to talk you though it.

I would update the kernel on my kubuntu but last time I tried that with the 32bit version (running 64bit thesedays) the damn Nvidia GLX module wouldn't load


strange since I had it working on debian with that version of the kernel... might have been something i did wrong when setting the config.