Using Linux

Although I just did a fresh install of Linux Mint the other day, I decided to do it again to straighten some things out before I had customized everything. Mostly I chose to reinstall because I was having a difficult time installing VMware Server. Because it requires a manual install, when it didn’t work, I wasn’t able to go find all the traces it had left all over the system to uninstall. I’m going to try VirtualBox instead.This time around I had extreme difficulties with my mix of IDE and SATA drives working correctly with GRUB.

My setup is this:

• Primary IDE
  • first partition: Windows XP
  • second partition: /home
  • third partition: Linux Mint
• Secondary IDE (linux swap)
• SATA 1 (data)
• SATA 2 (data)
• eSATA (data)
• USB IDE (data)

On the last screen of the install utility the “Advanced…” button gave the default for the bootloader installation as (hd0), which I thought would be acceptable. It wasn’t. GRUB would never start and the system would boot directly into Windows every time. I could boot into Linux with the Super Grub Disk, but that was not an ideal solution.

It turns out, the BIOS or the system or whatever sees the IDE drives first and the SATA drives second. Once any part of Linux Mint loads, its GRUB sees the SATA drives first and the IDE drives second. Therefore, (hd0) probably was /dev/sda during installation, which turned out to be the eSATA drive. I wanted the bootloader on the primary IDE drive.

I determined all of this with hours of going back and forth tweaking my /boot/grub/menu.lst file and trying to restore or install GRUB with Super Grub Disk. Using Super Grub Disk is how I found out the system sees the drives differently before Linux Mint starts. The GRUB command find /boot/grub/stage1 using SGD returned (hd0,2), while the same command from a terminal within the Linux Mint install or LiveCD returned (hd3,2).

I decided to redo the reinstall. This time I chose a different option from the “Advanced…” button on that last screen of the install utility. Instead of leaving it at (hd0) as is the default, I chose the drive from the list that I knew had the Windows partition on it. Although I thought it should be the first drive, it was listed as /dev/sdd. I deliberately chose the drive and not one of the partitions (/dev/sdd1, etc.).

The problems weren’t completely fixed there. The /boot/grub/menu.lst file had to be altered slightly. By changing references to (hd3,2) into (hd0,2) in the Linux section, GRUB would be able to boot into Linux properly.

The Windows section needed a little more tweaking. I found a few options on some forums. I removed all the map references and changed the Windows section to this:

title Microsoft Windows XP Professional
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
boot

After that change, everything booted like it was supposed to. I was amazed. GRUB loaded and I could choose Linux or Windows and each would come up with no problems at all. I was quite happy, finally.

Rolling out a new OS version every six months is no small task, so I applaud those who work on Ubuntu. I just don’t like how it catches me off guard and causes me to realize how little free time I have.

I want to start fresh. A clean install on a formatted partition. It is the recommended procedure on many forums, and I want to rid myself of Automatix. The problem is, I need to figure out all that I will have to reinstall when I actually do it. A short list so far:

• Opera
• Unison
• whatever I did for scheduling backups

Not the best thing when I start to not remember every little tweak I have made.

Maybe that is a good reason to update it here for myself.

First I must go back and look into separating my /home directory again to its own partition.

This evening I undertook the upgrade to Ubuntu 7.04. It went pretty smoothly. I started by using these steps for moving /home to a new partition. I learned something new in the process: when exiting Gnome using Ctrl+Alt+F1 all it takes to get back into Gnome is Ctrl+Alt+F7. I have been stuck a few times before because I didn’t know that and it is nice to realize now.

The next step was to insert the Fiesty CD I had burned and restart the system. My plan was to install fresh on a new partition and mount /home at the new partition I created for it. I was impressed that there were only 7 steps to the install and no interruptions after those 7. Ubuntu makes it easy to walk away for awhile once the file copying starts. Quite a contrast to Windows XP where one is constantly interrupted during the installation to ask for more input.

Because I have all kinds of hard drives and partitions I had to go through the manual install. Since I feel like I know what I’m doing in that area it was not hard. I did come across this bug in the installer though. I wasn’t trying to change the size of any partitions but it was a little scary because when editing a partition the New Size box had a value that was from a Free Space value on another partition. It was very strange. I didn’t change any of the numbers and they were ignored. I’m not sure what would have happened if I attempted to change them.

After booting into the new installation I realized that I had forgotten my plan to move one of my external hard drives to an eSATA connection rather than a USB connection. At this point I attempted to do this. The reason it matters is because as an eSATA connection the drive is /dev/sda instead of /dev/sdc. It comes before my two internal SATA drives. Upon reboot the drive wasn’t automounted and that was a bother. I looked in /etc/fstab and the file was using UUIDs to point to the drives. I decided to be lazy and just do a reinstall to fix the issue. It would give me a change to not automount all of the extra partitions I have on the computer as well.

So basically I restarted with the CD again and fixed my problems. I didn’t create mount points for all the partitions I didn’t want mounted and the eSATA drive came up as it should.

I’m happy.

Now just to make sure I have all the software I want.

I’ve been planning on doing some reorganization of my hard disk partitions for quite a while now. The occasion of the release of Ubuntu Feisty Fawn will prompt me to actually get it done.

I think I will do it this way on the 40GB IDE drive:

• hda1 Windows XP
• hda2 /home (accessible by Windows with Ext2 IFS)
• hda3 Ubuntu
• hda4 openSUSE

I’ve got an old 4.3 GB IDE disk that I’ll use for a swap drive too.

The first step will be to move my current /home directory to a newly created /home partition as recommended by Pelo in #ubuntu. I found a guide to moving /home on the Ubuntu Blog. I’ll then be able to just reinstall an OS and point it to /home during the installation. I just hope it’s not that much hassle getting things like VMware set back up.