Waxin’ Lyrical

So I finally had to do what I’ve been putting off, and since no amount of hemming and hawing could’ve gotten me out of it -

I went and did it.
I installed Linux on my desktop PC.

I managed to put it off during my networking modules - just do all the assignments in the lab! Fedora Core 5? A passing acquaintance, pleasant to work with and thoroughly professional, although generally very reserved and not exactly very friendly.

I managed to put it off during my database modules - again just use the labs! Red Hat? Another passing acquaintance, middle-aged and dignified, with a somewhat archaic demeanour, and even more reserved than FC5.

But then, what flavour for my desktop? One came to mind - one of the younger distributions, said to be good looking, amiable, kind-natured, and always glad to help - yet still of fine pedigree - highly capable, effective, and reliable. That distribution was Ubuntu Linux.

Meticulously, I set to work collecting information about how to best go about making room for her on my faithful pc. I have 2 drives - one IDE and one SATA, and while my boot partition is on my IDE drive, Windows XP resides comfortably on the SATA drive. I look up guides on the internet, and in preparation I free up one of the partitions on my IDE drive for my new OS. With my preparations done, I insert the LiveCD and prepare to welcome Ubuntu.

I must say that my first impression was an excellent one. Unlike a certain other OS, Ubuntu loaded up off the CD and greeted me with a warm and very friendly user interface (Gnome) - I look around and realise that she was actually running off the CD. I was provided with tools to manage my drives, Firefox (the network was fully functional), as well as a nice big icon on the desktop saying “Install”.

In what I hoped was a display of bravado I gallantly double clicked the icon.
My Pioneer whirled for a bit, and I was presented with a few questions regarding my install:
What language did I prefer? (Apparently Ubuntu is quite multilingual)
Where am I? (Ubuntu wanted to make sure of the time)
And finally, I was asked which partition I wanted to put her on, so I pick the partition I had prepared before hand…
but wait … Ubuntu absolutely had to have a swap partition, and quite adamantly insisted on me creating one.

Well fine, I thought. I’ll give you 2gb of space for swap - what’s 2gb anyway! So I try to create another partition on my IDE and realised I was at the maximum number of physical partitions (4), and could not create any more. No room for a swap partition here. My SATA was mostly full and had a logical partition I could use, but it was also almost full-up and I had no room to back up the data, nor the inclination to create a new swap partition in that one (which would mean erasing the data, and then making the new partition). I was in a dead-end, with no visible way to continue with the installation.

Ubuntu offered me a way out - she’d shrink the logical partition in my SATA and then create a new one of the space created after the shrink. I’ve read horror stories about data loss after people did similar things with a windows re-partitioner but had no other choice, and with a heavy heart I accepted. A window came up informing me that the process may take quite a while depending on the size of the data, and the thought of the loss of whatever data I had stored on that partition clutched at my heart every minute of the process - but after a while a “operation” complete window came up, and Ubuntu’s swap partition was created.

I’m posting this now on Windows, and I haven’t noticed any data loss.

The installation was almost ready to proceed - and I see on the “confirm options” screen “GRUB will be installed on (hd0)”. The guides I consulted said to not install GRUB on the Master Boot Record - GRUB is Linux’s bootloader and is used to load the OS. One guide emphatically notes in large bold text:

DO NOT INSTALL GRUB in the Master Boot Record (MBR)! If you install GRUB in the MBR, all bets are off…you’re on your own.

(hd0) was cryptic but didn’t look like MBR to me - but to be safe I look it up on Google, and it turns out that IT WAS THE CODE FOR GRUB TO REFER TO THE DREADED MBR. I had to change it - but how? I could find no guides on google regarding the grub-code, save for the fact that (hd0,x) referred to partition x on hd0. Ok, I thought. Now I can put GRUB on my linux partition.

Except I had 2 hard disks. Which one, then, was the one my Linux partition was on? I google it again - no dice. Fdisk -l reports that my IDE is hdc and my SATA is sda. I trawl through some support threads and see that hd0 is the first boot device, so I cancel the installation, go into BIOS setup, and make sure my IDE drive really was the first boot device. It wasn’t, of course - I had to boot from CD-ROM in order to install Ubuntu. Deciding to do what I could I set it to the next best thing - the second boot device, and restarted the install.

(hd0,x) is the partition x where I wanted GRUB installed, and since Linux is on the fourth partition I warily type in (hd0,4) and proceed with the install. Ubuntu hums along, the installer proceeds to about 90%, and notifies me that it was setting up GRUB…

and then it informed me that (hd0,4) was an invalid GRUB code, and threw a large “Installer has crashed unexpectedly”, followed by a terrifying “This is a fatal error” and a crash dump.

…then it hit me. The count starts from 0. Partition 4 is (hd0,3). How do I noobed this up?! AND WHY ARE YOU SO UNFORGIVING UBUNTU LINUX?! … you could have…. told me to input a new code, you know, instead of crashing in my face *sniffle*

To play it safe I reboot my PC and restart the installer, and the install proceeded smoothly this time. After it completes I am told to reboot my PC, and I follow the rest of the steps in the guide to get NTLDR to recognise Ubuntu is installed. I create the entry and successfully load GRUB …

… and realise that Ubuntu had recognised Windows XP during the install after all, and had a created an entry in GRUB to boot windows XP.

… D:

(In all fairness, a new user who hadn’t consulted any guides and who’s installing on a fresh system wouldn’t have run into any of these issues. Quite simply, I shot myself in the foot by following outdated guides. LET THIS BE A LESSON TO YOU ALLLLLLLLL)

This entry was posted on Friday, March 9th, 2007 at 1:29 pm and is filed under Journal Entry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.