Ubuntu

Ubuntu 7.10 FUBAR

Asked by spider

I wrote Ubuntu 7.10 to CD. Booted CD and dragged a new 160 GB eGo USB (fat32) hard drive icon to the install.

I resized the partition to 14% and the partitioner locks up at 15%. Rebooted, tried again, failed. Rebooted tried at 50%, still stops at 15%.

Boot to XP and the eGo shows only half the space. Loaded Acronis and ran the recovery for lost partitions. Still only recognizes only half the disk.

How can I fix this and get Ubuntu loaded on this USB hard drive.

I unmounted the drive and it installed, but now it won't boot off the new operating system.

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OK I now have things working on my main computer with the USB hard drive but my laptop has the GRUB error 21.

I had to boot to the hard drive instead of the USB drive to get the boot menu otherwise it reports Error loading operating system.

Not sure how to fix the MBR on the laptop.

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Revision history for this message
spider (spidersoft) said : 		#1

Recovered the partition with Cute Partition Manager.

I'll try loading Ubuntu later today.

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spider (spidersoft) said : 		#2

Formatted partition with XP to ntfs.
Tried loading Ubuntu to this entire partition and it still locks up at 15%.
I didn't lose the partition this time.

What can I try next? Create an unformatted Linux partition? Would that help?

Maybe tomorrow.

Revision history for this message
spider (spidersoft) said : 		#3

Finally got Ubuntu installed on the USB drive by unmounting it first.
Then on reboot, I got a could not boot from the operation system message.
Then when I tried to delete the partitions and create a new one, everthing went FUBAR!

I'll see what I can do with Gpart tomorrow.

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Mike Brown (mslorteau) said : 		#4

Try ordering a Live CD, it is probability a Cd error.
Try the error checker on the live cd menu.

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spider (spidersoft) said : 		#5

Here's what I've got figured out.

When you install Ubuntu from the CD it hijacks the MBR of the computer's main hard drive
in order to place its boot menu ahead of all other processes. If you are installing to an
external USB hard drive then you need to leave the boot order in the BIOS with the CD
first, then the onboard hard drive, then the USB drive. If the USB drive is first the loader
will not be able to load the operating system. The USB drive must always be connected
to get the Ubuntu boot menu.

Anyway, I still have not figured out how to repair the MBR on the laptop. The Grub error
that it reports is because it can't find the drive that was used in the install. Putting the
USB drive back on the laptop does not solve the problem.

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spider (spidersoft) said : 		#6

I did get Ubuntu running on my main machine.

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spider (spidersoft) said : 		#7

Downloaded MBR fixer from Dell and all is well.

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spider (spidersoft) said : 		#8

It turned out that Gparted could not partition my 160 gig
USB drive. This is why the installation would stall.