The (Other) End of the Internet

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…and it’s doing a WONDERFUL job of it!

I have tried to install Ubuntu Linux as part of a dual-boot on my desktop computer no less than SEVEN times. Here is the tutorial I am using as a guide.

All I can get it to do is sit and wave that blinding neon orange (YUK) bar back and forth for about a year then put up what looks like a command prompt that says “initramfs” in the prompt.

I checked with a search engine and found out how to get the system to give me a little information about what it is (or isn’t, as the case may be) doing. It’s hanging up while “waiting for the root file system”.

So, if I understand that correctly, after I’ve been fighting with this for a damn week, after I’ve rearranged my whole partition table (and LOST a bunch of data in the process) to make room form this OS, after it’s successfully written the operating system files to my hard disk not once, but SEVEN times, NOW this stupid thing is going to tell me it cannot read my hard disk?

For the record, Yes, my system is a little on the old side. The system doesn’t exactly have a brand name. I built it out of pieces and parts, most of which came to this end of the internet via eBay. I like to refer to it as “Frankenstein”. The motherboard is from Gigabyte Motherboards, but they discontinued it in 2003 or so, I think. The hard drive is an 80gigabyte IDE drive.

I saw one discussion that said the only way to fix the problem is to get into the system’s BIOS settings and set the hard drive type to “RAID” instead of IDE. I hope that’s not the only solution, because my BIOS doesn’t HAVE a setting for RAID drives!

Then there was another discussion where a guy mentioned that his hard drive was identified as /hda1 until he upgraded his kernel and something switched it to /hde1.

I need to either find someone who can tell me what the problem is, or I need to find a different build of Linux to install or, if all else fails, I could just stick with Windows and continue to make Microsoft wealthy.

Technorati Tags: ubuntu, linux, windows+xp, dual+boot, initramfs, waiting+for+root+file+system, gripes, rant,

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Looking at the title of this post, would you care to venture a guess as to what my mood is like right now? Here are the details about what happened, since you asked. Didn’t ask? Sure you did. Shut up and read.

I found this tutorial explaining how to dual boot linux and XP when XP is already installed. Reading through the various comments, I discovered that the author was very helpful and willing to assist with problems and questions. A question about moving partitions in order to make room for linux garnered a response that included a link to Paragon Partition Manager.

My first mistake was downloading that program. My second mistake was in running the setup utility for that program. My third, and biggest, mistake was in trying to USE that program.

I told it to take 1024K away from the last partition on the drive, move the partition to the end of the drive, take 500K off the next to last partition, move that partition over so it was up against the last partition, and so on, rather like giving every partition a dose of virtual Fenphedra, until the end result would be a 10.5Gigabyte expanse of unallocated space right next to my primary partition where I could install Ubuntu.

I stacked all these operations in its queue and went to bed because this was probably going to take several hours and it was already almost midnight. When I woke up this morning, I discovered that my E: drive (the home of my “Program Files” directory and every program I have ever installed) was BLANK, NOT FORMATTED, and my D: drive wants chkdsk run at boot, but chkdsk keeps saying “Corrupt Master File Table” and aborting.

Yeah, Yeah, you’re going to tell me, “You should have made a backup first”. Would anyone from that particular corner of the room care to tell me exactly HOW to backup 65+ gigs of stuff onto 10 gigs of media? If you can pull off that stunt, I seriously want to know how.

At this point, my plan is to use the freshly emptied partition to backup as much of my D: drive as possible (I’ll be trying to put 11GB of stuff onto an 8GB partition), delete, recreate, and format the partition containing D:, put stuff back on it, and then start re-installing stuff in my Program Files directory as I need it.

…and then spread as much bad publicity about Paragon Partition Manager as I possibly can.

Technorati Tags: ubuntu, linux, windows+xp, dual+boot, hard+disk, partitioning, Paragon+Partition+manager, errors

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The other day I was looking for a suggestion for rearranging partitions so I could dual boot my desktop machine. One person suggested I boot from Ubuntu’s LiveCD and use the partition editor included there, so I looked into that possibility last night and remembered a problem I have with that drive.

The reason my primary partition is 7.94 gigabytes is because there are a few bad sectors located at the 7.95gigabyte mark. When I tried to include that area and make my primary partition an even 8 gigs, Windows XP saw the bad sectors on my C: drive and refused to install.

What I actually have is:

Primary Partition (C:) - 7.94GB
Unused (unusable) space - 100MB
Extended Partition - ~72GB (split into 5 logical partitions)

My problem at this point is that 100MB area of bad sectors. Do I:

A) expand my primary partition to include it (assuming I can do so without losing all the data on my c: drive) and run ScanDisk to see if they can be repaired,

B) leave well enough alone, combine the logical partitions so that I end up with two partitions and a “dead zone” between them, then install Ubuntu after those two partitions, or

C) leave everything the way it is and just steal a few gigs from the end of the extended partition to install Ubuntu?

Option A would allow me to consolidate all my Windoze stuff into one partition and it would consolidate free space to allow the maximum amount of space for Ubuntu. It would, however, change all my drive letters and pretty much foul up every program that’s installed.

Option B still consolidates most of my free space and allows for a good sized Linux partition, but still changes drive letters and gives all my programs reason to complain.

Option C would be the easiest if it works, but it also leaves me the smallest possible amount of space for Ubuntu - something on the order of 2GB, I think - but it doesn’t require me to go through and fix all my other programs.

Given the need to work with what’s available and not just buy another drive, what would you do?

Technorati Tags: ubuntu, linux, windows+xp, install, dual+boot, partition, hard+drive

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Recently I got the chance to fiddle around with Ubuntu Linux and I kind of like it. I liked it enough that I’d like to install it on my desktop machine so I can actually use the real thing instead of a live CD or a virtual machine. However, I’m not sure I like it enough to consider it worth reformatting/repartitioning my hard disk and losing almost 70 gigs of data - some of which belongs to other members of my family.

The obvious solution is to set up a dual-boot system. I’ve seen a few “how-to” articles which explain how to do this in such a way as to not lose any data…

…but…

The way my 80 gig hard disk is partitioned, I have 6 drives ranging in size from 5 gigs to 25 gigs and my c: drive has less than 2 gigs free. About 90% of my free space is on the logical partition that the OS sees as drive H: - the opposite end of the disk from where I need it.

I know Partition Magic can resize, merge, and otherwise shuffle partitions around, but I also know that there’s no way I’m ever going to pay $70 for a program I’d only use once.

So, if anyone has any ideas on how I can get this partition table rearranged to make room for Linux without going into hock, I’d love to hear them.

Technorati Tags: windows, ubuntu, linux, dual+boot, hard+disk, partitioning, partition+magic, vmware

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I was wandering around on snopes.com just now because I find that site a little bit addictive. I picked up a bit of trivia that is both interesting and slightly disgusting. It seems that around the beginning of the 20th century some companies were advertising diet pills that worked because the capsule actually contained a tape worm.

Umm. Yuck!

Obviously, this was way before the reign if the Food and Drug Administration and the government’s enforcement of truth in advertising. Those were the days when people would sell stuff like either whiskey or tomato juice under the label of “cold medicine”.

One has to wonder who in their right mind would take a diet pill BECAUSE someone said it contained a tape worm.

Everyone knows that the best diet pills don’t move when you break them open.

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It occurred to me that I haven’t posted any bizarre news on here in quite a long time, so I went looking around on snopes.com and was referred to this gem.

No names have been published in connection to this article, but apparently a woman described as “upwards of 90 years of age” was found living in a house with two skeletons and a decomposing body of her siblings.

The article states that autopsies would be performed on the bodies.

How do you do an autopsy on a skeleton?

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I must be the luckiest person alive. At least, that’s what some people might have thought if they had seen my inbox this morning. I had exactly three emails waiting:

Email number one declared that I had won some sort of sweepstakes without even entering. The prize was 1.5 million British pounds. At the current exchange rate, that’s about $2,294,970 US Dollars according to an online conversion site that I use.

Email number two was from some credit company explaining that one of their clients had been killed in an airplane crash and left no next of kin. This unscrupulous person offered me 40% of his client’s 10.5 million dollar account if I would help him move the money out of his client’s account. My share of that transaction is 4.2 million dollars.

Email number three was another company wanting me to provide them with my correct bank account information so they can complete the transfer of an enexplained 3.6 million dollar payment.

All together that’s $10,094,970 USD I got while I slept last night. Aren’t you jealous?

Honestly, though, I’ve seen enough stuff like this to know three things:

1) I am not going to win a sweepstakes which I’ve never entered.

2) Even if some guy IS going to split the money 60-40 with me, I probably don’t want to be involved in a transaction that involves me lying about being related to someone.

3) I will never, ever, under any circumstances, email my bank account information to a total stranger - especially one who should already have that information if they are who they claim to be.

So, instead of planning a trip to vegas, I just forwarded all three emails to the reporting address for spamcop.net and went on with my (decidedly non-multi-millionaire-ish) life.

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As long as I’m going on about Granddaughter Number One, I just have to mention her book. My wife was selected by frecklebox.com to review their personalized gifts for children. They took our granddaughter’s name and sent her a personalized book.

To be honest, I expected one of those “personalized” books that are of such low quality that it’s obvious they printed off a small mountain of these things then went back with a rubber stamp with the kid’s name to fill in the blanks. This book blows those poor quality books away. The story is about a little girl who wants to learn to spell her name and the baby’s name is spelled out in pictures in the book - by autumn leaves, or sea shells, or rocks in a garden. She’s going to want to keep this book for a long, long time.

Honestly, I was so impressed with the book that I’m writing this rave review even though I wasn’t the one asked to do it. You know you have a winner when people start writing unsolicited reviews of it.

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I cannot believe how big Granddaughter Number One is getting. The first time we put her in her walker, she had to have a rolled-up towel to pad the thing with because she could barely hold up her head. Her feet wouldn’t reach the floor and she really wasn’t the least bit interested in the toys attached to the walker.

These days, however, she has no problem holding her head up and, while she hasn’t quite gotten the hang of going forward, she loves to push it backward as she uses her mouth, of all things, tp push the button in the middle of the tray which starts the music playing.

I can’t wait until she’s old enough to play in one of those kids wagons that’s designed to look like a car and operates on pedal-power. Something tells me she’ll enjoy making Grandma and Grandpa chase her all over the house.

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On this date in 1975, A steel freighter named the Edmond Fitzgerald was lost in Lake Superior. All twenty-nine men on board were lost. I cannot honestly say I remember it happening, but only because at the age of eleven I never bothered watching the evening news. The following year, Gordon Lightfoot released a song called “Wreck Of The Edmond Fitzgerald” which tells the story of what (probably) happened on board the ship that day.

The video below is one I found on YouTube. It is a truly awesome tribute to those twenty-nine souls.

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