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Hardy Heron / Gutsy Gibbon Graphical Installation 'C'

Pre-partitioning with the Gnome Partition Editor and then installing Ubuntu.

Last Edited: Thursday, May 08 2008

Ubuntu Hardy Heron has just been officially released.

This web page was first made using the 'Beta' and 'Release Candidate' versions that were available for testing or previewing.
Now it has been newly updated to the current Hardy Heron LTS release.

This web page describes one way to partition a hard disk for installing Ubuntu Hardy Heron 'dual boot' style with another Linux operating system.

This is the first time I have bothered to illustrate the graphical installer, because the graphical installation is so easy, and because there are already some very good web pages and video about it already.
I wanted to show people how to do the actual partitioning part of the operation, most of the other installation sites seem to be skipping that, and that could be stopping some new users from installing Ubuntu.

Actually, hard disk partitioning is quite simple for most of us. These days we have Gnome Partition Editor so we can 'see' what we are doing, (or at least see a graphical representation of it).
This installation uses Gnome Partition Editor to pre-partition the hard disk prior to installation from the Ubuntu Hardy Heron Live CD.

The CD used for this installation was made from ubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso,
herman@amd64:~$ md5sum ubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso
8895167a794c5d8dedcc312fc62f1f1f ubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso

How to run an md5sum integrity test on your downloaded .iso file (before you burn it to disk).

Why integrity check your downloaded .iso?

Checking the integrity of your .iso in Ubuntu

Checking the integrity of your .iso from a Linux live CD

Checking the integrity of your .iso in Windows

The computer used for this demonstration is a standard 'run-of-the-mill' desktop PC.
The processor is an LEC brand, model PM266A, with an ASUS P4V533-MX main board, Intel Celeron 2.60 GHz CPU, and 487.3 MB of RAM.
It used to have Windows XP Home Edition in it until I deleted it and installed Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon instead.
There's a photo of the computer further down this page, click to here look at it.

I got this computer second hand. It was cheap because it wasn't working at all.

After I got it and figured out there was nothing apparently wrong with the hardware, installing Ubuntu in it got rid of the "main problem" and fixed it quick.
Now it's going to be my Ubuntu demonstration computer and I'm going to keep it in my front room where anyone interested in Ubuntu can come and use it and try Ubuntu out in it.
There are more and more people interested in Ubuntu these days.

TIP for those with MODEST RAM: If your PC has around 256 MB of RAM, you can still use the Ubuntu Hardy Heron Live CD for installing with, but you will need to make a swap area on your hard disk first for the Ubuntu Live CD to use when it needs extra RAM.
You can download and use the GParted -- Live CD to partition your hard disk first, and then use the Ubuntu Hardy Heron 'Desktop' Live CD to install with.
After that you will find the Ubuntu Live CD will run alright, if not, you may need the Ubuntu 'Alternate' CD instead, that can install a minimal Ubuntu system in a PC with as little as 32 MB of RAM.

You should always make a backup of at least your most important files before using any hard disk partitioning software.
You may also optionally want to make a backup of the boot loader code area of your first hard disk's Master Boot Record too. This installation installs GRUB's stage1 code there.
Here's a link about how to back up and restore your MBR (optional), MBR backup and restore.

You may also want to take the precaution of downloading a copy of Super Grub Disk as well, just in case you have any problems booting at first after the installation. It's extremely rare to have booting problems if your computer only has one hard disk.
Occasionally, computers with more then one hard disk do have booting problems at first, especially if they have SATA and PATA hard disks mixed together in the same computer, or if they have PATA (IDE) disks and the jumper settings are all messed up. Boot problems are generally easily fixed, but you might need Super Grub Disk to help you boot your computer for a little while until you get the problem solved.

Okay, so we're going to install Ubuntu Hardy Heron after Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon now, and this means partitioning the hard disk to make room for Hardy.
We're going to use Gnome Partition Editor.

The first thing to do is boot the Ubuntu Hardy Heron Desktop LiveCD, (of course).
If your Live CD doesn't boot, make sure you have the boot order in your BIOS set to boot from a LiveCD. If you're not sure how to do that, look at this link, BIOS Page .

This is the first thing you see when the Ubuntu Hardy Heron Desktop Live CD boots up, a language selection screen.

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Here's where I made a wrong turn, I chose to boot the Ubuntu Live CD directly.

I should have scrolled down to 'Check CD for defects' first. That might have saved me hours of time and bother if I had just taken an extra few minutes to relax and let the CD check its own integrity. But I was in too much of a hurry.
You'll see what happened later on.

Another option is to just scroll down one line and pick 'Install Ubuntu', that would be okay if we were going to use the Ubuntu installer's built in partitioner.

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Here we are in the Desktop of the Live CD.

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You can find Gnome Partition Editor in the Ubuntu Desktop Live CD by clicking 'System'-->'Administration'-->'Partition Editor'.

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Figure 1 shows the hard disk with Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon installed in a single / (root) partition plus a swap area.

Before partitioning your hard disk there are a few things you should know, like the 'partitioning rules', and what sort of partition scheme will suit you best.
We don't have room for all that in this page.
Here is a link to another page with some information about that, Help on Partitioning.

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It's easy to resize a partition with GParted (Gnome Partition Editor), you just right-click on the partition you want to shrink or expand and click 'resize/move', from the right-click menu.
Then you grab an end of the partition to be resized and drag it to were you want it.
You can also use the arrows on the spin boxes to achieve more accuracy if you like, or you can highlight the numbers and type another number over them to set the size you want.

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Let me see now, I want to divide the size it is now, 37174 MiB, in half so I'll have two partitions of equal size.
That's 37174/2, and that comes to 18587 MiB.

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Okay, now I just need to click the 'Resize/Move' button.

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Okay, done!

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I right-clicked on the free space and clicked 'New'.
I want the new partition to be a primary partition, but really it doesn't matter.
I want the ext3 file system.
That doesn't matter either, because it will be formatted again later by the installer.

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Gnome Partition Editor is making my partition for me.

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Alright!

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All done!

Both of the Ubuntu installations will share the same swap area, there's no need to do anything regarding the swap area.

The partitioning is all done, now it's time to install Ubuntu.

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To begin the installation from the Desktop of the Live CD, I right-click on the white 'Install' icon and click 'Open'.

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Here's the language selection panel, it's already set to 'English' by default, so all I need to do is click 'Forward'.

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Hover your mouse over the new location selection map and it automatically zooms in, select your nearest city for time zone purposes and click on it.

The other way to select your city is to click on the 'Selected city' spinbox and scroll up and down the list to choose a city in your time zone.
For me it's 'Brisbane', even though I'm actually a very long way from there.
The important thing is it's in the time zone I'm in.

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Most of us use a US English type of keyboard, even in Australia, but if you do have a special type of keyboard you'll probably find it here somewhere.

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Sorry, no, I don't want to use 'Guided' partitioning this time.
'Guided' partitioning would be the best choice for a Windows user.
If I only had a Windows installation in my hard disk and nothing much else, it will automatically make me an ext3 formatted partition for the '/' (root) file system for Ubuntu and a swap area.

The main reason I want to choose 'Manual' here is because of the swap area, I already have one, so I don't need another one.

For anyone who doesn't know what a swap area is for, it's like a 'page file', but it's in a separate partition. It is used for a slow lane for the memory, leaving your RAM free for the fast stuff.
The swap area becomes even more important if the computer has less than about 512 MB of RAM.
At less than 125 MB of RAM the swap area starts to become vital to a Ubuntu operating system.
The maximum swap area that's probably useful in most computers is three times the size of the RAM in MB, or 1 GB of swap area, whichever comes first.
More than 1.0 GB of swap area is generally just a waste of space.

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After choosing 'Manual', I clicked 'Forward'.

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I have picked out the partition I'm planning on installing in.
(I clicked on it to highlight it).

The sda hard disk is my USB external hard drive that I have connected for this install for copying there screencaps to.

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Then I hit the 'Edit' button because I need to edit it.
I need to set the 'Mount Point' to '/' (root), as this partition will house my main (root) file system for Ubuntu. I did that by clicking on the down arrow or 'V', to the left of the 'Mount point' spinbox.
The dropdown menu give us a choice of:
/, /boot, /home, /tmp, /usr, /var, /srv, /opt, or /usr/local.

I also make sure the 'Use as' field is set to 'ext3'.
Ext3 is my favorite file system, I know how to take care of it and what commands to use for fixing it if anything ever goes wrong with it.

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Double check you have the file system set to ext3.
Or reiserfs, that's a good file system too. If you prefer a different Linux file system you can choose it, as long as you know how to take care of it, or are prepared to learn, that's fine.

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Here's what I'm up to now, I haven't placed a tick mark in the square for 'Format?'
The installer won't like it if I don't let it format my partition for me, it'll think I haven't made a file system there yet and give me an error message and tell me to go back.

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Okay, so now I've ticked the square for 'Format?'.
Everything looks good to go now, so once again I click 'Forward'.

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This panel asks me some easy questions.
I always make sure I choose a good secure password.

Here is a link to an easy way to choose a secure password that's easy to remember but hard to crack, password tip.

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I don't care about importing and documents and settings this time but this is a really great feature in the Ubuntu Desktop Live CD installer. I have used it before, it copies thinks like files and bookmarks and so on, things you normally need to back up and copy into the new install manually. This option does a lot of things automatically for you and so saves a little work.

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Yes, that looks okay, I can confirm that by clicking 'Install', or if I'm not happy with something I can click 'Back', and fix any mistakes I might have made.

By default, the GNU/GRUB boot loader's stage1 and stage1_5 will be installed to MBR and the first track of whichever hard disk Ubuntu thinks is my computer's first hard disk.
Stage2 of GRUB will be installed in the Ubuntu partition.
Ubuntu will automatically scan my hard disks for other operating systems and add them to the boot loader's menu so I'll be able to boot any of my operating systems when I reboot without any manual configuring needed, it works perfectly in 999/1000 computers.
Sometimes we might need to do some fiddling to get things right, but it's normally pretty simple.

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step7 fig2
If you click the 'advanced' button you get to choose whether or not to install a boot loader and if so, where to install it.

Boot Loader
I haven't tested these options yet.
I pressed 'Cancel' to skip this, I just brought the up for your information.
In my opinion the best thing to do is the default, install GRUB to MBR in the first hard disk.

Some people might want to try installing GRUB's stage1 to MBR in a non-first hard disk with the optional stage1_5 files in the first track of the hard disk.
To install GRUB's stage1 and stage1_5 files to a non-first hard disk's MBR, you would type something here like (hd1) for second hard disk or (hd2) for third hard disk and so on, or (fd0) for floppy disk maybe.

Others might want to install GRUB's stage1 to a partition. In this case GRUB's stage1_5 file will not be installed.
To install GRUB's stage1 to the boot sector of a partition, you would type here something like (hd0,1), for first hard disk, second partition, or (hd0,2), for first hard diks, third partition and so on.

GRUB's stage2 files and menu.lst are always installed in Ubuntu's /boot/grub/

For a more complete list look here, Quick Guide to GRUB's Numbering System.

If you chose not to install a boot loader, (not recommended), you would need boot with Super Grub Disk or else with some other GRUB, (perhaps in another Linux operating system).

Popularity Contest
(No, not for you, for the software). This is optional, it's just to let the developers know what software you will install later on so they can see what's popular and decide what's the most important to work on and learn how to make Ubuntu better next time.

Network Proxy _ (Sorry, I don't know much about this option, those who need to use it will know what to do here probably).

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Oh No! :(

The installation was aborted by the installer due to a problem.
It was 60% of the way through too.
I'll have to try again.

I have seen this error message once before, it was a while ago, and it turned out to be the CD/DVD drive lense needed cleaning.

This sort of thing doesn't happen very often, fortunately, but things do go wrong every once and a while, so I might as well make it part of the show rather than covering it up and pretending everything is always perfect every time.

...so I tried again and the same thing happened, I got this error message again right at 60%.
:(

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So I rebooted into my existing Gutsy Gibbon install and ran some tests to try to see if I can find out what's going wrong.
I installed smartmontools and checked the hard disk, but it seems to be okay.

Check On Your Hard Disks With Smartmontools.

Then I ran an optical drive cleaning CD, that should have cleaned it if it's anywheres near as good as it's claimed to be in the sales spiel.

Then I rebooted the Ubuntu Live CD and ran the installer again.

and,

.... it stopped at 60% again with the same error message. :(

Apparently, the CD/DVD lens cleaning CD wasn't good enough or I'm not using it properly, it didn't seem to do anything last time I tried it either.

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'Open your mouth and say 'Ahh'.... 'Let me see your tonsils'.

I think I can see something shiny in there that looks like an optical lense and I should be able to reach it with a cotton bud (Q-Tip).

So I tried cleaning the 'lense' with a cotton bud dipped in metho (denatured alcohol).
I don't really want to have to take the CD/DVD drive out and take it apart to clean the lense unless there's absolutely no other choice.

I rebooted the Ubuntu Live CD and ran the installer again.

Guess what?
.... it stopped at 60% again with the same error message. :(

Okay, this is serious. This means war!

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It was easy getting the CD/DVD drive our of the computer, I didn't even need a screwdriver, this little baby has a handle you can twist to unlock the optical drive or drives if there are two of them, and then they just slide right out like drawers. Cool! :)

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Getting the optical drive apart might be a little tricky for most people.
They are relatively 'child proof'.
The trick is to look for a small hole in the front, a little over 1mm in diameter.
You should be able to poke a thin metal rod through that hole 20mm or so to press on a lever which disengages the CD/DVD drive's gears.
Then you can open the tray manually, just by prying on the front of it and then pulling gently when you have it open enough to get a grip on it.
Avoid using too much force or you might break something.
Either that or make sure you leave the CD/DVD tray open before turning off the machine.
Once the tray is open, the plastic facing behind it can be removed by pressing on the plastic tabs and pulling it forwards.
Then it's just a matter of taking out a few screws and looking for the sticker that says something like 'warranty void if seal removed'. That's a sure giveaway of where to go for. Do exactly the opposite and go for the seal!
After that it's just a matter of holding in the little plastic clips and pulling the metal cover off the plastic molding, and you're in.

So there's the optical lense. It's definitely not designed for easy cleaning, I would never have been able to reach that from the outside with a cotton bud (Q-Tip). It's behind the spindle.
Why can't they make a little metal trap door on top or a hole covered with something so you can open it and reach the optical lense for servicing?

The shiny thing I cleaned earlier that I thought was the optical lense was only the head of a screw.

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Cleaning the optical lense.
This one is concave, so naturally it gathers dirt particles.
Most computers tend to suck dust in through the drives because the power supply and case fans in most PCs blow air out from the case, creating a relative vacuum inside the box. The result is they suck air, and dust with it, through every crack or hole from the outside world, including through the CD/DVD drive and floppy disk drives.

I rebooted the Ubuntu Live CD and ran the installer again.
Guess what?
.... it stopped at 60% again with the same error message. :(
GAH!

Okay, well, I have days like this.

I decided to take a closer look at the underside of the CD.
It doesn't look dirty to me, it's a brand new CD-RW. Well, it does have a few small traces of dust on it and holding it at the right angle to the light I can just see some radial streaks of something on it. Nothing much worth mentioning but I guess it won't hurt to give it a wipe with a soft cloth dipped in metho.
So I did that, wiping from center to outside in straight lines, not round in circles.

Then, to make sure, I went to my other computer in another room and md5summed the downloaded .iso file again to make sure.
It was okay.

Then I burned it to disk again, erasing what was on there in case the dirt might have stopped it being written properly.

This time after I booted the installation CD I also took the precaution of running the 'Check CD for defects' option before beginning another install. Usually I do that first every time before I begin any install, but today I thought I'd skip it. Hmmm, I sure wasted a lot of time by skipping that.
The CD passed the test this time, I wonder if it would have earlier?

Alright, back to installing again, I had to go through the installation agian from the beginning, and this time things worked out, as you will see from the next few images.

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All finished, before the computer shut down it spat out the Ubuntu Hardy Heron rebooted

Ubuntu hardy,(development branch)kernel 2.6.24-14-generic
Ubuntu hardy,(development branch)kernel 2.6.24-14-generic (recovery mode)
Ubuntu, memtest86+
Other operating systems:
Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic
Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic (recovery mode)
Ubuntu, memtest86+

Use the | and | keys to select which entry is highlighted.
Press enter to boot the selected OS, or 'e' to edit the
commands before booting, or 'c' for a command-line.

The highlighted entry will be booted in 10 seconds.

This is the GNU/GRUB boot screen where we choose which operating system want to boot .

GRUB is fully customizable and you can have fun learning about GRUB, for more info on the GNU/GRUB boot loader, click this link, GRUB Page .

This is the login screen where you need to type in your username and password.

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This is what my new Hardy Heron Desktop looks like.

The installation is over now.

There are still a lot of things to do to make Ubuntu work the way I want it to.

It's a good idea to open up our repositories and get an update, install the software we want, and start configuring, personalizing and customizing our Ubuntu installations.
Here's a link to a page with some information to get you started, Post-install Page.

If you used this installation as a guide for setting up a Ubuntu/Ubuntu or Ubuntu/other Linux dual boot, your /boot/grub/menu.lst file will probably be set up with a 'direct kernel boot' for the other Linux operating system.
I recommend you amend that and change it to a chainloader or a config file boot command so that both Linux operating systems can update their kernels without the GRUB menu needing to be manually updated. Please read the following link, Operating System Entries for Multiple Booting More Linux Systems.

Here's a link to a very important new website, UbuntuHCL.org
That's the new Ubuntu Linux Hardware Compatibility Site.

No longer do we need to risk bringing our new hardware home after a trip to the computer store with our hard-earned cash only to find that the new hardware we bought isn't usable with Linux.

Help your fellow Ubuntu users by entering details of hardware that you own that you know does work well with Ubuntu so others will know what to look for when we go shopping for new computer parts.

Look in UbuntuHCL.org first to see what other Ubuntu users had to say about a computer hardware item you are considering before you go ahead with a purchase.

That's all for this page. I hope you enjoyed it.