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Hardy Heron / Gutsy Gibbon Graphical Installation 'B'

With the partitioning being done with the Ubuntu Installer's own partitioner in manual mode during the installation.

Last Edited: Saturday, April 26 2008

Ubuntu Hardy Heron has just been officially released.

This web page is up to date with the current Hardy Heron LTS version of Ubuntu.

This web page is about how to use the Ubuntu 'Desktop' CD's built-in hard disk partitioner to install Ubuntu Hardy Heron after Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon and Windows XP.
Windows XP was on the hard disk first, and Gusty Gibbon was installed 'dual boot' with Windows XP.
Now, we want to resize the Gutsy partition in half, and install Hardy Heron in the free space.
The idea of this is that it allows the user to retain Gutsy Gibbon as the main operating system and move files into Hardy when the user is ready.
We can have as many Linux installations as we like, after all, Linux is free.

Multiple booting is as easy as dual booting, and it avoids the problem of having something go wrong during an upgrade. Many people upgrade from an older version of Ubuntu to a newer version when it is released, but a few don't make it or decide they'd rather go back to the older version. It's too late, they can't go back.

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.

The Ubuntu 'Desktop' Live CD's graphical installation is easy enough to use, and there are already some good web pages and even some videos about it.
However, 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 now. 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 doesn't use Gnome Partition Editor to partition the hard disk.
We will use the Ubuntu Hardy Heron Desktop Live CD Installer's built in partitioner this time.

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.

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.

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.

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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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It's best to scroll down a couple of lines and run 'Check CD for defects' first before trying to use the CD for doing any work in your computer.
It is possible to corrupt your partition table if you try to use a dirty or corrupt CD. At least the installation might not be able to be completed or you may end up with a corrupted installation.
check CD for defects
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It only takes a few minutes for the CD integrity test to finish. Then you will need to reboot.

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The Ubuntu Live CD's Desktop.

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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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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, although it would work okay.
If you want to see what 'Guided Partitioning is like, see: Hardy Heron LTS / Gutsy Gibbon Dual Boot Installation A
That would be the easiest and best choice if I had a Windows installation there previously.
It will resize an existing partition and make me a partition for the '/' (root) file system for Ubuntu and a swap area.
The main reason I want to choose 'Manual' here is because since I'm dual booting with another Linux, I already have a swap area. Two Linuxes can share the same swap area so as long as I'm not planning on using the 'hibernate' feature instead of shutting down or rebooting, I don't need to have a separate swap area for each installation.

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, so the computer works better.
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. (Whichever is less).
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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This panel shows me what partitions I have in my hard disks.
I have two hard disks in this PC.

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I have picked out the partition I'm planning to resize (shrink) to make room for installing the new version of Ubuntu in.
(I clicked on it to highlight it).

Then I hit the 'Edit Partition' button because I need to edit it.

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Here's the panel that comes up to let us edit the selected partition.
All I want to change with this partition is the size of it.
I need to make it smaller so I'll have room to install another Ubuntu beside it.

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I want to divide it in half, so I used the calculator that's in the Live CD to divide the current size by two.
Well, really, most people wouldn't really need a calculator for such simple arithmetic, but this is just to remind you it's available in case you're doing something a little more complicated that what I'm doing.

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I highlighted the old number and typed in the new size over the top of it.

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When I click 'Forward', this message comes up.
I clicked 'Continue'.

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Okay, good, the Ubuntu installer's partitioner has resized my old partition to half of it's old size and now I have free space to make a new partition in.

I click 'New'.

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This is asking me for details of the new partition I want to make.
By default it is suggesting a logical partition.
It's offering to make one that will occupy all of the free space, and suggesting an ext3 file system.

It hasn't got anything in the 'Mount Point' field.
Make sure the 'Mount Point' is set to / (root), you will need to click on the arrow beside the field and type that in.

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Here's what I'm up to now, I have to placed a tick mark in the square for 'Format?' yet.
We'll need to do that to tell the installer to format the partition.

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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 fig35
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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All finished, before the computer shut down it spat out the Ubuntu Hardy Heron rebooted.

Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.24-16-generic
Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.24-16-generic (recovery mode)
Ubuntu 8.04, memtest86+
Other operating systems:
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic (on /dev/sda2)
Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic (recovery mode)
Ubuntu 7.10, 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.

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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 .

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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.

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Here's how the partitioning turned out.

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.