turg's Journal: turg's rule of computing #42 (and more dumb questions)

turg's rule of computing #42: Don't partition your hard drive at one o'clock in the morning.

(sigh)

So I thought I'd make an Ubuntu partition on the new hard laptop -- just to play around with it a bit.

So I pop in the CD and boot it up, choose install and start answering the questionnaire. The question about what size to make the partition is confusing (e.g. is it asking what size to resize the existing partition or what size for the new partition) and after I answer it I realize I've answered it wrong and hit the back button (got an "Are you sure?" and said yes) and gave the right answer. I didn't realize that it had started partitioning immediately -- I thought it wasn't doing anything until I finished the whole questionnaire.

So what I wanted was 45 GB for the WinXP partition and 15 for Ubuntu.

What I got is:
-Windows thinks it has a 15 GB hard disk
-Ubuntu thinks it has a 60 GB hard disk with a 15 GB Ubuntu partition and a 45 GB WinXP partition -- except it shows the WinXP partition as 5 GB used and 10 GB available.

Presumably there's some tool I can use in Ubuntu to fix this? I haven't done anything more with it so I haven't tried connecting Ubuntu to the intarwebs yet.

Also, How do I tell Grub to make WinXP the default?

Though, now that I'm thinking about it, I have since decided to make the laptop the primary home of the music collection so maybe I just want to blow away the Ubuntu partition and give the whole 60 GB back to WinXP. I can find someplace else to play with Linux on the desktop.

Some Answers

[Morosoph]

Presumably there's some tool I can use in Ubuntu to fix this?

Indeed, gparted [sourceforge.net] should be up to the job!

Also, How do I tell Grub to make WinXP the default?

Edit /boot/grub/grub.conf; one the the lines will read "default=n", where n is the Ubuntu partition. Edit 'n' to point to the Windows partition, instead. In this example [gentoo.org], the default would be 2.

Re:

[PastaLover]

Edit /boot/grub/grub.conf; one the the lines will read "default=n", where n is the Ubuntu partition. Edit 'n' to point to the Windows partition, instead. In this example [gentoo.org], the default would be 2.

Or just put the WinXP one on top in the file. It's not gentoo, so the menu.lst will look decidedly different.

Of Course

[Morosoph]

Or just put the WinXP one on top in the file. It's not gentoo, so the menu.lst will look decidedly different.

I'm aware that it's not Gentoo, just Gentoo's documentation can be pretty good. I use Fedora.

Grub is grub, Gentoo or whatever; grub.conf will already exist as a file. The fix should be fairly obvious, but an example often helps...

Here's my grub.conf:

# grub.conf generated by anaconda, edited by trnjw
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a

Re:

[PastaLover]

Grub is grub, Gentoo or whatever; grub.conf will already exist as a file. The fix should be fairly obvious, but an example often helps...

Sorry I should have been more specific. Debian (and hence ubuntu) has a script that auto-generates the menu.lst for you by examining the kernels in /boot. As a result, the list looks slightly different. In particular, there is a section delineated by:
### BEGIN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST
### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

Every time you install a new kernel the list expands by one, so the best thing to do would be to take the Win XP listing (which is usually at the very bottom of the file) and put it on to

I See

[Morosoph]

Gotcha. You learn a new thing most days...

qtparted

[winkydink]

It's included on the Knoppix cd. It puts a pretty gui on gnu parted. Be careful. Backing the whole mess up before you start would be a good idea if you've got a spare disk.

Doh

[sillypixie]

I've been there...

I used gparted to fix a VM where the C partition was stupidly made tiny (by me, my first ever VM), and it worked like a charm, so hopefully it works for you.

I have to do the same thing in a bit here for our main work fileserver -- at the time we installed it, 4gb seemed like tons of space, but at this point it is so full we had to move the pagefile off, and it isn't downloading updates anymore :(

I hate disk partitioning. Hate hate hate it.

Pix

Re:

[Corporate Troll]

Yeah, Gparted rocks... Try it.