Ubuntu Installation :: Install On USB Extrnal Without Losing Normal Boot?
Jan 23, 2011
I have Ubuntu 10.04 installed on my desktop on it's own hard drive. The other drive has XP. Grub is on the Ubuntu drive. Everything works fine from the Grub menu. but I have lost the ability to boot from the XP drive. This would be a problem if the Ubuntu drive failed or if I wished to remove it. I would like to repair this, but my immediate problem is with a new install on my laptop:
We are going away for 2 months and I want to be able to continue to learn Ubuntu while away. I want to install it on a new external USB drive on my Win 7 based Toshiba Satellite (ADATA Superior SH93). I did a trial run up to where I have to choose the drive to install to. But based on my experience with my Desktop, I stopped there. I can't afford to have the Win 7 boot disabled.
My question: How do I install 10.10 (or 10.04) to a laptop USB drive without affecting the ability to boot from Windows when the usb drive is removed?
Last week I successfully installed Ubuntu/Gnome onto a 3 year old Toshiba Vista laptop which worked mostly brilliantly. Today I am trying to install it onto a 4 year old Toshiba XP laptop, but am having problems.
Laptop specs: Intel 1.50GHz 488MB RAM 60GB HDD, partitioned by Ubuntu on install into 30GB/30GB, both partitions over 75% free space The laptop, though old, still functions in XP, and the main reason we're switching it to Linux is that it has issues managing wireless, plus it's fun to do so - learning experience and all. The other laptop has better specs - multiply everything by 2 but Windows was much less reliable as, after all, it is Vista, and switching to Linux there was a necessity.
The Ubuntu is 10.10 and it's the same live cd I used to install it onto the other laptop. It's installed alongside Windows XP and the install proceeded without issue. However when booting in normal mode it becomes unresponsive very quickly - sometimes as soon as the five pips on the loading screen become orange, the last time it lasted a whole 2 minutes before becoming unresponsive.
In failsafe graphics boot it runs without issue. The update manager tells me it's up to date, and I have installed Wine through SPM while typing this. It's behaving as I'd expect it to, with tiny lags on scrolling sometimes (perhaps related to being in failsafe graphics).
Is there some setting (graphics?) I should change to allow it to cope in normal mode? I'm aware 488MB RAM is slightly under the recommended amount, but it evidently can cope in failsafe so would appear to be enough to function?
I installed Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on a machine with 8.04 LTS, and have dualboot between those i system.The problem is when a start a get a message:'Boot error'If I hit 'Esc' I get to the Grub -meny and can boot as normal.
I've installed on my workstation the opensuse 11.2! After the reboot when I enter the username/password, nothing occurs... On the other hand, it's running well with the failsave, why??
Just a little disappointed. I downloaded the 11.4 Gnome by about midnight, checked the CD for integrity,and started the Live CD, and it worked quite well. Installed it, but troubles started. OpenSuse 11.4 won't boot up in the normal mode, but would boot up in the safe mode only. I am now writing from the safe mode, but would like to boot up normally. It get stuck after the first verbose page. And not a move from there. The laptop is Lenovo T400, Core2Duo with 4GB RAM, screen 1440x900. No problem with any other distros up to now.
I have been running 11.4 now for quite a while. I installed maintenance to it trough Yast's Online update and now can't boot except through the failsafe mode of GRUB. How can I pinpoint where the failure is?
I've installed fglrx drivers with 1click install on openSuse11.3. If I try to boot in "normal mode" I end up in black screen. However if I boot in safe mode, then login and startx, everything works ok
Code: ~> fglrxinfo display: :0.0 screen: 0 OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc. OpenGL renderer string: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4300 Series OpenGL version string: 3.3.10151 Compatibility Profile Context Shows fglrx works OK, as well as overall performance is pretty good.
I've done Code: aticonfig --initial radeon drivers is also blacklisted but running (if it means something) Code: # depmod -a; lsmod | grep radeon radeon 868858 0 ttm 64561 1 radeon drm_kms_helper 32944 1 radeon drm 221516 3 radeon,ttm,drm_kms_helper i2c_algo_bit 6728 1 radeon
In summary, after updating from 11.2 through 11.3 to 11.4, normal boot works fine, failsafe mode hangs with two fatal errors - "Module atiixp not found" and "Module ide-pci-generic not found". i would like to fix this a) so I have a recovery position b) so I learn a little more. As 11.2 has gone out of support I decided to embark on the upgrades to 11.3 then 11.4 using the zypper method described on this site. I think failsafe boot worked ok with the original 11.2 install, but I never had to use it in anger, so I can't be 100% sure. I did not test failsafe in 11.3, just checked that the typical cd set of applications seemed ok before proceeding with the upgrade to 11.4.
I have an AMD processor, chip set and an ATI 3800 series graphics card, so I added the ATI repositories for 11.3 and 11.4 as i worked through the upgrades. At 11.4 there were some graphics glitches during normal and failsafe boot which were successfully fixed by adding "nomodeset" to both boot options. Normal boot works fine but failsafe boot hangs with the error messages above. Searching for failsafe boot errors is unhelpful since, in all cases I have checked, normal boot fails too. I did try removing "Xfailsafe" from the failsafe options which produced no change.
I am guessing that, in failsafe mode, the ATI drivers are not loaded into the kernel and the idea is to default to some safer drivers which, in my case, are not present for some reason. However, there seems to be little information on the origin or purposes of atiixp so I don't know how to go about fixing this. I have not really researched the generic pci driver issue, but I am guessing that this is a fall back when the expected atiixp is missing.
Edit: I have a Sony Vaio FJ170 laptop with Phoenix BIOS version R0060X6 & a broken DVD Drive. The BIOS doesn't support booting from USB (it does have 'External Drive Boot' option, but my USB stick doesn't get listed under boot devices in BIOS when connected to the laptop).
A few days ago I upgraded to Windows7, then installed Lucid through WUBI. With the help of another thread of mine (here), I changed the default boot option & timeout of Windows to zero to directly boot into Ubuntu. So far it was good. But recently I tried to get back to Windows for some reason but could not succeed as the F8 key no longer brings up the Window's Advance Boot Menu.
Is there another way to restore the dual boot menu timeout to get back to the Windows installation. Or even better, is there some way to make a fresh install of Windows & Ubuntu side-by-side without DVD drive. I am only 14 and absolutely new to Linux. The network booting methods given on the Internet were too complex for me to understand. I like Ubuntu but also need Windows for programming C++ & Photoshop CS4.
machine boots straight to Windows, Grub2 does not display the normal boot menu choices. Therefore, not able to boot into Ubuntu 9.10.Perhaps someone could look at this Results.txt file and shed some light on what went wrong.This machine was working fine for a long time, then all of a sudden, it starting booting straight to Windows.
just looking to do a normal install but my cd drive is not working so i decided to use a usb. on the ubuntu homepage you can download the usb version except it is the netbook one. I just want the normal version but to install it via a usb. is there a way to just transfer the normal install to a usb install?
I am planning to install 10.4 when it arrives. And am not going to upgrade because i upgraded from 9.04 to 9.10 so now i need to refresh the system.But I have all my partitions except root using lvm2 logical volumes. My question is : What is the safest procedure to install 10.4 on an existing lvm2 without losing my files/partitions
I'm attempting to install debian on my old ibook g3. Upon normal boot I get a black screen with a bar (attached image) I boot the kernel with init 1 and I see that I have no xorg.conf, so naturally I input xorg -configure. Attached is the log, as I am under Windows and read it. Let me know what you think and let me know if you need any output from me[URL].. p.s As I'm a new member I can't attach anything yet so I uploaded it to media fire. ibook.zip (includes xorg.log & IMG_20110707_203900.jpg /984.41 KB)
I am new to Linux. When I installed some applications and something through package manager,Now I get two added options in boot loader with identical names like failsafe and normal. what is that?multiple kernel?
I noticed that after making my build in suse studio my system freezes immediately after GRUB ( Normal or Failsafe) boot splash screen. I also noticed that this happens only with the specified kernel below. I'm not sure when using Kernel 2.6.37, one had the same problem. I never used it. The original kernel 2.6.34 had no problems such as the one I have described. My systems has no further problems only that it takes several restarts to go past the "Freeze". Below is a list of my system specs:
openSUSE 11.3 Kernel-pae 2.6.38.2-4.1 from Kernel Stable. GRUB 0.97-174.1 from openSUSE 11.4 Upstart 0.6.5-33.1 xorg-x11-server 7.6_1.9.3-142.1 from X11:xorg 11.3 repo.
The GRUB from openSUSE 11.4 has been very stable and non-problematic. I will be buying an Intel core i5-2500K in a few months that's why I need the latest kernel and XOrg-X11-server. What could be causing the freezing?
When I boot from the CD I don't get the normal choices to install. The only 2 choices I get are; "Try Ubuntu without any change to your computer" and "Live-Install" I click on Live-install, and I get a boot loader box that has live-install in it and a OK click box i click ok and nothing happens.
I had 11.3 running for quite some time without any problem. The upgrade to 11.4 was ruined for some reason (only got commandprompt login) and the message that Xorg.0.log couldn't be copied. Decided to install 11.4 from scratch, but since the install my screen flashes every 20 seconds or so to black screen and and after 1 second back to normal. There is no interruption of any other task like typing. Card: FeForce FX5200 card. Can someone please point me to a solution? Also, my monitor (Philips 150S) is not recognized. How can I change that without changing xorg.conf by hand?
I installed Ubuntu 10.10 a while back using Wubi. I have it installed alongside Windows XP. Just yesterday the power went out in my house while I was booted into Ubuntu. When I turned my computer back on I still have the option to select Ubuntu or Windows, but now when I select Ubuntu I get right into a grub prompt. Grub used to give me a list of kernals but now it just sits waiting for commands.
I am trying to install Fedora 12 using the x86-64 DVD. My problem is everytime I try to install with the normal settings or basic video deriver setting it says "X failed to load" and so Anaconda never loads. How do i fix this problem. I have an Nvidia 7800GTX.
I use a pretty fresh installed RHEL 5.4, which should be very similar to Fedora. After the basic installation I installed xen and xen-kernel via yum with no errors. I can select the xen-kernel at boot time. But after booting the normal kernel shows up.
I am facing a problem with my AT91SAM9260 customized board. Board is almost same as the evaluation kit.
I could download the binaries ( Bootstrap-v1.16, u-boot-1.3.4, linux kernel 2.6.20) successfully to the DATAFLASH/NANDFlash in my board by using atmel SAM-BA tool with usb/serialport/jlink.
Here I describe the problem.
When I power up the board, boot strap is not jumping to U-boot location, in the normal boot sequence and board stuck with bootstrap.
But when I disconnect/connect the JTAG USB cable ( provided with SAM-BA ICE) , it's jumping to u-boot location and booting the board properly. I'm getting the same error in NAND FLASH also.
I have tried one more test case.I copied bootstrap binary at the flash location, [location which is specified for u-boot binary] instead of U-boot.bin (location: 0x8400 in dataflash), I got continous bootstrap debug messages in my console. [ So can I conclude SDRAM doesn't have any problem? ]
After installing some updates to ubuntu 9.10 my laptop will no longer let me boot into the normal OS environment. It takes me to the GNU GRUB version 1.97~beta4 command prompt. I think I am supposed to execute the following commands in order to get it to boot normally:
set root=(hdX,Y) linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-14-generic root=/dev/sdXY ro intrid /boot/intrid.img-2.6.31-14generic boot
To find the correct partition I entered 'ls' and it gave me back:
(loop0) (hd0) (hd0,4) (hd0,3) (hd0,2) (hd0,1)
if I can only find the boot files in the (loop0) how do I go about setting this up so I can boot into my OS as it normally should?
how to install Nvidia drivers without losing my menu.Slightly more specifically: When I go to install the drivers for my graphics card (Nvidia 7300 SE/ 7200 GS) under the 'Additional Drivers' menu in Administration, it does everything fine, wants to restart, and when it does, I have no menu, no bottom bar, nothing. The only thing on my screen is my wallpaper. (I'm using the gnome set-up, not Unity) For whatever reason, my Linksys adapter stopped working with Windows7. I dunno why, I tried everything, it's just not working. Yet when I boot into Ubuntu 11.04 x64 it works perfectly. HOW ON EARTH a Linksys device is working better out of the box on Linux than it does on Windows is profoundly beyond my level of understanding, but no complaints. Once I found out that Ubuntu can actually run World of Warcraft better than Windows, given the right adjustments.I removed Windows from my hard-drive post haste.I've gotten WoW to run on Ubuntu now, but it runs horribly, like 1fps. Added the OpenGL text to the config.wtf file, and it got only very slightly less horrible, but I'd like to assume that having an actual driver for my graphics card would make the game playable.
I'm experiencing problems with Ubuntu Lucid Lynx x64 Desktop Edition and my nVidia GT200b [GeForce GTX 275]. First of all, when Lucid Lync came out, everything worked perfectly out of the box. I even had all the shiny desktop effects with Compiz. Then, let's say around mid-june, after installing the latest updates Compiz didn't work anymore. So I had to use no visual effects anymore. OK not the end of the world I assumed. But since Kernel 2.6.32-24 came with the updates, I couldn't even get X running again. Everytime my machine boots up, I get a X error message that no matching screen could be found. I checked the xorg.conf, even ran 'nvidia-xconfig', removed xorg.conf and tried it again, etc. etc. I can't get it to run with the latest updates. So I chose to stick with 2.6.32-22, where I at least have a running X server.
Btw., yes I am using the recommended hardware acceleration driver from System->Administration->Hardware drivers (which is btw. the only selectable one, there is no other one). It says "version current".
Why is support for the GeForce GTX 275 dropping? Or what am I doing wrong?
My enabled updates: lucid-security, lucid-updates, lucid-proposed. I do not have backports enabled.
I have Ubuntu 10.10 installed on my computer (no other OS) and it wont boot up. I don't want to lose the files in my documents. I tried accessing them using a live CD and then copying them from the harddrive (home folder then 'richard' then documents then tried to open the folder but I dont have permission to and there seems to be no way of changing this.
The files are definitely on my harddrive but I dont seem to have a way of accessing them!
Is there anyway of either accessing them and copying them to a usb etc or repairing my installation of ubuntu without erasing the files in my documents? Opening in recovery mode etc wont work.
Seems that I have been having a problem with the initial user login on Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook. Whenever I try and login the normal way (from standard gui login) my system comes to a standstill and I have to switch to command line (ctrl+alt+F2) and restart/shutdown my computer in that fashion. The only way that I can login and actually see my desktop without any hint of my system freezing up is by booting into the ubuntu recovery Console using the dpkg function to remove any broken packages, select boot normally (where I have to login through the command line), and manually startx.
Originally I was running an x64 version of ubuntu desktop 10.10 but I switched to an x86 version of netbook due to many incompatibilities in software and trouble finding x64 software for my system. When I was on Ubuntu Desktop I had a similar problem where it would freeze at login as well but I fixed it by removing compiz & compiz-core. I tried that with this version of the OS but had no luck because it said that compiz was not installed.
Not a major issue, just somewhat annoying that I have to resort to other means to login
PS: My computer is a Toshiba P500-026. Some stats are listed below in my signature if its relevant to my problem.
