Ubuntu Installation :: Installing With No Optical - USB Boot Or FDD
Jan 18, 2010
I have a Dell Lattitude LS. It gets used for very light web browsing, RDP into my main PC and also to access Megasquirt in my car. It had until recently a stripped out XP install there that ran ok despite the laptop being a P3 500, 256mb RAM. That install is now damaged, it gets as far as the login screen and then hangs. Instead of repairing it, I want to put ubuntu on there as i think it'll manage the (lack of) resources better. However, the laptop has no optical drive, cannot boot from USB and I'm not sure if the external FDD. I have for it works either (it's a bit crusty).
I do have a pata > usb convertor to access the drive via my main PC though. Am just not sure what I can put on there to let me boot and then install. Is it plausible to make the HDD act like a LiveCD? Should I partition it, and copy the install ISO contents into one of the partitions, and go from there - but how do I make that bootable? I do have another laptop with a PATA HDD that does have a working optical drive. Could I begin the install on that, then pull the drive and swap it over at some point during the install - or is that a no go?
I am pretty new to ubuntu, I have a machine without an optical drive booting meerkat from the only partition on the only disk. I would like to move from this situation to duel booting with windows 7. Can anyone advise on general strategy/path for achieving this? In particular addressing the following:
1) Can I unmount the partition that ubuntu is running off in order to repartition the disk? If not (how) can I partition my OS boot disk? 2) Is there any way to install windows onto a clean partition using the windows disk ISO from within ubuntu? Could I perhaps somehow mount the ISO as a drive then use Wine to run the windows installer? Would this approach break down when the windows installer restarts the machine to continue installation? I assume its impossible to boot off the ISO?
FYI I'm absolutely loving ubuntu - the only reason I want windows too is so I can play some windows games without an emulation layer.
I dont know when k3b stopped working but have just gone to burn a disk and when opening it tells me
Quote: No optical drive found. K3b did not find any optical device in your system. Solution: Make sure HAL daemon is running, it is used by K3b for finding devices.
I can boot from cd and can mount cds from within Slackware but for some reason k3b insists that i don't have a drive.
Optical Out from my TV into the SPDIF / Optical In on my PC Optical Out from my PC into my Sony 5.1 Theatre Kit
The audio from the PC comes through ok when listening to music and movies. But unfortunately I can figure out how to enable the audio passthrough from my Tv so that the audio comes out of my theatre kit. In Sound Preferences, the hardware is set to 1 Output / 1 Input [Digital Stereo (IEC95 Output + Digital Stereo (IEC95 Input]. When I click on the audio tab, the Input Volume is at 100% and the Input Level is moving in conjunction with the audio coming from the Tv.
I saw it mentioned in another thread to install Gnome Alsa Mixer which I've done, it seeems to identify the audio chipset as Realtek ALC882, the motherboard is an Abit AB9 Pro. Hopefully I'm missing some config somewhere or there a box I should be ticking but I just can't find it.
So if I boot without a DVD or CD in my optical drive, then I attempt to put one it, it doesn't mount. I try mounting with the terminal and that fails as well. If I boot with the media in the optical drive, it works fine. (this problem occurs both on my desktop and laptop and I know the DVD and CD's work in both 9.10 and in windows, This error also occurs with Linux Mint and Sabayon leading me to believe this is a kernel issue).
[Code]...
What do I need to do to get this to work like it should? I have been asking about this since the beta of 10.04
I have a pc with linux mint installed, and wanted to try edubuntu with my kids. The first time we tried, it booted just fine from the dvd, as the bios is already set to boot from dvd as priority. So it ran off of RAM.
Subsequent tries however, result in the pc booting mint from the hdd, and no sign of edubuntu at all. I have tried different distros/isos, but to no avail. I have also opened the box to see if the dvd drive had somehow come unplugged.
I have two optical drives (not SATA) that previously showed up as /dev/hda and /dev/hdb. No longer. I see no mention of them in fstab and catting all the /dev/dvd /dev/cd... /dev/sr.. turns up nothing. If I place a disk with info in the drive nothing appears anywhere I can see (not in dmesg).
K3b tells me no devices found. wodim tells me Detected CD-R drive: /dev/sr1 wodim: Cannot do inquiry for CD/DVD-Recorder. Errno: 5 (Input/output error), test unit ready scsi sendcmd: fatal error CDB: 00 00 00 00 00 00 cmd finished after 0.000s timeout 40s (These are not SATA drives.) I noticed rebooting will show drives if there is media in there. However, that disappears after a while as well. Then inserting and reinserting cdroms gives no messages in dmesg.
I am about to install Ubuntu onto my MacBook Pro (5,2).However the hardware configuration is a little unusual, and may cause complications.I have removed the optical drive, and replaced it with a SSD, onto which I wish to install Ubuntu.Since this will be the second internal HD, whatever bootloader I'm using will need to be able to see this second disk, and perhaps the MBP hardware may have trouble with this (I don't know)?My questions are the following:
1) What bootloader should I use? (I'm not sure what exactly are the distinctions between rEFIt, grub2, grub2-efi, etc.)
2) Which partition[s] should I install this bootloader on? I am confused about whether I will need to install grub2 (or grub2-efi?) on the MBR of 'sda' (the HDD), or perhaps on the 'EFI partition' on that disk (originally created by OSX?), or perhaps somewhere else, or even at multiple locations.
3) How do I perform this installation? A link to the right (up-to-date) guide would be appreciated. (I've been browsing through perhaps rather too many help pages and forums, all written at different points in time over the last few years, when the technologies (GRUB2, distros, etc) were at different levels of advancement. And in that time, people have made progress in getting various things working on MBPs, their methods will have changed, and so will their advice/recommendations.) One thing in particular that I'll need to know is what to do when running the Ubuntu installer, to direct it to put the bootloader in the right place (or maybe we won't want the installing of the bootloader[s] to be handled by the Ubuntu installer). Also, it's still unclear to me what things like 'GPT-sync' (or 'bless') do, and what role they might have to play in this.
4) How do I accomplish this without having an internal optical drive? In the past I've been unable to boot MBPs from a Linux USB drive, and I understand that there are particular MBP issues with this. FWIW, the main HDD has already been partitioned into OSX and Windows (which I don't care about being able to use, actually, so if a proposed method makes Windows unusable it's of no consequence really). As such, perhaps some installation (eg of bootloaders) can be performed from within OSX? Alternatively, I do have USB sticks and a USB external optical drive that I can use. I also have access to another computer that's running Debian, so I thus have access to any Ubuntu/GNU software tools that may be needed. Finally, I can even put the optical drive back into the MBP temporarily if necessary in order to accomplish this installation.
I migrated to 10.04 (clean install) from 9.10 recently. I have no problems with internal sound card playback but cannot get the USB Creative Audigy Optical port working. I have defined it as Digital Output in Pulse Audio and when an application plays audio I can see Pulse Audio showing output but no output from the Audigy.
I would appreciate if anyone has come across this problem and if so could give some pointers to fix this issue.
I've installed Ubuntu 10.04 on a friends NEC VERSA P7200, which had Windows XP.I set up two new partitions, sda3 (for /) and sda5 for swap.After installing 10.04, I rebooted to get "unknown filesystem", then grub rescue> prompt.After reading a ton of suggestions, and after typing insmod normal, normal, I get the Ubuntu splash screen with ability to boot into Ubuntu or windows.Rebooting gives the same error, then if I type insmod normal, normal, at the grub rescue> prompt it allows selection of ubuntu/windows/test memory etc.
I installed Ubuntu 11.04 on my laptop that was running Windows 7. After installing Unbuntu I can no longer boot to Windows 7 or Ubuntu. The disk is now a dynamic disk which won't run with Windows 7 Home Premium. As this is a HP laptop computer, I had to do a recovery which wiped out everything.
Today I installed Ubuntu to C or win xp partition.
I can access the other partitions but when restarting I cannot see the boot loader. It directly boots to Ubuntu. My Win7 partition is still there , but I cannot boot into it.
I'm currently running Ubuntu 9.10 on my server and I want to install a new 10.04 from scratch in a second bootable partition to be able to boot it up and test the new version before putting it into production (without tampering with my old version). I have an empty partition on my drive already
My misses wanted XP putting back onto her laptop, which had Ubuntu 10.04 installed using the whole drive. So I created a partition for it, and install XP onto it, but now it now longer gives me the option to choose between Ubuntu or XP. I know I need to reinstall GRUB but I am not sure on how to do it. Can anybody give me a step by step guide on how to do this please?? The simplest the better because I am not too hot on Ubuntu, unfortunately.
I had win 7 installed, decided to install ubuntu on this desktop computer. I had a windows partition, and a few other partitions, one with a wubi install of windows that I never used, so I decided to delete it, while installing ubuntu 10.10. I had free unallocated space for installing ubuntu, which was contiguous to the partition of the wubi install of ubuntu, so I decided to merge them, I did all this in gparted while installing ubuntu 10.10, 2gb swap, then 15gb root and all that remained to home.
Everything worked out fine (of course I never touched the win7 partition). After reboot grub doesn't show win 7, so I thought I'll just add it to grub, followed a few tutorials on this forum, but nothing worked. Then I remembered that the partition which I deleted to merge with the ubuntu partition, was an Active partition, and soon found out that my win7 partition was not active! (this is probably because I installed win 7 while I had still win vista, so that active partition was where vista was).
So now a ~100mb apparently unallocated partition was the active partition (win 7 hidden boot partition?), and trying the Startup repair of win 7 cd doesn't work, tried bootrec /fixboot, successfully, but bootrec /rebuildbcd can't find any Windows installation, even after setting the win7 partition as active with DiskPart. This is almost entirely a windows problem, but I just wanted to have Ubuntu working alongside Windows (I use a lot adobe's sw, which runs sadly only on windows, otherwise I would use only ubuntu).
I just installed ubuntu 11.04 on a separate partition on my hard drive so i can have dual boot for window 7 and ubuntu. I have done this in the past with 10.10 and it use to work fine. But now after installing 11.04 I am not able to boot it. I have recorded a video of what happens. here is the link. http://www.......com/watch?v=oLr2LqS0cEQ
I have written my laptop spec in the description of the video.
i just installed Ubuntu 11.04 and i was enjoying it, but when i wanted to boot into windows 7 my computer just restarts by itself. I really don't know much about Ubuntu
I have been running Ubuntu 9.10 and Win XP Professional as a dual boot system, with each OS on its own HDD, smoothly and seamlessly since the release of 9.10. Yesterday one of my kids got a video file from a friend and it had a virus along with it. Long story short, in the process of trying to repair it Windows shuddered it last agonizing breath.
Now I have to re-install Windows because some of the programs the schools make them use require Windows. How do I go about doing this without damaging my Ubuntu installation? Will re-installing on a second drive affect GRUB?
I installed Lucid Lynx on a dual boot with a previously installed copy of Windows 7 and everything installed fine via Wubi...but now when I boot up and I get to my Boot Mgr and select Ubuntu I get the following message and can not get past a black screen stating -
Try (hd0,0) EXT2
I have tried to read what others have done to fix this but nothing has worked so far,Also I can still log into Windows 7 just fine, just no Linux...
I am getting a blank screen with a blinking cursor. Install gave message to the effect: can't find boot file. Now I can't boot with any version or even get a prompt.
I used unetbootin (on another machine) to put the ubuntu 10.04 minimal amd64 .iso onto a usb stick. I used it to install a minimal system on a new 64-bit laptop (dual booting with Windows 7). Now, when I turn on the machine I get my choice of OS. When I pick Ubuntu, I get a blinking cursor, the harddrive is accessed. Then the cursor disappears, the harddrive is quiet, and nothing else happens.
its pretty much my first install. I am duel booting with Vista. I followed the guidelines and made a partition for my Ubuntu install. Everything installed correctly, however, it tell you to activate drivers for my video card, then restart. After restart ubuntu will not boot, it just sits at the startup screen and does nothing, I waited like an hour just to make sure that it was not just installing more things. I have re-formatted my partition and am going to reinstall later. Oh, I installed 10.4.1.
I have install Ubuntu 10.10 64bit in my sony vaio vpccw16fs which have Nvidia graphics card (GT 230M). I have install it using nomodeset and after entering the system I installed nvidia from System> Administration> Additional drivers. Driver version was current 260.19.06. After installation I was able to see the boot screen but was unable to see the logon screen. The computer froze with the background color of bootscreen which is purple. And I have to restart it and have to choose failsafe graphic mode. And after logging in in failsafe graphic mode. My NVidia driver says I am not using it. How to use nvidia driver properly. I have tried many Tutorials present on internet but none of them works.
Here is my xorg.conf file. # nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig # nvidia-xconfig: version 260.19.06 (buildmeister@builder101) Mon Sep 13 04:59:45 PDT 2010 Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "Layout0" Screen 0 "Screen0" InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard" InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer" EndSection .....
When I boot up, my Laptop reports the operating systemis missing??? Unless, I put my XP installation disk in the drive, thenFedora will boot up fine.If I put the Live install Fedora disk in & choose to boot from the HD, again it reports the OS is missing??Clearly it isn't as here I am using Fedora after booting leaving myation disdrive.Incidentally, I don't have windows installed, Fedora only.
Having searched this and other forums and googled without valid results, I need some help. I've been a linux user since RH 5.2, having experimented with several distros but have not run into this problem previously. I've just installed F13 for the third time. Each time the installation completes without any apparent error but when I reboot, I get the following message:Quote:
Error No Active Partition Intel UNDI, PXE-2.1 (build 082) copyright ... This product is covered by one or more of the following patents ... Realtek PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller Series v2.26 (090219) PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable PXE-M06: Exiting PXE ROM
The cable failure is consistent with there being no cable and inability to configure wireless during install. I used the custom partitioning option during install and was very careful to search for any fields I might have missed initially.
So, I have an old laptop that used to have windows/ubuntu until the drive got fubarred (no physical damage). I shoved the laptop as side as I didn't use it much anymore (it's an old, loud 2.4GHz desktop p4 in a dell--mostly toshiba--laptop. pcmcia atheros based wifi card and an ATI m6 graphics card. Laptop was new back in 2002-03 maybe).The Cdrom drive had died a while back, and it's not worth buying a replacement. The bios doesn't support boot to USB. What are my options for getting Ubuntu on there (9.10 preferably)? The drive has been formatted already, so there is nothing to boot into right now.
I can pull the drive and hook it up to my desktop (windows 7 machine only right now) via USB, and partition it from there, but I'm not sure how to get the installer on there. The MBR of the laptop drive will also have to be rewritten. Is there a way I can create a dos partition, load it with files, and start a linux install that way (maybe with grub4dos or something)?Or can I somehow boot into an ISO image on a partition?The only other thought I have is creating a floppy disk that will allow a network boot, but I haven't looked into that. I basically just want something to bring with on vacation that I can get online with. Browsing from the phone leaves a little bit to be desired.
I have a DOS/Linux dual-boot system. After recently replacing the original motherboard (an Elitegroup P6VEM3, of all things!) with a salvaged Dell D300 motherboard, I'm preparing to replace the Red Hat 8 currently installed with a Ubuntu live CD that I've had for some time (but that wouldn't work at all on the old motherboard, for some reason) I have a question about the "partitioner" stage of the installer: I don't know what to do with my 5 DOS volumes. My hard drive is partitioned as follows (from the partitioner's report when I select manual mode; annotations in parentheses):
I am not able to see the existing windows OS already installed when the machine is booting.When the machine boots up I see a blank screen and it boot directly into Ubuntu.Here is the results file I have collected by running the tool:Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010============================= Boot Info Summary: ==============================
=> Grub 2 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks on the same drive in partition #1 for /boot/grub. sda1: __________________________________________________ _______________________
