Installing college linux on a Sony Viao vga b100b laptop
 

I tried installing college linux on my laptop, but it doesnt work, now all it says it operating system not found. Can anyone tell me what I need to do exactly, and how I need to set the partitions.

Hi,

How large is your hard drive? How much RAM do you have? Are you sure you want to go for College Linux instead of a distro like Ubuntu or Kubuntu? Do you want to keep Windows so that it acts as a dual-boot, or do you just want to install College Linux on the whole thing? If so, I'll explain how large you should make the partitions, and try to guide you through the setup...

One more question though - you've tried booting into College Linux and it just tells you that the OS can't be found? Is that all it says, or are there more messages?

J_K9

P.S Welcome to LQ!! ;)

My hard drive 60 gigabytes, with 512mb ram. Im installing college linux on my laptop because Im taking a Unix class, and he gave us a college unix disc, cause we are gonna work with that in class. The class is once a week, so I havent been able to find him, and probably wont get a chance until Monday, or if I run into him earlier on. Once I get more experienced with Linux, I probably will try a better version. I wanted it to dual boot, but I think I need to use my restore discs to get windows back. After I tried to install it myself, it says Operating system can't be found, but before that comes up, I get a hard drive failure predicted back up all your data message. Im waiting till I get the money to buy a new hard drive, but until then, Im using this one. It has still been working with windows though, so I thought it would work with Linux too. And I still have files on my hard drive, and didnt get a chance to back up my data. I was hoping to get into Linux and back up my data if it would let me.

Ok, so, assuming that your Windows partition takes up your whole hard drive at the moment, then you are going to need to resize it to leave some space for College Linux. I suggest you look at my bookmarks, where I supply two methods for resizing FAT32/NTFS partitions - both work beautifully! ;)

You may want to resize the Windows partition to about 30GB - but that is up to you. Just leave enough space for Linux and the stuff you are going to be using/installing on it. :D Once it has been resized, reboot and insert your College Linux CD. Boot it up, and follow the instructions until you get to the partitions. Choose to partition your hard drive manually. Good. :)

Now, let's say you've left 30GB free space for Linux... Create a partition, and make it around 29GB. Set it to boot as "/", as a "Primary" partition, and set the file system to "ext3".

Once you've clicked "Accept" for that (or something similar to show that you have finished that partition), create another one. Make this one take up the remaining space (you don't want it to be bigger than 1GB), and set it's boot point to "swap". Finish that by clicking "Accept" or "OK", and then you're off! Write the partition table to your hard disk, and let it work its magic! :D

Once the installation's over, you will be asked to take out the CD and reboot. Do as it says, and if you have more problems, then just state them here...

J_K9 ;)

Ok, I got linux to boot, and I think my windows xp is messed up or something, so I just gave all the free space to linux. I got it to boot and everything, and now I cant figure out at all how to make the cd-rom/rw or the internet to work. I have the network cable plugged in, but it just wont connect to the internet :scratch:

'su' to root (or use sudo if that is available), and do: "ifup eth0". You may need to alter your /etc/network/interfaces file...post it up if you need help! :D

M.

How do I do the su to root and that other thing you said? I really have no clue what that means. And, do you know if there is any way to access my files on my hard drive from windows xp?

Wow...one step at a time! :D

First of all, go into terminal (or if not, press Ctrl+Alt+F1 - press Ctrl+Alt+F7 to get back). Then, type "sudo ifup eth0". If that doesn't work, then do:That should work. You may need to change your /etc/network/interfaces file though, so could you please do (from terminal) "cat /etc/network/interfaces > file.txt". That will save the output of the command in the file "file.txt", in your current working directory.

From the GUI, open it up, and just cut and paste it into a post here. Then, I'll examine it, and post the one you need back up for you... ;)

M.

Ok I did what that said, but when I entered the sudo ifup eth0, it says "this is not a sudoers file. This incident will be reported" And the "su" then password # ifup eth0 thing didnt work, because it says something about the password not working. Then I tried the cat /etc/network/interfaces > file.txt thing, which would only work using the backslashes ( \ ) but it worked. Then when I opened the file.txt document, it was completely blank. I tried several times but it just wouldnt work:cry: