Dual boot installation crashed. On live cd only now.
 

I know I should only post the same question in one forum. But this could be related to any distro. Besides, last I looked there were only ten folks in the specific distro forum. So flame me if you must, but please take a look at my problem.

Desktop/Intel MOBO 3.3 gig/wd hdd 80 gig/ATI Radeon 200 series.
I downloaded Ubuntu yesterday and have evaluted all my hardware etc. Everything was working OK except a minor resolution problem. So I went for the installation. At partition time I chose option one. Resize HD and went with the recommendation. All went according to Hoyle until it was copying files. It got 42% and froze. I couldn't minimize, shut down installation or even shut down the machine without the off switch on the back. I tried to boot from the hard drive and got the fatal "error loading operating system". I booted using the Live dvd then tried to redo the installation. When I got to the partition screen this time all I got for options were, "erase the whole drive" or manually partition the table. I chose manually as I hope there's still a possibility of saving the windows partition. This is where I just don't have the knowledge to continue. It appears that the drive has been partitioned for linux, but now it wants me to tell it where to mount stuff. I don't even know what stuff is. I took screen shots of the two screens, but have no idea how to post them here. They're saved on my desktop. I see on the right here I don't have permission to post attachments. By the way....I read how to ask a question. I think this explains what happened and what I've done.
Any help will be greatly appreciated. REALLY. I can't live off a live cd.
Thanks again
George

What version of Ubuntu were you trying to install? If it was Edgy, I have seen some problems posted on Ubuntu's site about this type of failure.

If you decide to stay with Ubuntu, use 6.06 Breezy. It is stable, Edgy is not, and I would recommend for any first time user to stay away from it.

The choices you are being asked are probably what partition to put the main system on, in liux speak that is / ( the root file system ). Where to put swap, it usually gets its own partition, and should be about two times the installed ram. The last thing is /home, this is where all your user stuff goes.

As long as you have not deleted your windoze partition(s) it should still work. From what you have said, it sounds like you re-sized the windoze partition. That is fine as long as you left it enough space to operate.

Thanks for that info. Let me ask a few more questions before I do something stupid. It is edgy eft. Do I dare attempt a different version since the installation got about 50% done. Also, does the installation program, when it gets to the prepare mount screen, have a recommendation already in place that I should just go with.
If you firmly believe I should do 6.0* I'm going to need some help on how to download and burn the ISO. You have to remember I became a linux user yesterday, and now have no option.
Thanks so much for your help.
George

Yes, Edgy is not considered stable. If you were experienced it would be another story, but one day experience doesn't qualify.

Usually the recommendations are fine, when you have little or no experience. They will produce a working system.

What you install first is your choice. For any new user, I suggest a stable version of their choice of distro. I have installed Ubuntu on an older laptop, and it worked well enough. I installed Xubuntu on the same system when Breezy came out. I have not gone to Edgy, it is not stable, and I did not see enough up side to bother with it. The levels of some programs are higher than some in Breezy, but for my use, it just doesn't matter wnough. I don't trust 'upgrades'. I usually do a fresh install.

BTW, the reason I installed Xubuntu was the laptop is only 350Mhz, and I found both Gnome and KDE slow on it. XFCE is a much lighter desktop, and the system is more responsive. ( My choice, I'm not suggesting you do that.

As far as downloading the ISO image and burning it, there are instructions on the "how-to" on this board. Follow the 'Download Linux' link on the right side. It will lead to links on where to download from, how to burn under various systems, etc. If you need more information, please ask.

Thanks Cliff,
It's late I'll tackle this again in the morning. I appreciate all your input and hope to hear from you again.
Thanks
George

From the liveCD, start a terminal session, and let's see the output from "sudo fdisk -l" (lower case ell). Enter your (own) password when prompted.
Personally for desktop usage, I reckon Edgy seems fine - especially if installed as a new install as the OP is attempting.
Now that partitions are allocated, you will probably have to specify the mount points manually. I think the auto only works if you have free space - or create some as you did on the first run.

As for burning the ISO, you may be able to do that from the liveCD - never used it, so can't say.

Ubuntu v6.06 is not Breezy, its Dapper Drake. Breezy was 5.10.

I suggest you use Dapper than Breezy. Breezy is very old now and might give rise to hardware compatibility issues. Dapper is more stable, more tested, and supports more hardware.

Edgy is also fine except for few things like you mentioned. My Ubuntu is running absolutely fine. I encountered no installation problems either. Maybe re-download the iso, burn it and try installing again. Also, you may want to do custom partition if you are comfortable with it.

Download Ubuntu 6.10(Edgy Eft)

I stand corrected, thank-you. It is almost impossible to keep these names and release numbers straight form the many distros that out there. Sorry for any confusion.

Even though I am not more than a newbie, I have the experience of the same problem. What Ubuntu did in my case was that it partitioned the disk for both Swap and Linux from my unformatted free space in the hard drive (25 GB remaining after having XP on another partition). After reaching about 56% of installation, it did not proceed for a very long time and ultimately displayed error message saying there is not enough space.
There was no way to proceed for a newbie in such a situation. Luckily, it had not yet accessed the MBR and I could boot the XP. Then while trying another distro SimplyMepis, I found that swap partition was less than 200 MB and the Linux partition was less than 500 MB (My RAM is 512 MB).
Later, I installed Mepis on that remaining (25-these two tiny partitions) first formatting those two and creating two more partitions from remaining space but still I could not reclaim that two formatted tiny partitions and they are there just as loss. (FYI: I could work out more than 4 partitions as my free space was already partitioned as Extended).
I wonder whether the case of yours is same, but that might be possible.
Please, check the size of those newly created partitions.

Good Morning everyone and thanks to those that have responded. First thing this morning was trying to figure out what a terminal session was and where to do this, but I did and here are the results of sudo fdisk -l.
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 6326 50813563+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 * 6327 9586 26185950 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 9587 9729 1148647+ 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 9587 9729 1148616 82 Linux swap / Solaris

I am a little concerned about hda1. During defrag prior to attempting to install windows reported 66% used. That's more than the 50 gig allocated to hda1. anyone know what the * at hda2 signifies. The installation does allow me to manually adjust the partition table. Should I give hda1 some more space? Lets say increas hda1 by ten gig and decrease hda2 by ten. Then just let edgy try to finish installing? That's just a thought, but I will defer to your experience.
Thanks for helping.
George

The * means that /dev/hda2 is bootable. That is where grub is supposed to be (but apparently isn't!)
/dev/hda1 is your windows partition.
/dev/hda2 is your linux / partition.
/dev/hda5 is your swap partition.

You are halfway through an install - you can't "just let it finish".
You are installing "Edgy" - which many have found to be unstable compared to "Dapper" which is AKA (k)ubuntu 6.06 .

I'd suggest you get a CD of either ubuntu 6.06, or kubuntu 6.06, and reinstall from scratch.
Tell the installer to install / to /dev/hda2.
Tell the installer to use /dev/hda5 as swap.
Tell the installer to format /dev/hda2 but nothing else!
You do not need a separate partition for /home.

Once you have ubuntu installed, with grub, you'll be able to get at your windows OS and files.
HTH (Hope This Helps)

Need? Ture enough, if you don't make a separate /home however, in the future when you install a new system, you will need to back up all files in /home and restore them after the upgrade. That is a pain. With a separate partition for /home, you can simply leave it in place, upgrade the system, and you do not need to restore the files in home.

It all depends how much you have in /home.

Thanks. 6.06.1 is downloading now. Another question. I don't see any burning software, except create an audio cd, in the applications. also, I just ran out of cds. I have plenty of dvds though. Can you suggest a dvd burn program that can handle ISO files. I just looked at K3B, but I don't think I have KDE on this Live CD.
Thanks again
George

One more question.
On the sudo fdisk -l results. What is hda3?
Thanks

It is the extended partition, that holds hda5
Sorry, I like KDE, and no longer use gnome. There's bound to be an equivalent though.