Installed Ubuntu 12 LTS recently. Dumped Windows XP after I couldn't reinstall even though had CD and Codes so I've quit that buisness. No more Drugs-

These are my problems:

Installed Ubuntu 12 LTS operating system on Flash drive and running on Acer Extensa 4620. Runs fine but- I want to move the operating system to the recently installed hard drive to increase speed.

I used Gpart to create the following structure: /dev/sda1 31 GiB, (an unallocated space 9.7 GiB), /dev/sda3 107 GiB.

The unallocated space in between the two ntfs partions is for the swap file 9.7 GiB.


First problem, can't figure out how to change unallocated space to swap file status.

Second problem: I tried to use dd I believe it was, to move the operating system to the hardrive but got errors in the command line execution.

Caveat- The file system on the Flash drive is ext4. It is smaller and not even close to fully used. Boot section is: 28 GiB with 14 GiB used.

As a newbie with other operating system experience I may be more comfortable than most with the process, however due to the radically different nature of Linux I'll need some precise instructions if you can help

Thanks for any assistance,

FusionState.

when it comes to moving ubuntu, i offen do a fresh install, select the same username&password, copy over /home folder, and set permissions for home folder and install desired applications on new machine.

you most certainly can't just dd it to your hard drive. if you tried that, chances are you have to repeat the partition/format process you described. which will loose all existing data. so if you have important data, move it to somewhere else first.

apart from that i'd do as yooy suggested.

ps: swap on linux is usually 1:1 to physical ram, so if you have 4gb ram, use 4gb swap.

suggest you read up on the whole topic, there's gazillions of how-tos on the web.

[experimental]: if nothing is important on the internal drive you can probablyand get a bootable system. then you can boot a gparted-live-usb to increase the partitions sizes.

9l7GB seems excessive for swap. If you have something like 4-8GB of RAM, you would not need nearly that much. If you have a big drive, I guess it doesn't matter. In GParted, you should see the unallocated space in the main window. Click on it to highlight it and then click the Partition tab at the top and you should have the 'New' option, click it and you should be able to set it as swap. If you've done this and it failed you need to post more detail on what exactly you did and the results.

Huh ???. You do *not* want to use NTFS for Linux.
Swap needs to be in a partition, not un-allocated space.

"dd" is absolutely the worst option in this situation. You can just preallocate partitions and create Linux filesystems on them and copy everything across, or (better) do as suggested by @yooy, and re-install from scratch. Much better option - Ubuntu is (was, last I tried) good at recognising prior userid/password on install.

You could use a tool like redobackup or clonezilla. They tend to work OK. Or partimage or g4u or g4l maybe.

Actually gparted can copy partitions.

dd should or might work. Kind of depends on some things. It wouldn't be my first choice to suggest.


After you clone it, you should be able to resize it.

Thanks for the replies. I do have a good backup option so I'll be able to wipe the drive and start over if need be.

schneidz: I may well try the dd if statement first. I do not understand the function though. if of ?? I've just run the concept through an Internet search and will read up on it. Sounds promising and "if" I try it I'll let you know what the outcome is. Could it possibly damage the hard drive by creating an USB image on a Hard Drive device. (I'm new to this..)

Alternatively-

Is there a way to turn the existing system on the USB Flash Drive into an ISO or distribution of some sort and then install that to the hard drive?

The reason for wanting to do that is: I've got a setup with various programs installed already and I don't want to have to reinstall all the programs again.

Thanks,

fusionstate.

The dd command does a byte for byte copy. dd if/dev/sda of/dev/sdb will copy from sda to sdb and overwrite anything on sdb.

I've used remastersys to do that on Ubuntu 12.04. The program is no longer be developed but should work on 12.04.