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Originally Posted by directorguy7
My WINDOWS MBR and hdd layout as follows.-
120gb (C: ) WINDOWS BOOT Drive.Vista (IDE)
230gb (D: ) Windows 7 Beta (SATA)
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500gb (F: ) Extra storage (SATA) (?: ) 30GB of the F: drive left unpartitioned.
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I would like to install unbuntu to the 30gb of blank, unpartitioned space. I know, tri-booting is not always recommended, but i feel fine with it as its not 3 windows OS's, and the fact that linux and windows use different boot loaders completely it would be fine.
When i start to install,(choose to manually set up partitions as im afraid it will erase a windows install or something) i am able to find the 30GB as the installer tells it as "Free Space" and is the only one i can "create a partition" to. I do this,
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To this point, all is right.
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(im not sure what a "mount point"means, but created it as "/" as leaving it blank does not allow me to continue installation.
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A mount point is an arbitrary location in your filesystem where a new device is attached, and its contents is made available. Don't worry if what I just said is chinese to you, it just takes a bit of time to become familiar with it.
In windows, not only partitions, but any other storage device is made available to you and identified as a single letter with a colon after it (a: ... z:)
In linux (and posix OSes in general), you "mount" a drive at a given point. The root of your file system is identified as a slash (/), this is where your fs starts. It usually lives in a partition, but it can really live anywhere, including a cdrom, and usb key or even a ram disk (but that's irrelevant here).
If you want to attach a new device into your fs you just mount it. For example, you could mount your cdrom at /mnt/cdrom, and then you would see the contents of your cdrom inside that directory. There's nothing like C: or D: to traverse devices, they all are attached or dettached from your fs as you wish. It's a very flexible system.
The mount point is arbitrary, you could really mount your cdrom wherever you want or fits you better, assuming you have the rights (as in "privileges" or "permissions") to do so.
USB drives, additional partitions and disks of any kind are all mounted the same, and their true nature is usually irrelevant to the applications. You'll learn this with the time and assimilate it. It's just different, but not complicated once you see it in practice.
So, in short, / is the right mount point if you only have one partition dedicated to linux.
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it installs fines, even finds both vista,and 7 and askes if i want to transfer documents (no.) it gives an option for boot loader config, but i left it alone, thinking Linux would see my widows MBR, and know i want to dual boot, and install fine.
Installation complete, but when i restart, linux is nowhere to be found, windows boot loader (offering only vista, and 7 as options like usual) loads and i can go into vista.
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I am not familiar with either Vista, Windows 7 nor Ubuntu, so I can't be sure. But, in principle, you need to install the (so called) Linux boot loader, and then configure it so you can boot windows and linux from it. That will usually be lilo or grub. The installer should be able to configure either of them to work with linux at least, and it *might* autodetect windows as well. However, as said, my experience in that field is very limited.
The configuration of the bootloader can always be corrected at a later stage if one of the OSes can't be seen or can't be booted. Probably someone around will step with specific instructions for the Ubuntu/Windows. I don't use Ubuntu so I have no idea about what does the installer do, and what does it leave for you to configure by hand.
Welcome. I hope you stay for long.
