I'm a Linux newbie and don't know how to do a lot of things. Five months ago, I asked a friend at FreeGeek Columbus to delete the extaneous operating systems from my computer just leaving the one I used, and he accidently deleted them all. “No problem,” I said, “I'll just reinstall when I get home.”

But everytime I try to reinstall K/Ubuntu, I get an error message saying
Installation Failed
The installer encountered an error copying files to the hard disk:
[errno 5] Input/output error
. . .

That happens with four Ubuntu installation Cds, three live Ubuntu Cds, one Kubuntu live CD, and one Fedora live CD. I suppose there's a problem with my DVD rom. PCLinuxOS and openSUSE, however, do install, so those are what I've been using (I've only recently ceased with openSUSE, for the time being).

Today, however, I got lucky trying out something different. I used an Ubuntu 9.04 alternative CD (not live as they abort when they come to the input/output error message) to install the base system and grub with lvm. It allows me skip over software installation which is where the input/output error message happens. It boots to a command line. I don't know what commands to use to get the software to install from a mirror, or how to install repositories from the command line.

Will someone help me out here? I've never had Kubuntu, per se (only Ubuntu with the KDE desktop); so since PCLinuxOS GNOME 2010 (a rolling distro) is more stable and polished than Ubuntu 9.10, I'd like to fill my base system out with Kubuntu software.

Any help or direction given me will be much appreciated.__________________

Try or for a list of servers and desktops you can install look at

It looked like the command was going to do it . . . but, then, there was output to the effect of need 0B archives. Apparently, the base system includes no software packages at all. Which makes sense because during the installation, installing software failed, but options included skipping it and going on to install grub (or, what I selected, to add grub to the MBR) and finish.

I haven't been in Ubuntu for a while, but I don't think I've ever heard of 0B archives. I'll be googling that as soon as I post this.

Thank you.

I found some output in: HowtoForge Forums | HowtoForge - Linux Howtos and Tutorials > Linux Forums > HOWTO-Related Questions > The Perfect Spamsnake - Ubuntu Jaunty Pyzor Error -- Author Rocky, that except for the command, is identical to what I got:

root@armourmail:~# aptitude install python
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
No packages will be installed, upgraded, or removed.
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B of archives. After unpacking 0B will be used.
Writing extended state information... Done
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done.

I'll be looking for how to get software souces via command line. But please advise me further.

Thank you.

I see that you are logged on as root. Are you in single user mode via selecting the recovery option in GRUB? Or did you enable root and logged on normally as root?

The aptitude output is what I would expect if python is already installed.

Anyway you can see and change software sources by looking/editing the file /etc/apt/sources.list

Googling and searching forums for Ubuntu, every relevant posting I found, involved editing /etc/apt/sources.list, and that just simply didn't happen for me. I tried every command suggested and every variation I could think of: sudo, sudo aptitude, sudo apt-get, sudo nano . . .. Nothing worked; I began to wonder if maybe my base system didn't have that directory. Nevertheless, the system did accept my backup command, sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list .backup.

Using my PCLinuxOS system to google and search, I found Ubuntu Documentation> Community Documentation > InstallationLowMemorySystems, made notes (don't have a printer), and restarted into my Ubuntu base system. But I couldn't get into /etc/apt/sources.list. Didn't know what to do. For lack of anything else to do, I tried some of the commands I'd made notes of to install packages. I tried to add repositories; wouldn't work.

But finally, sudo aptitude install xorg got output verbiage that directed me to put Jaunty 9.04 i386 release CD into the rom drive. But I didn't have one having given them all away or loaned them out to people I know who are unfamiliar with Linux. All I had was the Jaunty alternative. So I put it in, and xorg was installed (I really didn't know whether to do xorg or x-windows-system-core and had decided to try the one if the other didn't work).

I got so excited I forgot to take out the CD. And good thing too, because the only packages I was able to download and install were those on the CD. I think what it came down to was since it is an alternative installation CD, a lot of packages normally available on Live CD weren't there. Kubuntu wasn't there, nor Xubuntu; but Ubuntu-desktop was (273 packages, if memory serves).

As happy as I am to have finally gotten Ubuntu back on my computer, I had to admit that Jaunty is rather lackluster next to PCLinuxOS GNOME 2010 (the two distros could be sisters despite the rpm and debian difference). That left me with no choice but to upgrade to 9.10 after updating 9.04.