14.04 LTS is running/ need help with partitions/ prt-scr attached/ thanks
 

I have Gparted partition editor installed.
Just a tad perplexed [scared to death] of making the wrong move here.
I have all my personal files/folders on an external drive, I wish to give
Ubuntu and it's supporting cast, all the room they want. I intend to be a maker at some point here on LinuxQuestions.org, but for right now, untill I learn more,
I have become somewhat of a taker.

"we are either makers or takers".....Issac Newton

Thank You!!

I don't understand what you want to accomplish.

As I see it, sda1 is 924 gig, and you have a small, unallocated 7 gig on sda2. Since you have 258 gig of stuff on sda1, and you are not telling us what that is, ( I'm guessing its your Ubuntu install, including /home ) what is it you want to change, modify?

Hi there,

I'm glad I'm not the only one.

No, it's just the other way round: The 258GB is unused space, that is, available. So the OP has a 1TB harddisk with only one useful partition, which is about 3/4 full. I guess he wants to discard the extended partition and integrate the remaing 7GB into the one big partition - which would be a mere drop in the bucket.

By the way: Am I the only one to think this is a strange setup? At a minimum, I would've made separate partitions for /boot and /home, and allocated a max of about 20..30GB for the root file system. And there's something else that strikes me: No swap partition?

[X] Doc CPU

i wouldn't bother a newbie with seperate /home and /boot partitions.
but more than 1 partitions there should be, definitely, esp. on sucj a large drive.
however, moving 665GB of data around, i think it's going to be very painful if you don't happen to have another 1TB drive around.

yes, a swap partition.
how about making that 7GB into swap, for starters? (but please remove the extended partiton first, and make the 7GB of unallocated space into a primary partition)

Hi there,

okay, a separate partition for /boot isn't vitally necessary, but I wouldn't want to merge /boot into the root file system, though I don't have a real solid reason for that. Just some sort of gut feeling. Got used to that when I set up my first Linux system, which was Gentoo, and the guide book I followed suggested that.

However, since my earliest days of using a PC, I have never, never mixed user data with OS and software. Not in DOS, not in any Windows flavor, and nowadays, not in Linux. Always had separate partitions, and I would strongly recommend everyone to have it that way. Actually, I haven't set up /home with an extra partition on any of my systems. But then I'm using /home only as a junkyard for many programs' user-specific configuration. For the actual every-day working data, which may be many gigabytes, I do have an extra partition that I usually have mounted to /data.

Especially then, agreed.

Yes, it's too late to close the barn now that the horse has already escaped. At this point, it would be too much of a fuss to shift data around, especially when every step bears the risk of failure.

I thought of that, too. And yes, the extended partition is really pointless in this scenario.
There was one aspect, though, that stopped me from suggesting that. I usually try to set up partitions so that the root file system and the swap partition are physically close to each other. With the partitioning we have here, it is likely that most of the system files are located at the beginning of the drive (low sector numbers), and the swap partition would be at the end (high sector numbers). That would involve a lot of R/W head movement when the swap space is really needed, and then swapping would deteriorate the overall performance quite a lot. Not to mention the stress it imposes on the HDD.

My typical partition layout is therefore: First /boot (less than 1GB), then swap (about 4GB), then root (about 20..30GB), then /data (the remaining space). For the sake of speed and quietness.

[X] Doc CPU

Maybe the OP will come back but his post is pretty confusing. First saying Ubuntu is running and then indicating he wants to install it but not where. On the 1TB? So what is the ext4 partition on sda1 now? If you want to create another partition on that drive, you need to shrink the ext4 partition. As indicated above, you have over 250GB available on which to create a partition to put it. You need to post more detail on what your intentions are.

The Op is running gparted from the system & the partition is mounted as noted by the key on the left-hand side. They should run gparted from live-media so that the partition isn't mounted.
I agree about necessity of seperate /home & swap, but /boot is not necessary with only 1 OS.
I would also agree that the OP needs to add another drive to the system

14.04 lts
 

The attached is the 'after' view of my system. I did a fresh re-re-re-install of Win7.
The F drive is a Seagate on which i use to seed my utorrent files. No more to be added. Open for Ubuntu use only.
I have purchased a 32G usb flash drive to 'live' mount my download of 14.04 tonight.
I will be waiting for your replies/help.

Many thanks,
/pete

My favorite Isaac Newton quote:

"If I have seen further, it is from standing on the shoulders of giants."

This forum has many folks who I consider to be giants in the world of Linux.

help withwhat exactly?
now you're sending windows screenshots - i don't understand what's going on.

please take a minute for yourself to define the problem.
also, keep it to one problem at a time.

reading the link in my signature might help.

Define the problem.
 

The problem is, I want to set up Ubuntu to run correctly, for a very, very long time.[I am only 67]
I am fed up w/ Windows constant: 1)'important updates' that no living creature on earth knows what is IN the code itself and the subsquent registry alterations those create [not to mention registry failure / corruption] 2) anti-virus programs that only monitor the user [required by-you guessed it MS] 3) MicroSoft's own self indulgence (love of ones self) 4) the constant crashes and related rebootings / reinstallations) 5) the costs associated with 1,2,3 and 4; I could go on...

Today I purchased a Seagate 500 GB external drive and had a friend help me set it up. We did our best but I still don't have a 'swap' partition, nor do i completely understand it's function / use;
as I have read about and some of you kind folks have eluded too. I'm a newbie!!!!! still wet-behind-the-ears just retired...
After I mentioned all the chit that comes w/ Unity, he suggested Cinnomin but we could not download it , so I am typing from Gnome. A Unity LTS 14.04 base I guess.. I have one hell-of-a-ladder to climb to reach you guys, but i'll get there.

Attached please find and comment on the screen-shots, if I/we are on the right track.
Special thanks for the quote of Mr. Newton's
If there is any interest on our very close future please visit King World News and Harvey Organ's
http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldne...orld_News.html
http://harveyorgan.blogspot.com/
p.s. it took me a while to figure out what 'OP' meant...lol
p.s.s. i have noticed that not too many new posts are being added,,tells me most of the world seems to be a tad ahead of me...
most of tha questions on the www are from the early 2000's
Thank You,

You don't necessarily need a swap partition if you have an adequate amount of RAM. It is only used if your RAM is not sufficient for what you are doing and is similar to pagefile on windows. Also, your second image does show a swap partition of 2GB, partition 5. Since you are able to boot Ubuntu, it's time to start exploring and using it.

If you have any specific questions, just post.

that is not your problem, that's your desired outcome.
yeah, sorry for those abbreviations. you can always use http://www.urbandictionary.com/ if something cryptic like that comes up.
that's just not true.

Read this Psychocats page on how to install Ubuntu. Then read the entire site, it is actually quite informative, and go from there.

@yancek
 

Thanks,

'Since you are able to boot'
Question: when I start up my computer with windows7 still loaded, the only way I am able to boot Ubuntu is to press the 'esc' key at startup and select a different option, namely 'boot menu', then I can select the Seagate drive on which Ubuntu is loaded. Am I assuming correctly in that I will be forced to follow this procedure as long as windows remains on the main hard drive ? Methinks, yes.

Comment: Two fold, I have been an initial seeder on KAT [kickass torrents] for almost two years now. My handle there is Cicero777. I have tried to use Vuze which is Ubuntu's imbedded / accepted torrent client, and a KAT approved client as well. Some of the movies are imo, dearly needed in the times that we face especially important for the youth, again in imo. As I am still new to Ubuntu, I like having windows around for my torrents [uses Utorrent] and having something to lean on untill I gain enough knowledge, experience, on Ubuntu. Yes, it's time to start exploring and using it, and I intend to but I also have to find a way to use Ubuntu to seed those flicks as well.
Would you be able to offer any suggestions on my torrent concerns ? KAT only allows Utorrent and Vuze, as far as seeding goes in their FAQ page.

VERY impressed with Ubuntu, very stable.

@ k3wO1............

'read the entire site'

I have already told you ,,,I'm 67
any how, by the time I red the entire site,,, folks would be living on Mars.....
axaxaxaxaxaxaxaxaxa
or is it
xaxaxaxaxaxaxaxaxaxa

lol

not sure i understand.
are you sure you are shutting windows down properly?


not impressed.
kat posters are a bunch of childish posers.
you are in the company of real nerds now.


not true.
it's transmission.


torrents don't use torrent clients, and it seems you have mistaken kickasses recommendations for actual facts.
i suggest you inform yourself about how torrenting works.
also you're not dependent on kickass or any one torrent website.


well....


i guess they meant "read the entire page".
anyhow, what's wrong with reading an entire site full of good and newbie friendly tutorials?
and what's wrong with being 67?

Hi there,

and you're already sure of that? - Well, I don't want to seed any new doubt. But Ubuntu, praised as the example of a user-friendly and easy-to-use Linux distro five years ago, has become controversially perceived over the past two, three years. That's partly because of technical matters (for instance, the introduction of their newly invented Unity desktop), partly because of political matters of the Canonical company.
If you think you're getting along with it well, however, it's okay.

But I do recommend to do a clean install and not some makeshift experiment that might fail as soon as certain prerequisites aren't given any more. First thing you should ask yourself: Do you want to keep Windows alongside as a alternative system?

If so, it's getting a bit tricky, because you'll first have to shrink the Windows partition on your HDD to make room for the new Ubuntu partition(s).
If not, you can simply dismiss the current contents of the HDD, assuming you have a backup of your personal important data. Reading what you elaborate about Windows further down, I guess that's the way you want to go. That would mean: Download the ISO image of your chosen distro, burn it to a DVD (or create a bootable USB drive), pop it into the drive, boot off it, and do a standard install, erasing the entire HDD and using all of it (or set up partitions manually).

Whatever way you choose, be prepared for some rough tracks until the new system is running smoothly.

My respect. And I thought I was one of the old guys here, being mid-forty. ;-)

If you're in for a permanent solution, please do not install Ubuntu on an external drive. There's plenty of tripwires about that, and it'll be slow even when it works perfectly: Assuming USB 2.0, internal HDDs are about 3..4 times faster.

Swapping is a technique to improve the performance of computers with limited memory (RAM). A part of the HDD is reserved, and memory contents that isn't used at the moment is swapped out into that reserved space, making the portion of RAM available that was occupied before. That way, a computer can act like it had more RAM than there really is, but the process is slow.
But from one of your attached screenshots I see that your computer is equipped with 8GB of RAM. That's fairly generous, and with that much memory you could easily go without swap for most purposes.

... which you don't like either? That's why I asked above if you were already sure about Ubuntu.
You might prefer to use one of its variants like xubuntu (using the xfce desktop), Lubuntu (using LXDE) or Kubuntu (using KDE), where the two former are very lightweight desktops, and KDE is full-blown and bloated like Windows.
Or a different distro altogether? I'm very satisfied with Mint, which is a derivative of Ubuntu and also comes in different flavors (different desktops, that is).

Standard forum vocabulary, like "AFAIK" (as far as I know), "IIRC" (if I remember correctly), "YMMV" (your mileage may vary) or "IANAL" (I am not a lawyer) and a lot more.
But of course, if you're new to the community, how should you know ...

[X] Doc CPU

LMHO!
(yes, i know, childish isn't it)

My hard disk

Above I've posted a screenshot of my laptops internal hard disk. It runs a dual boot of Windows 8.1 Professional and Debian Linux Testing.

Installed Windows first. Left 100 gb of space for Linux. And installed Linux there. It automatically created a 4 gb swap partition as well. It also installed Grub which is a bootloader and allows me to choose between Linux and Windows at startup. Linux by default. Works flawlessly here.

Hi there,

je bent Nederlands? - Natuurlijk, ik zal naar de member informatie kijken. :-)
Always a pleasure to read some Dutch, even more to hear some Dutch.

That's the usual procedure. Recommended, because Windows acts according to the first commandment: "You shall have no other gods before me." In fact, Windows will not care if there is another operating system installed; it will just bull-headedly install its own boot loader, running anything over that was there previously.
All Linux distros, however, notice and respect other OS's being present on the HDD, even to the point of integrating them into their own boot menu.

It depends on which system you want to be the primary one. If you use Linux only occasionally, and only for special tasks, that may be a good decision. However, for me it would be the other way round: I'm using Linux more than 90% of the time and for almost all purposes; very rarely I still use Windows for something it does better than Linux. That's why I wouldn't spare more than about 20..30GB for Windows. Not even for an NTFS data partition, because after installing an appropriate driver, Windows can even use ext2/3 partitions. Have been running XP for years as a secondary system, using ext3 partitions for data.

[X] Doc CPU

My data is on the Windows partition, which Linux has no problems accessing. Even though I now use Linux 95% of the time, the 100 gb partition does nicely. In fact, only about 20 gb is used :)

But you're spot on about the Windows loader. It only allows, well, itself :D

P.S.
Klopt. Ik ben een Nederlander :)

You want stable try Debian or something other than Ubuntu or that uses Ubuntu as its base.
It's k3lt01. Kay, Three, Ell, Tee, Zero, One

Yes

Before he died my father was 69 and teaching himself Linux, he was bedridden and on an oxygen machine. I don't see what your age has to do with anything, it would be different if you were extremely ill or had a learning problem.

You have to read LQ after we have answered your questions I don't see how reading a link to good information is going to be a drain on resources.

Guess again. I said what I meant and I meant what I said. A few of Peter's questions could be answered by him doing some reading of relevant pages and sites, including the Ubuntu wiki and Psychocat's site. I'm in the middle of 3 assignments I don't have time to sit and explain much now so posting a link to a page with good information is a reasonable thing to do from my perspective.

KDE, FORKS,MYTHTV, Gnome Shell
 

Hi Gals and Guys

with the reading / research that I have done so far, I'm getting
deeper into the rabbit hole that is turning into a bottomless pit !!!
All those Distro's to contend with and being a newbie is almost
more than my pea-pickin' brain can handle. Myth sounds nice and clean
i.e. no desktop screen cluter. but I dislike bugs which begs the
question,,which has fewer! and what sacrifices do I want to make.

Then the business of KDE, FORKS,MYTHTV, Gnome Shell,,,,,seems to me
that each and everyone of you guys / gals missed your calling and
should have become BRAIN SURGENS instead !! dang, what have I gotten
myself into ???

My typing is SO POOR that I have to type this on Notepad, copy paste
here and pray like hell that the LinuxQuestions.Org window session
does not expire as it has for me yesterday and earlier today.
Ulimately it is my decision as to which I choose to play with, so I
greatly thank you for all your help...
I am attaching fotos of my HP system.
I just want an open source alternative to the 'mans' offerings.
Just a semi-normal fellow, looking for freedom of choice.
Seems to me, that I may have bit off moar than I can handle.
[but I'm having fun doing it]

The following comments I copied from

:http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastruc...40300539OPDTUB
and I am sure there are millions more just like these:

//////////////////
///////////////////




I like mythbuntu because the desktop does not have any icons on it,
just a Blank desktop where you choose what to drag there... and the
fact that everything is in the "applications" menu structure... just
click it and drill down into the menus... simple,simple,simple. none
of the "what does this icon button do"?... that KDE and unity has.
simple is better, because in linux the TERMINAL and COMMAND LINE are
your BFF (lol) or you have tolerate it with a passion... yes, mythtv
is installed by default but if you want to get rid of mythtv it is
easy... mythcontrol center/ system roles/ select no backend/ no
frontend...)

////////////////

First and foremost, while Mint is technically a fork of Ubuntu, for
all intents and purposes they're basically the same thing done
differently. Why this author would feel the need to dual boot them
both seems ludicrous to me. Both Ubuntu and Mint share the same
repositories and the current edition for each has exactly the same
basic underpinnings (and the same bugs.) Obviously, superficially
they're quite different. Mint offers more user choice in its desktop
offerings including its custom Gnome 3.x fork, Cinnamon and Mate,
both of which use a familiar desktop/taskbar paradigm. Ubuntu only
offers its own Unity which has limited reconfigurability, bizarre
global menus, non-intuitive HUD and window buttons that are
backwards. But more than user choice, Mint also supplies many third
party codecs and web plugins out of the box. With Ubuntu, these have
to be installed manually. Whereas a new Mint user can get to work
almost immediately in an environment that's familiar, a new Ubuntu
user will find that he or she isn't in Kansas anymore and will
probably fumble about trying to get to grips with something so new
and unfamiliar as Unity. To me, the choice between Mint and Ubuntu
for novices, which is Ubuntu's intended audience, is a no-
brainer...choose Mint.

////////////////////



"All too often, I hear the word 'easy' being tossed around as if
it's a bad word when describing Linux distributions. It's unfortunate
that in some circles, an easy-to-use Linux distribution is looked
down upon. Thankfully with both Linux Mint and Ubuntu, this isn't the
case. The communities for both distributions are both very focused on
a new user experience. I happen to see this as a positive thing.

"Despite the mutual goal of offering an easy to use Linux
desktop, I've noticed that Ubuntu and Linux Mint have different
approaches as to how they appeal to their users.
"In recent years, I've actually found the two distributions shift
further apart than ever before. This change isn't a negative thing,
rather a positive highlight that allows both distributions to
differentiate themselves better. The shift began with different
approaches to tools and software. Later, the differences between the
distros evolved to include the desktops as well.

"Today, Ubuntu firmly embraces Unity while Linux Mint holds
tightly to their own re-imagining of the Gnome Shell. In both
examples, the goal is to provide the most seamless experience to new
users as possible. Interestingly enough, the approach taken with each
distribution couldn't be more different when it comes to the desktop
environment."

/////////////////


Both Mint and Ubuntu by default will install on a single partition of
the entire available disk space. However both use the same manual
partition tool that makes defining your own disk partition layout
easy enough.
I generally partition my disk into 4 partitions. Partition #1 is the
/boot area of about 200mb to hold the kernel boot image and grub
config files. Partition #2 is the / (root) area where all system
files go. How big to make this depends on the size of the disk, but
you can usually fit everything you need in 20GB, I usually size this
around 30-50gb. #3 is a swap partition, usually sized to be 1-2 times
the amount of dram memory. #4 is my /home partition and it's what
left on the disk after the first 3 partitions are sized.

///////////////


(X) Peter T
p.s. judas priest,,some of you get a tad touchy
very soon, we are ALL going to need all the friends we can muster
TPTB [the powers that be] want more, the financial system is bust

typing on notepad, then posting it to the forum? i've done that myself.
just slow, not old.

hey, no problem. people on linuxquestions like to rant. it's a fact.

you have good hardware, just look at distrowatch.com's top ten and choose something already.

most linux' are non-commercial.
a businessman doesn't sell you a car by saying "it drives really well, but it has this scratch and that part will have to be replaced soon...". same goes for windows.
but linux developers and users are doing exactly that.
think about it, in the end it's a good thing and one of the reasons while linux is actually better than windows.

i never tried MYTHTV but the name says it has something to do with TV, no?
so if you're not planning on using your machine mainly as a home theatre, maybe you should choose a different distro.

and now i really recommend to you to mosey over to distrowatch.com, read the reviews for the top ten, and install one of them and do not listen to us forum-crazy nerds anymore.
when you took a few steps and problems crop up, then you come back (and maybe start a new thread for that).