setting up dual boot debian and linux
 

I have partitioned my drive, have debian running in one partition and want to install Ubuntu 12.04 in the other. I have put the ISO for 12.04 and unetboot in that partiion but now I need to boot to that partion to open and install the program there. My issue is how do I boot to that partiton?

That is not how you install an operating system. You need to burn the iso to a DVD and boot from that, and install from there. The install process will give you the option to install the systems side by side.

The purpose of unetbootin is to create a bootable flash drive. You use unetbootin to put the iso on the flash drive then boot from the flash drive and install from there. Unetbootin basically puts a Live/Install CD on a flash drive. You could boot the iso from Grub2 if you had it installed on Debian.

Thanks for your advice. I downloaded linux unetbood and put it on my flashdrive along with the ISO for 12.04, set my BIOS to boot from the flashdrive, but I only got a message to the effect "insert bootable disk and hit any key" repeatedly... I then tried to get into the GRUB, hitting enter as grub flashed by... how do I get into grug so that I could boot from it? Thanks for your knowledge and patience

Robert Schwab

No, that's not the way to do it. Move the iso and move unetbootin to Debian. Then from Debian, all you should have to do is click on the unetbootin icon and start the process. It would be easier if you put them both in your /home/user directory. Once you have Ubuntu on the flash, boot from the flash and start the install to whichever partition you want.

I first put the ISO of 12.04 and Unetboot for windows in my flashdrive and opened it up on the other hard drive where I have Windows 7 loaded. Unetboot opened, downloaded Linux and once Linux finished loading, I rebooted, got a screen of purple haze, the empty ubuntu screen, and then the screen scrolled to black... no 12.04, no grub menu, no Windows 7, just purple haze....not good.

So when I do as you suggest and load unetboot and the ISO into my home folder on Debian and try to open unetboot, I get a red box saying "Could not create the archive, archive not supported" or when I try to open with gedit, I get a message

gedit has not been able to detect the character encoding.
Please check that you are not trying to open a binary file.
Select a character encoding from the menu and try again.

It looks like Debian can't read Ubuntu... any suggestions?

You install the ISO on a flash drive by using unetbootin. then reboot to the flash and install whatever distro is on there to whatever partition you want.

There are different unetbootin programs for windows and for Linux. If you downloaded the windows version and then moved it to Debian, it won't work. You need to use the Linux version of unetbootin from Debian.

I'm not sure what you are trying to do with gedit, it's a text editor and won't help you with creating a bootable flash drive.
I've used unetbootin a number of times and have never seen the "archive" error you are reporting so, do you have the Linux version of unetbootin? If so, you should be able to click it to open. You should also be able to open it in a terminal. Change to your /home directory. Assuming a user named rschwab90, cd /home/rschwab90/. Change the user name to whatever it actually is. You should then be able to run unetbootin with a command: ./unetbootin-linux-502. If you have a different version than 502, you will need to enter the correct name.
You should then be prompted for your root password and get the unetbootin gui. If you already have the Ubuntu iso, click the radio button to the left of Diskimage, then to the far right you will see a tab with several dots. Click it an navigate to the directory in which you have the Ubuntu iso. In the Type box at the bottom, you should see USB. In the drive box, you should see an entry for your flash drive which needs to be plugged in before you start unetbootin. On a machine with only one hard drive, your flash drive should show as sdb1. When you have this selected, you click Ok and it should put Ubuntu on the flash drive.

I'm guessing you have the wrong version of unetbootin but I can't be sure about that. In the unetbootin window, since you already have the Ubuntu iso, there is no need to do anything with the boxes at the top, Distribution, Select Distribution and Select version. Without knowing which of these steps you used, there is no way to give any more specific advice.