Very Basic Confusion

M

Macro$haft Victim

Member
I read the instructions, but they assume more knowledge than I have. I have two new HP a6200n computers with Vista on 320GB hard drive with 2 MB RAM. I used Vista's Drive Shrink to create 160GB of free space. I want to load Ubuntu 7.04 from a Live CD. (I already know it works fine by running it as the Live CD.)

At Direction 2 you state, "When prompted to set up the bootloader, make sure you specify to install LILO, GRUB, or whatever to the bootsector of the partition that Linux is being installed to and not the MBR of your hard drive."

How do I do that? What are each of the exact steps? I looked at the FAQ and did not see an answer.

Thanks!
 
Hi Victim, welcome to NeoSmart Technologies.

See, we can't provide "specific" instructions for Linux because there are just *so many* different distributions with different steps involved.

Now the specific instructions for Ubuntu are to start setup, and when you see a button called "advanced" click it. It'll show something like hda - a reference to the drive that Ubuntu is on. You need to change that to something like hda2 - making it refer to the partition instead. Pick the name-number of the partition you earlier chose for Ubuntu.

Good luck :smile:
 
I am even more confused by your answer. I did not "pick" any partition for UBUNTU. It is running in the Live CD mode and I have no idea "where" that is located. Nothing in Vista identifies as "hda". The only things are the letter drives C, D for the Factory Image which I have to maintain intact, then others through "J" for a USB jump drive. Where are you getting that description?

How do I determine the proper designation of what I am supposed to be describing the Ubuntu Partition to? When I go into "Advanced" it shows the empty space I created earlier, but no directions for how to properly name it as a partition. Neither does it explain what allocation to make for a swap file or how to properly name that either.

As much as I loath Macro$haft it is this kind of user unfriendliness and lack of clear, basic step by step instructions and complete explanations that keeps so many of us stuck in it! That is not a criticism of you, but a general observation of why most people keep using the garbage from Redmond.
 
Well, you can't configure the Vista bootloader to boot into a Live CD - you should click the "install ubuntu" icon on the desktop, and after you pick the partition to be your "/" drive in Ubuntu setup you will see a small button simply called "Advanced" that you click.

This button appears on the last page right before the actual copying of files begins.
 
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