Preparing for installation

T J Tulley · Post by **T J Tulley** » Mon Oct 22, 2007 2:48 pm

At present Gparted in SystemRescueCD is creating a new 4 GB partition to be /, a 20 GB partition to be /home, and a 2 GB partition formatted as Linuxswap. That's the only one which I can mark appropriately for its intended use. I have put a boot flag on the one for /root.

That's happening in my PC - I'm sending this from my laptop where Firefox is installed in a Windows system - the process is taking a very long time. I'm hoping for a reply before it is complete!

Those partitions are in a 200 GB disk which is at present in an adapter on SATA1; I shall move it to be Primary Master in IDE1 and then install Celena. Celena is already on the present Primary Master disk which will be temporarily removed; booting problems are occurring - BIOS repeatedly fails to recognise it, ultimately succeeding after increasing delays.

I have copied my home folder to another location from where I shall copy it into the new installation.

This enquiry is about properly identifying the root and home partitions in advance - I have managed this for root in the past, but not for home. I can't see a facility to do this in Gparted, nor was I able to do so during the Install process from the system cd - burned from the downloaded iso image file.

I shall be most grateful for advice. [Sent ~ 8 p.m. BST]

Added later using Edit facility:
Install failed to detect any HDD devices! So it was not possible to proceed.
BTW - even in the version of Celena running from the CD, Help was not available. Same message in box.
So I returned disks to (nearly)* their former positions and this time, Celena booted immediately with no delay - first for a long time. Perhaps it was simply bad connections - though I find that hard to believe. I viewed Device Manager in the CD version - no HDDs shown. Now they are all there, with the new partitions which I created from the SystemRescueCD. However, the partition intended to be / for the intended new installation is not mounted.

* Now, SATA 1 has 500 GB SATA disc and SATA2 has 200 GB SCSI disc in adapter.

Incidentally, there was a problem detecting .dmrc - that is now solved, thanks to advice from Boo.

There remain the questions - how are partitions prepared which will be recognised as a proper site for a new Mint installation - and how is the required Help for Celena made available? [Sent ~ 00.30 BST]

Boo · Post by **Boo** » Tue Oct 23, 2007 1:11 am

I know your many disk setup and i would try to simplify things.

you dont need to format and partition before you install. actually it is best not to as it can all be done from the installer.
the better way to do it is instead of creating partitions for /, /home and swap before the install is to create free space on the disk where the partition were going to be.
ie delete the partitions and leave it free (no partitions).

now when you install, at the partitioning part you could choose "use available free space" but this will only create a swap and / partition in the free space you left.
but you want a /home partition so you choose manual partition. then using the free space you create your /, /home and swap partitions.
this way you will know where they are and what they are called. also /home will get mounted correctly.

T J Tulley · Post by **T J Tulley** » Tue Oct 23, 2007 8:18 am

Thanks again Boo:

I thought it was recommended to prepare partitions. Perhaps that was a magazine article long ago.

When I last did an installation I couldn't see any way to identify one for /home. Your advice subsequently solved that problem, and now that the boot problem has resolved itself and Celena starts without any delays or warnings, I shall not for the moment do another installation.

As far as I can see at present from the Newsletter, when Daryna reaches a stable version may be the next occasion, although an upgrade may be acceptable - we'll wait and see.

There remains the issue of the missing help file: it is missing from the temporary version loaded from the CD, as well as from the installed version. Should I raise this in a mail to the Development forum? Newbies walk carefully!

Similarly the fact that Help in Firefox says there is a link to Import Wizard in the File menu - there isn't, but this is a Mint version of Firefox. Is that an issue for Mint developers, or for Mozilla?

A final general question: Celena comes with Open Office 2.2.0 Mint Edition. I downloaded OOo 2.3 and installed it in Cassandra - should I install 2.3 now in Celena? How "special" is the Mint edition? The advantage of 2.3 is that after this edition Open Office will automatically remove previous editions - up to now (2.2 included) they have to be uninstalled.

Boo · Post by **Boo** » Tue Oct 23, 2007 6:47 pm

I think the OO mint edition is really just some theming/splash screen changes.

I would install 2.3 on celena.

T J Tulley · Post by **T J Tulley** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 5:03 am

Thanks again Boo.

I'll do that soon. At present I'm having repeated crashes - I shall contact my previous anti-virus supplier AVG and install their Linux version, in case there is some malware around. I know it's unlikely in this environment - but so are crashes.

I've just noticed that while Celena is starting, when the screen appears after entering identity and password, I see in very small letters within the Linus Mint logo first "Nautilus" and then very briefly "Restricted manager". What does that imply?

Lolo Uila · Post by **Lolo Uila** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 5:16 pm

There are certain drivers in Ubuntu (Mint) that are called "restricted" because they are not open-source. Ubuntu uses the Restricted Manager and specific repositories for those drivers.

WiFi and ATI & nVidia graphics drivers are the most common examples.

Aloha, Tim

Lolo Uila · Post by **Lolo Uila** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 5:23 pm

Also, crashes are probably driver or hardware related. Give us some info about your system and we'll see if we can figure it out. And run the memory test from the Grub boot menu and let it loop for a while to see if you have any RAM problems (another common cause of crashes).

Viruses and Malware are nearly impossible in Linux (unless you do something stupid like run in root mode all the time).

Aloha, Tim

T J Tulley · Post by **T J Tulley** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 7:57 am

Thanks Lollo Ulla:

Memory [1 GB] gets tested at every boot by BIOS - I'll wait to see whether crashes recur. Yesterday was bad at the beginning, but not later.

Currently my main grumble about Linux is lack of drivers for hardware - scanner. slide scanner and webcam. I have installed Wine but its powers seem a bit limited, and haven't tackled the installation of Virtualbox although its tar is downloaded.

A similar problem is incompatible software such as MyFamilyTree which only works with Windows. I am told that a Linux program will do that job but I haven't yet had time to try it.

Lolo Uila · Post by **Lolo Uila** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 9:06 am

The BIOS test is a VERY poor memory test. It will miss errors more than find them. In all the many years I have been building and modding computers I don't think I've ever seen a BIOS memory test fail, even on systems with verified bad RAM.

The memtest86+ test in the Grub boot menu is very thorough. If your system passes that you can rest assured your RAM is okay.

Glad to hear things are working better though. I still have Windows dual-boot set up on my systems for the occasional Windows program I may need to use. It just seems simpler than messing with Wine, but I suppose I will some day just to see what it's all about.

Aloha, Tim

Lolo Uila · Post by **Lolo Uila** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 9:16 am

Oh, and lately I too have been using Gparted to pre-partition my hard drives before installation. The reason I started doing this is the install partitioner seems to make the partitions smaller than I tell it to. Gparted, on the other hand, makes them the sizes I define.

You just partition the drive with Gparted, and define /, /home, swap and any other mount points you need during the install. If you're not too critical about your partition sizes being exactly what you define, then you can just let the installer partition the drive as well.

Aloha, Tim

Samar · Post by **Samar** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 7:31 am

Hi, I am using Linux Mint 3. How to install Creative webcam Model no. VF0330 in my system. I tried camorama but everytime it read "could not connect to video device(/dev/video0)." Kindly instruct this newbie.
Samar

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