Why GNU/Linux Rocks

[shikitohno]

Yep, my first step in a fixing a problem is usually searching the ArchWiki to see what they have to say about how the misbehaving program should be configured and what not. I've fixed more problems in my Fedora machine based on the ArchWiki than based on advice from any of their support forums or IRC channels. Amusingly, I've only had to consult it a few times for my actual Arch box, because the thing's been running rock-solid for so long. I think the only time I needed to use it in recent memory for fixing something on that machine was looking up to see how chroot worked, because there was a bug in the recent kernel update that rendered my system unbootable. 5 minutes with a live CD, and the machie was up and running again on a downgraded kernel.

Aside from documentation though, I think the AUR is pretty awesome. Get all the fun perks of source compilations, and the benefits of a package manager if you use something like yaourt. Of course, there are still some goofball packages in the AUR that have been set up to override any custom CFLAGs you've got going on,

[lxskllr]

lxskllr- have you been around long enough to remember the Linux original 0.09 install? Or even better, did you ever do a a first release SCO or Free BSD install? Those were the days... it took all day, two pizzas and a case of beer to get it running

I was around, but not really into computers then. My first machine was an Atari800, and then I dropped out for awhile. My next box was a machine I got at a show(remember those?). That was a 486DX50. I donated that to work, and dropped out yet again. My next one was a Dell P4 Northy. From here on out I'm into computers, and start building my own and everything. My first taste of GNU/Linux was in 2005 with the Ubuntu 5.10 release. I couldn't really use it due to having Winmodems for networking. Every new Ubuntu release had me up all weekend trying to the Winmodem working, but I never got it. Finally in 2008 I put Ubuntu on my laptop, and I began using it exclusively for my portables. In 2010 I started using it exclusively on my desktops, and here I am. Still with Ubuntu, but maybe switching to Debian when 12.04 gets released. It all depends on how smooth the upgrade goes, and how much I want a rolling release vs redoing all my customizations. I'll checkout Unity again, install Xfce, then see how it goes...

[sgreger1]

Jesus ****ing christ, I have never had a more difficult time installing anything before. I CANNOT get Ubunto to ****ing install. First I boot via DVD and choose "custom" so that I can define the partitions. It won't let me "add" ANY partitions on my larger faster HD, and when I go to add to the regular drive I have Win7 loaded on I can add the /boot but after that it won't let me add any other ones.

Every time I try to add a partition it says: "Starting sector number, 4,295,469,056 exceeds the msdos-partition-table-imposed maximum of 4,294,967,295. This is regardless of how big I make it, nothing works.

On my second hard drive it doesn't even give me the option to "add" in the partition menu either. I'm so ****ing pissed and there is nothing on google about this to help me. A bunch of tickets etc but no explanation.


Does anyone have any ****ing clue how to make this happen? What does this error mean? It sounds like I am trying to allocate more space than it will allow bu that is BS. I'm making a 10GB SWAP, a 20GB / root, and a 50GB /home. Nothing works. The only one it will let me make is the 258mb /boot and after that it errors out.



EDIT: It seems that I cannot install Ubuntu because I own a 3TB hard drive. Owning such a hard drive means I can not use it because Ubuntu is behind the times according to the internet. **** me. It won't let me create separate partitions from the ubuntu installer because the amount of hard drive space on my computer exceeds the maximum it can handle. ****ing makes no sense, isn't ubuntu used on huge corporate servers and stuff?


"If the user attempts to create a new partition with the unused space (space beyond 2TB), parted will fail with the following message:
Error: starting sector number, 4294967296 exceeds the msdos-partition-table-imposed maximum of 4294967295."

[shikitohno]

From what I've read, it's due to Ubuntu not supporting GPT in their kernel by default. According to an article I read, Red Hat and CentOS both include it by default, and I'd imagine Fedora does too. According to the archwiki, they enabled the necessary option by default as well, so the installer should be able to handle your 3TB drive perfectly fine. If you want to try Arch, here's the guide for installing. Keep in mind, however, that Arch is commonly thought of as a bit overwhelming for beginners, and there's no gaurantee it'll work for your particular case. If you try and go that route, I'll be happy to do my best helping you out if I can, but in the spirit of Arch I may have to tell you to RTFM or STFW if you ask a question that's too obvious. As long as you can get the partition's set up properly, I don't see Arch having an issue with this, and there are a couple forum posts of people who had success using 3TB drives there. It's a system that can be somewhat daunting, but as long as you follow the wiki's guide, it's relatively easy to get through. If partitioning works fine, I'd say that it would be about 60-120 minutes worth of time to set it up the first time.

It does get easier though, and now I can do a full install in about 30-45 minutes, since I don't have to stop and double check the guide constantly.

[lxskllr]

See this...

http://askubuntu.com/questions/56619...rd-drive-sizes

[shikitohno]

As I understand it, the underlying issue for sgreger is this:

The kernel's CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION option must be set to 'y' to compile EFI partition support into the kernel; 'm', for a loadable module, is not sufficient. CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION is enabled (i.e. set to CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION=y) by default in the Arch default kernel; if you are running a different kernel, you can use zgrep CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION /proc/config.gz to check for this setting. This option is required even if GPT-formatted disks are used only for storing data and not for booting linux.

This option enables GPT partitions, which give you a maximum addressable disk size of 2 ZiB, which places sgreger's measly 3TB well within functional range. The issue with Ubuntu is that they appear to not have this option enabled by default in their basic kernel. Since sgreger is running into issues trying to pull off this partition, I think it's a fair guess that he's using a UEFI boot on his machine. So, basically his options are to either install Ubuntu and compile his own kernel to enable it (which I think would be a rather overwhelming, if fairly educational intro to linux), or he can install a distro that enables it by default and he should be able to install without any sort of issues. That's the theory anyway.

[lxskllr]

You said RedHat supports it OOTB. Fedora would probably be a decent pick. I don't thins sgreger's ready for Arch yet :^P

[sgreger1]

Okay, so I finally got it to work (well at least got to the next step). I had to get the drive to GPT fromat and shrink it some, which enabled me to at least get past the installation phase and create the necessary partitions. So it installs, I boot back into windows, I use EasyBCD to make Ubuntu a boot option when I start my computer. Everything works up until this point.

I restart my computer, it asks me which OS to boot, I choose Ubunu, it then goes to a command prompt that says "GRUB>" and I am not sure what to type. I know GRUB is the bootloader but it seems like I need to let it know where my various partitions and the kernel are at this point.

I think I found the right tutorial, can one of you guys look at this real quick and see if it sounds like the right thing I should be doing?

So here's how to boot a kernel with that > prompt:

You need to specify the GRUB "root". Root can mean a lot of things in Linux, but in this case GRUB just needs to know the drive where the kernel is that you wish to boot. The following commands use this information. Here's how you specify the "root" (note that I'm showing grub> for clarity, don't enter it):

(don't hit <enter> at the end... yet)

grub> root (hd

and then hit the <tab> key, GRUB will stick in a zero if you only have a single hard-drive or give you a list of drives if you have more than one. This first number is referring to a physical hard drive, not just a partition. Enter a comma and then hit <tab> again and you'll see a list of partitions to choose from next like this:

QUOTE
Possible partitions are:
 Partition num: 0, Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7
 Partition num: 2, Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x83
 Partition num: 3, Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x4
 Partition num: 4, Filesystem type is fat, partition type 0xb
 Partition num: 5, Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x82
 Partition num: 6, Filesystem type is reiserfs, partition type 0x83


This can help you choose the partition that has the Linux kernel on it if you're not sure. Pick a number and then type the remaining parenthesis and <enter> so a complete example line would look like this:

grub> root (hd0,5)

Now that's choose the kernel. If we're not sure the kernel is here, this next command will show us that, in which case you'd go back and choose another partition (or drive and partition if applicable in your situation):

(don't hit enter after this, yet)

grub> kernel /boot/

Hit <tab> again and you'll get a list of the kernels that grub sees on that partition in /boot. Isn't this cool? If it can't find any kernels, make sure you entered /boot after kernel and then go back to the previous root command and try a different one. Remember that GRUB counts beginning at zero so hda6 would show up in grub as (0,5). Assuming you find a kernel, type the unique letters to it (you can hit <tab> to finish it) and then enter a space to append "root=" on the end with the location of the Linux root directory. This root is the regular meaning of root in that it refers to where Linux normally mounts the "/" filesystem. Unless you've custom partitioned, it'll be the same drive and partition as where /boot is. This time you have to give it the term Linux uses to refer to that drive like "/dev/hda7". I don't think auto-complete works here so you'll have to be specific. Here's a sample line where /boot and / are on the same partition:

grub> kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda6

Note that /dev/hda6 and (hd0,5) refer to the same partition.

The next command may or may not be optional depending on whether your system needs an initrd file to boot. If you don't think you need it, just skip this part:

(don't hit <enter> yet)

grub> initrd /boot/

Hit <tab> again to show eligible initrd files and type enough letters to auto-complete the rest with another <tab>. The final example line will look similar to this:

grub> initrd /boot/initrd

Note the above settings on some paper so you know what they are. Now the last command:

grub> boot
(hit enter)

If you get a kernel panic and a blurb about needing a root, then you probably forget to add the root= part on the end of the kernel line, and if you get an error message referring to initrd, then you need this line. This is also why you should write down the settings you use. Reboot, and try again.

Once you've booted you should edit GRUB directly (the above changes didn't install anything, it just got you running) or use your distributions boot loader configuration tool (in SuSE, I use the one in YaST under System) to edit grub using the parameters above.

[lxskllr]

Got a link to that tutorial? GRUB2 has replaced GRUB, and it might be a different procedure. I don't know just by looking at it. This is where I'd be hitting DuckDuckGo.

[sgreger1]

Got a link to that tutorial? GRUB2 has replaced GRUB, and it might be a different procedure. I don't know just by looking at it. This is where I'd be hitting DuckDuckGo.

http://forums.scotsnewsletter.com/in...ST&f=14&t=5025


Ive been trying to google it but I guess I don't know the right terminology to ask it I just woke up so i'll try again over on the linux forums. This has become my mission now to make this thing ****ing work and I will not sleep until I get it up and running.

[lxskllr]

That's the spirit! Keep at it. Your computer freedom is at stake :^D

Seriously though. While you may run into bumps, there's a certain satisfaction you get by solving problems on your own. A little blood in the computer makes it run better :^)

[sgreger1]

That's the spirit! Keep at it. Your computer freedom is at stake :^D

Seriously though. While you may run into bumps, there's a certain satisfaction you get by solving problems on your own. A little blood in the computer makes it run better :^)

Yah the real fun is trying to learn something new and figure it out. I am behind the times in regards to all things linux or command prompts in general. Is that utorial at least generally correct in that the reason I am being prompted "GRUB>" is because it needs me to tell it where to find the kernel /boot etc?


Edit: Found this one which has a screenshot that looks like what I am receiving:

http://aaron-kelley.net/blog/2011/04...-ubuntu-11-04/

[lxskllr]

Check this thread out...

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1436662

That tutorial you have is too old. It may or may not work, but it's for a different version of GRUB, and Windows. Without me knowing exactly how, I can't endorse its use.

[shikitohno]

sgreger, I think the big question is why did you even use EasyBCD to begin with? This seems like an unnecessary additional layer of complexity, where simply using grub2-install /dev/sdX would have sufficed, or grub2-uefi if you need that instead. In my experience, grub has always worked fine with detecting a Windows install and automatically generating an entry in the boot menu for me. If I had to guess, you probably either need the grub2-uefi package to have it work on your system, or else you managed to successfully install grub2, and then overwrote the relevant files when you went and used this EasyBCD thing. I think it would probably be easiest to fix this with the magic of chroot. Pop in a live disc, chroot, and either use grub2-install /dev/sdX (X being the letter of the drive you have your /boot partition on, so if it's on the 3TB drive, /dev/sdb), or install grub2-uefi if necessary, and install your bootloader with that.

I've never heard of EasyBCD before, and I've gotten by fine with nearly 3 years now of not having used it at all, which is why I'm so confused about what made you think that step was necessary. Just to make that clear.

[lxskllr]

I'm with shikitohno. I've always let GRUB handle the bootloader, and it's worked great. I've also used EasyBCD, but only in dealing with Windows installs. I try to stay away from anything MS in a mixed environment. MS doesn't like to play nice, and makes using non-MS stuff a PITA.