Problem installing Linux

Lenin

Helloooo Lads!

Right, so I downloaded Ubuntu and burned the image to a CD, have been using it from the CD for about a week and I like it so I want to install it on my Laptop which has a 60GB hd with XP installed. Using the Gnome Partition editor, I reduced the size of the partition with XP to 47GB having unallocated space of 9Gigs for the Linux install...

First I tried to use the full 9Gigs to install it(mount point /, ext3 etc.) but it said I had no swap file created, didn't seem to give me an option to create one.

I tried to(Using Gparted) free up 1Gig for the swap file from the 9gig unallocated space but it partitioned the 8gb as type ext3, mount point /media/sda4 and the 1GB is now 'unusable'...

I'll try to post a picture...

aidan_walsh

In Linux, swap is generally a different partition with a special file system type named "swap". Format the unusable partition to swap, and mount the swap point there.

Lenin

Aidan_walsh to the rescue yet again..

When I tried to format the unallocated space, it said It is not possible to create more than 4 primary partitions. This I think is because the 8GB space is partitioned as ext3 media/disk-1, not sure why...Here is a picture of the drive from Gparted...

leeroybrown

The PC partitioning scheme has only four primary partitions (sda1,sda2,sda3 and sda4 in this case) available per drive. This is your problem. Dell have put their usual mess on the drive (utility and recovery) leaving only two. Windows is using a third and Linux is using the fourth leaving none available for swap, hence the error.

Is there a 'use a swap file' option somewhere in the Ubuntu installer? If not the option would be to create an extended partition (sda4) on the final primary with two logical partitions (sda5 and sda6) in it - one for Linux and one for swap. You'd probably have to use the manual partitioning option to do it.

Lenin

ok, I posted a picture of the Ubuntu installer part, it doesn't give an option for a swap file and really the only option it gives is 'Edit Partition' which is displayed in the pic below(allowed to change type and mount point)...So I don't think I can create any logical partitions here either...

Would deleting the dell diagnostics/utility free up a primary partition which could then be used as a swap file? Would that be a good or bad thing to do?

Also, what about installing ubuntu without a swap file? Bad idea?

H3LLg0d

http://www.cutlersoftware.com/ubuntusetup/wubi/en-US/index.html

Lenin

Thank you H3LLg0d, I got that installed and am using Linux now Haven't even booted into XP pro on the laptop since! Great way to get linux installed.

The only problem I'm having is some stupid audio/video codecs and plugins..Primarily, some libdvdcss2 thing that is required for DVD playback seems to be preventing me from Installing and unisnstalling applications now...

Errors like:
E: gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse: unable to open files list file for package `libdvdcss2'

Any ideas?

nuada

sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2

Lenin

I had tried that already nuada. The problem is that I now can't install or uninstall applications. It's constantly giving me an error and referring to libdvdcss2...How would I remove all things to do with libdvdcss2? Perhaps I could just try it again...

SouperComputer

Lenin wrote:

I had tried that already nuada. The problem is that I now can't install or uninstall applications. It's constantly giving me an error and referring to libdvdcss2...How would I remove all things to do with libdvdcss2? Perhaps I could just try it again...

sudo apt-get remove libdvdcss2