Ubuntu install woes

AHarvey · 9 Jun 2008 at 17:29

Right,

Downloaded the latest version of Ubunto desktop last night and copied it to a CD-RW. Just spent 30 mins installing it only for to not work.

Firstly, hardware setup.

Running an Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe mobo, AMD 64 X2 4400+, 2GB RAM. Hard drives are : 2 x SATA for XP and games, then I have conencted an 80gb IDE HDD.

The IDE HDD is using the same cable as the DVD-RW. IDE is Primary and the DVD-RW is secondary.

It installed fine, formatted the IDE and installed using the entire drive.

Removed CD and reset the PC as instructed and it booted up the screen where you choose XP. I once tried linux before and after removing it never got around to removing the linux or XP screen so even though XP is the only OS I still have to select it.

So, rebooted, went into Bios and made the IDE/Linux HDD the primary boot HDD. Upon reset I get the Asus Mobo pic, have to enter the bios password to allow the PC to boot and then press enter on the "Press <CTRL+S> or F4 to enter RAID utility", all this is normal.

Then however it goes strange, I get a:

GRUB Loading Stage1.5
GRUB Loading, Please Wait

screen. Then either Error 25 or Error 16 pops up. Sometimes it gets to the screen that asks me what version of ubuntu to load (revocery screen, memcheck etc). If I select ubuntu I get the following message:

Error 18: Selected cylinder exceeds maximum supported by BIOS

Totally confuddled

Any suggestions?

EDIT: Just checked the IDE HDD with XP Computer manager and it is showing a 73.18GB Health (Active) Partition and a 3.15GB Health (Unknown Partition)

EDIT 2: Reformatting and reinstalling, fingers crossed!

whitecrook · 9 Jun 2008 at 18:39

re install and use a ~75MB EXT2 formatted partition at the start of the disc and mount it as /boot . The partition the rest of the disc as normal. install grub to that disk, and as you have done configure your bios to boot from it.

eXor · 9 Jun 2008 at 21:28

AHarvey said:
snip

Having a hard drive and optical drive on the same IDE channel is a huge no-no. They will both run at the speed of the slowest device on that channel.

Unplugging the XP drives, while you install Ubuntu, will prevent Ubuntu from interfering with your XP install. Then you can either use the BIOS to control which OS boots, or make ubuntu the booting disk and add a grub entry.

Google fixmbr or fdisk/mbr to learn how to blow away grub if you don't want Linux controlling boot up anymore.

FatRakoon · 10 Jun 2008 at 04:31

eXor said:
Having a hard drive and optical drive on the same IDE channel is a huge no-no. They will both run at the speed of the slowest device on that channel.

Wow, people still think this?

No, that used to be the case a century ago, but not in the past half a dozen years at least, so it will make absolutely no difference to the speed, and no, your HD will not run as slow as the CDROM.

Removing the Windows HD / HDs is certainly a good option though so trying out a Linux install, and yes if everythign does go astray then the " FDISK /MBR " DOS command will help kill off the... Well... Master Boot record ( Where linux wants its booter )

brummie · 10 Jun 2008 at 08:00

eXor said:
Having a hard drive and optical drive on the same IDE channel is a huge no-no. They will both run at the speed of the slowest device on that channel.

Thats not true.

I'd put the drives on cable select and put the HDD on the end of the cable (MASTER). Put everything in the BIOS to AUTO and make sure the boot sequence is CDROM first, HDD0 second and other boot options YES.
That way you'll be able to reinstall and just remove the CD to boot into linux

GarethDW · 10 Jun 2008 at 08:59

If you're still struggling to get it to install via the CD you might want to look into using the Wubi tool, which allows you to install Ubuntu from within Windows. It's not just a VM and the difference in speed compared to a "normally installed" version is unnoticeable.

http://wubi-installer.org

whitecrook · 10 Jun 2008 at 18:10

To be clear, it's not that the hard disc will run at the speed of the slowest device, it's the fact that only one device on an IDE controller can talk at once, i.e performance would be really poor writing to or reading from the HD while writing to or reading from the CD rom if they are on the same controller.

In practice this limitation doesn'treally manifest itself much these days, because hard drives these days will transfer 50MB/s+ not 15MB/s, and CDs/DVD's are much faster than they used to be and have technologies like burnproof etc. Back in the day IDE cd writers used to be a major PITA to not get a coaster out the other end.

Also, most people that have that setup, (2 x hd + optical) usually have it configured with the main HD on it's own controller, and the 'secondary', i.e storage/temp drive on the 2nd controller shared with a CD drive.

NicNac · 10 Jun 2008 at 18:17

so if I have it right as long as your not using the optical drive+hdd at the same time you will be ok? my server (old dell) is setup like this. I very,very rarely use the optical drive and will more than likely remove it when I do a bit of maintenance on it

whitecrook · 10 Jun 2008 at 18:20

Don't worry about it, it will be fine. Really. But if you can, you should place them on both controllers - i.e CD on controller 2, and HD on controller 1. Each with their own cables.

This is only possible if you have 2 devices, as 99% of boards (bar the newer SATA eqiupped) have only 2x IDE controllers.

The effect of using the CD rom and the HD together if they are on the same controller, i.e. channel1 + channel 2, will be similar to copying a bunch of files to a HD, whilst simultaneously copying a bunch of files off the HD, i.e. it'll still work, but jus tbe a bit slower. But really - how much of your time is spent using the CD rom? Personally for me it's about 5 mins a month. Across about 20 machines... YMMV.

edit > n00b editing skillz