Ubuntu 5.10 "Breezy Badger"
Submitted by ArchNGEL on Sun, 10/23/2005 - 07:40.
My Story or How I Stopped Worrying And Got Rid Of Ubuntu!
I've always been reading, been told that Ubuntu is the distro of
everybody's dreams. I was like: I am no nobody, I want a piece of that
cake too. So preparations took place.
After a week or so I finally had the time to sit down, take a deep
breath and install ubuntu. The latest, the bestest... with the name of
some little hairy animal.
Insert CD-Rom, reboot, Enter, no graphical... okay, looks good so far so
I just Nexted until the HD Partitioning menu. Naw, I had three
partitions that were identical in size, and a couple of others. But I
had no idea which of three was which, no "used %" hint or anything, so I
had to reboot to my Fedora to check the sequence of the partitions. My bad.
Reboot, Enter, enter, enter, enter... partitioning went OK.
As a guy who grown up using Win 95 I was waiting to select packages,
but I had to realize that this decision had been made by Ubuntu team,
and it was copying, installing everything in reach. No good guys, no
good, I hate to uninstall later.
So basically I have an SATA HDD with XP, FC4 and us. Recognition of
XP went successfully, but not the recognition of FC4, it didn't (read
about it later). So where to install GRUB was a question I've never
been asked that drastically - especially from a
one-step-from-a-desktop linux. Okay, /dev/hda caused some troubles, my
mistake, but installer was unable to handle that mistake. However much
I tried to select "GRUB install" from the install steps menu after the error messages, it did
already assume (without asking again) that I still want to install GRUB on hda, and rubbed it in my
face.
Okay then reboot, enter, enter, enter, wait for all packages, enter,
enter /dev/sda and like a super-hot fairy it went on. (I started the install
sequence every time from the beginning to have a "clean" install.)
So it spit out my install cd, asked me for permission to reboot,
granted I said. Let's see what it had to show me. A (relatively)
disgusting GRUB - okay, I should have more knowledge in applying /boot
- and somehow my FC4 disappeared from choices. Heck, I thought I would
copy that 3 lines of text into grub.conf later.
Ubuntu started, I was gaping. Nice-nice. The flower of happiness
started to grow in my heart. Arrived at a beautiful GDM screen,
entered the required data, and the marvellous system reported that
file permissions were in a mess, and told me to tidy my stuff then come
back.
I'm not an aggressive child and I (thought I) knew what to do, I had to
change the UID and GID of me. Who can do that? ROOT. Who is root 'coz
I'm not that's for sure. Yeah, sudo. Thank you very much folks.
Babbling something about security... UID and GID set in place. Matching
with owner-group IDs of /home (Ubuntu uses 1000 for UID and FC uses 500).
GDM -> lo/pa -> Gnome error. Read error message? [y] -> "Starting
gnome..." or similar. Yeah, at least it didn't tell me what the problem had been.
Okay, I wanted to apt-get the KDE. Editing apt-get as read on forums,
uncommenting etc. etc, running apt-get update, tons of Warnings,
idontcareanymore. apt-get install kubuntu-desktop. Questions and
answers: Y and downloading a lot and showing tons of warnings and
errors.
Okay, I would apt-get the Enlightenment. Same. Errors of heaven.
Okay, I wanted to get back to Fedora and get rid of this hellhole or at least take a nap
and then fix things. Fedora kernel panic. Fedora install DVD update... kernel panic.
I'm not so good at this stuff, I also don't have the time and now the patience to start
figuring out the problem, so here I am with a messed system that took
me 3 weeks to compile to fit my needs and now I'm about to reinstall.
Ubuntu? Maybe for a clean install, I'm not sure. Probably, coz you all
love it. For me it's not an option. For now.
Those who read this post will think that I must have f***d something during the install. Well, those who think that might know that Ubuntu doesn't really ask your opinion about anything during install, however I can't exclude this possibility. Also, I consider myself as a quasi-newbie after being in the linux business for only a couple of years, but I believe that "desktop-linux for dummies" should have worked under my surveillance as well. Maybe I will try a livecd next time.
Story based on: Amilo M7440 w/ Windows XP Professional, Fedora Core 4 and an extra partition for another distro.
re: Ubuntu
I hear ya. I post topics on it, but you might notice I haven't reviewed it! I'm not a real big fan myself. I post topics cuz so many others are.
I'd not be so quick to reinstall your fedora, after all you say you have much work in it. What exactly does the error say when you try to boot? Does it say something like init not found? You said fedora wasn't in your grub choices after installing ubuntu, and you left out how you were trying to boot fedora afterwards. What I'm leading up to is perhaps the boot loader is looking in the wrong place for it.
Boot a livecd like pclos if you have one and mount your fedora partition and see if it all looks like it's still there. If so, you may be able to fix the bootloader.
I'm not really a grub person, but perhaps we can sort it out. Come back with some specifics and we'll see if we can save it.
----
You talk the talk, but do you waddle the waddle?
No need to account for anythi
No need to account for anything, I posted here 'coz I like it here. And I definitely wanted to post somewhere, just so ppl know it's not necessarily as good as it's shown - imho.
However, my post was already written on the peaceful rock of Fedora on the stormy sea of Linux distros. The kernel message in fact was sg like: "Kernel panic... tried to kill INIT", and googling didn't show me any _relevant_ pages, not that I searched too thoroughly tho.
My Fedora partition was intact - since I could mount it from Ubuntu, and thus I could copy the identical grub.conf lines from there to my Ubuntu grub.conf so that it could find it. It did, it loaded the kernel, but the kernel paniced. I paniced. If both of us panicing, there is nothing much anyone can do
Especially now.
It took me one or two days to reinstall my system, it was much faster since the 95% of the previously mentioned three weeks was about googling errors. At last, I think my system is just better than it was.
Thank you again for your offer to help me, and carry on w/ the site. Roxx.
--
You talk the talk and I waddle the waddle