Stage 1: Portable Multi-Distro Linux USB Drive

June 14, 2008 at 7:09 am (3d, AMD, Adobe, Adobe Reader, Amarok, ArchLinux, CLI, Debian, FSB, Fedora, Feisty Fawn, Firefox, Gutsy Gibbon, Hardy Heron, IDE, IDE cable, Linux Mint, MEPIS, Mandriva, Mint, NTFS, PSU, RAM, Sabayon, Sidux, SimplyMEPIS, USB, action, add-on, administration, administrator, asrock k7vm3, audio, avi, boot, boot loader, clone, compiz, compiz-fusion, computers, conky, coordination, cpu, cpu temp, cube, customize, dd, desktop, desktop effects, effects, entertainment, error, ext3, eyecandy, fiction, fix, free, grub, hard disk temperature, hard drive, hitachi, international, linux, lm sensors, maintenance, management, maxtor, media, mem test, mods, monitor, network, online, operating system, partition, pc, plugin, portable, programs, samsung, seagate, sempron, slave drive, stack, stress test, sudo, syntax, system, temperature, temperature monitor, ubuntu, upgrade, usb drive, watch, windows xp)

Like the title says, I want to install 5 Linux distributions on my USB drive. It is a Western Digital Scorpio drive with 80GB of space. I thought it was broken and unusable until I plugged it in recently. Seems it was the pc that wasn’t reading it right after all. Now that I have a new power supply unit in this old box, everything seems peachy. I was using the drive as a back up but I already have 3 hard drives and only 2 are currently plugged in. I ran out of IDE connectors. Did I mention it’s old? :p

I have my drives set up to work independently as I sometimes take them out and test them on other pc’s. I don’t need all of them to be hooked up just to boot up one drive or OS. I just invoke the BIOS Boot Menu using F11 during POST and pick the one I want. Simple and easy for me.

I used my GParted Live CD to make the partitions the way they are now. See image below. Shrunk my NTFS I use as a windows back up sometimes. Next up was 2 Gigs of swap then an extended 60GB partition for my /home and 5 partitions for the Linux distributions I want to try. Looks nice and organized and most importantly – it works fine.

GParted Screenshot of USB Drive Partitions

I got the torrent from LinuxMint.com and got some rest while waiting for it to finish. Burned it at the lowest possible speed using the simple CD writer in Linux Ubuntu 8.04, my primary distribution. I had some issues booting up the Live CD. I got an “(initramfs)” prompt instead of a regular desktop. Using the Compatibility Mode, I found out that it was some error with it not detecting the floppy and SCSI devices. I used the Live CD troubleshooting guide provided by nice people in the Mint Forums. Pressed F6 during splash, pressed tab, deleted “quiet splash–” and entered “all_generic_ide”. That worked and let me into the Live environment. I liked what I saw, was curious and proceeded.

The installation was smooth. My first boot was met with the famous Grub Error 17 and 18. The reason being how the BIOS and the Live CD arranged the drives. In the Live CD, the usb drive was third and my BIOS read it as the first drive. The solution was to edit the menu.lst and change all references to (hd2,4) to (hd0,4), which is where my Mint is.

Tried again and here I am posting the results. Four more distributions to go. I’ve narrowed down my choices based on release date, number of packages and most important is the community or support. I did not include Linux Ubuntu since I’m already using that and it has its own hard drive in my pc. The list goes:

  • ArchLinux – 10/07/2007 with 15,000 packages
  • Debian – 04/08/2007 with 26,000 packages
  • Fedora – 05/13/2008 with 8,000 packages
  • Mandriva – 04/09/2008 with 16,000 packages
  • Sabayon – 09/07/2007 with 12,000 packages
  • Sidux – 04/12/2008 with 22,950 packages
  • [Simply]MEPIS – 12/23/2007 with 20,000 packages

*data is based on http://en.wikipedia.org

I wanted the distribution to be recent, within the last year or 2 years, so I wouldn’t be learning something that’s at the end of its life cycle. I wanted as much packages as possible because… just because. I’m still a beginner and still have a lot to learn. Now I have not looked into the community or support sites for these distributions yet. Well, I went into Debian once but for after reading some threads, I felt unwelcome because of my choice of OS – Ubuntu. I will give it another go and keep an open mind.

That’s about it for today. The rest is yet to be determined. Hopefully, I’ll get more information in a few days and start installing a 2nd OS on my USB drive. Until then…

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Next Project 0.2: Portable Multi-Distro Linux USB Drive

June 13, 2008 at 4:49 am (3d, AMD, Acronis, Adobe, Adobe Reader, Amarok, CLI, Debian, FSB, Feisty Fawn, Firefox, Gutsy Gibbon, Hardy Heron, IDE, IDE cable, Linux Mint, Mint, NTFS, USB, action, add-on, administration, administrator, asrock k7vm3, audio, avi, boot, boot loader, clone, compiz, compiz-fusion, computers, conky, coordination, cpu, cpu temp, cube, customize, dd, desktop, desktop effects, effects, entertainment, error, ext3, eyecandy, fiction, fix, free, game, grub, hard disk temperature, hard drive, hitachi, linux, lm sensors, maintenance, management, maxtor, media, mem test, mods, monitor, network, online, operating system, partition, pc, portable, programs, samsung, seagate, search, sempron, slave drive, stress test, sudo, syntax, system, temperature, temperature monitor, ubuntu, upgrade, usb drive, war, watch, windows xp, xsensors)

Change of plans. Instead of a using only Ubuntu, I’ve decided to add other Linux flavors. I’m currently downloading Linux Mint 5 Elyssa. I still have space for more Linux distributions in my 80GB Western Digital Scorpio drive. I like the Mint philosophy about ease of use. Maybe as I progress and learn more, I’ll look into non-Debian based distributions. Aside from usability, my biggest issue will be community support. Mint has the same positive and helpful community that I like in Ubuntu. I’ve only been to their parent’s forum once and it felt kinda hostile. I was disappointed since it came highly recommended by my fellow Ubuntu users. But I’ll give it another look. Like everything else in life – gotta learn the roots.

I have an NTFS partition in my WD Scorpio that I’ve already backed up into my Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron installation. I’m experiencing a lil sentimentality and hesitation in wiping it off the drive. There’s still plenty of space though. I can shrink the NTFS and use the rest for swap, /home and an extended partition to house the distributions I would try.

I have another concern. These distributions usually have their own bootloader. Although I don’t really use Grub that much as I use my hard drives independently by choosing which one to boot in the BIOS Boot Menu, that won’t be possible in this planned drive. I guess I can pick only the ones that use Grub but I’m not sure how much variety that would give me. I’ll have to look into that in the days that come. For now, looks like my partitions are set. Will try Mint first on my USB drive and go from there. Good luck to me.

(“,)

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Finished Upgrade: Gutsy Gibbon 7.10 to Hardy Heron 8.04

May 30, 2008 at 7:08 pm (AMD, CLI, FSB, Feisty Fawn, Firefox, Gutsy Gibbon, Hardy Heron, IDE, IDE cable, PSU, RAM, Rhythmbox, action, add-on, administration, administrator, asrock k7vm3, boot, clone, compiz, compiz-fusion, computers, conky, coordination, cpu, cpu temp, cube, customize, dd, desktop, desktop effects, effects, entertainment, error, ext3, fix, free, guild, hard disk temperature, hard drive, hitachi, linux, maintenance, management, maxtor, media, mem test, mods, monitor, network, no cd, online, operating system, overclock, overclocking, pc, programs, samsung, seagate, search, sempron, slave drive, stress test, sudo, syntax, system, temperature, temperature monitor, ubuntu, upgrade, windows xp, xp)

Posting from Linux Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04, second try. My first try was doing an upgrade from the manager. After finishing that and booting up in Heron 8.04, 2 things caught my eye – the prompt for updates and a Crash Report. First thing I clicked on was the Crash Report but it does not respond. Clicking on Update Manager doesn’t do anything either. I went in search for possible solutions but none came soon enough. I wanted to give Heron a try and the wait was not promising. So I went with the popular vote and did a clean install.

I made the mistake of doing it with my XP drive still plugged in. My boot setup is that of two drives operating independently of each other with XP being the primary drive. Both XP and Ubuntu booted up as it should but the problem starts when you remove one drive. Grub error 17 comes up whenever that’s the case. Next order of battle is to fix the windows MBR. Luckily, when things were working I was able to burn a way out. I went into Recovery Mode DOS and entered “fixmbr”. Once that was done, XP booted up nice in its own independent way.

I then took off the XP drive, leaving only the Linux drive and booted up the LiveCD. Reinstalled Linux and of course take a nap. Grub is safe and sound only in the Linux drive. Everything works peachy. As in my last post, there are 2 main things I want working. My Conky and Compiz-Fusion settings aren’t up and running yet. But I will be working on those next. In the next release of Ubuntu, I will attempt the upgrade first and the clean install will be the last option. I just have to remember removing the XP drive if I end up doing it again.

To summarize: If upgrading does not work, remove the XP drive before doing a clean install. I’m glad to have kept a record of the changes I have made. At least I have some sort of guide to put my settings back the way they were in 7.10. I have XP and Linux Ubuntu 8.04 running as planned. Spent a good deal of time but definitely another learning experience worth the effort.

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Hiccups in Gutsy Upgrade

January 29, 2008 at 11:56 pm (CLI, Feisty Fawn, Firefox, Gutsy Gibbon, IDE, IDE cable, NTFS, add-on, administration, administrator, clone, compiz, compiz-fusion, computers, conky, cpu, cpu temp, cube, dd, desktop, desktop effects, entertainment, eyecandy, free, hard disk temperature, hard drive, hitachi, maintenance, management, maxtor, media, mods, monitor, network, online, operating system, pc, plugin, programs, samsung, seagate, slave drive, sudo, syntax, system, temperature, ubuntu, upgrade, wattage)

*sighs* I just finished tinkering with one of my favorite applications in Linux Ubuntu… Conky! Oh and I just upgraded to Gutsy a few hours ago. Hit a little bump at the beginning though.

Failed to fetch http://medibuntu.sos-sts.com/repo/dists/feisty/free/binary-i386/Packages.gz 302 Found
Failed to fetch http://medibuntu.sos-sts.com/repo/dists/feisty/non-free/binary-i386/Packages.gz 302 Found
Failed to fetch http://medibuntu.sos-sts.com/repo/dists/feisty/free/source/Sources.gz 302 Found
Failed to fetch http://medibuntu.sos-sts.com/repo/dists/feisty/non-free/source/Sources.gz 302 Found

I got the following error when I went to the Upgrade Manager and clicked on the button to upgrade my beautiful Feisty 7.04 Fawn to Gutsy 7.10 Gibbon. Thinking it has been a few months and an upgrade is in order. I changed servers several times but kept getting that same message. After searching for similar issues in the Ubuntu Forum, it turned out that I had 3rd party sources in the list. I commented them out by adding “#” at the beginning of their lines and I was on my merry way. It took about 5 hours to fetch all of the necessary files and a couple more to upgrade. Went smooth, no problems or error messages. And then my Feisty bid me goodbye and asked for a final reboot…

Hello Gutsy! First thing I noticed were the icons. They looked edgier and better in my imperfect vision. Next thing I noticed was… Where’s my conky? Where’s my 2 other unused desktop? Alas! I lost both in the midst of all the new and pretty things in my Linux box. On to the terminal I went and ran “conky”.

Conky: can't open '/sys/bus/i2c/devices/9191-0290/temp1_input': No such file or directory
please check your device or remove this var from Conky

And this is what came up. A smart fella looked at the error message and suggested I comment out the temp line since that was giving me the error. Back on the terminal, I did “sudo gedit ~./conkyrc” gave my password and made the changes. For some reason the comment wasn’t working so I just took the whole line out, saved it, hit Alt+F2 and entered “conky”. Lo and behold, it came up with all the little details I cared about except the temperatures in my gutsy box.

It was still there and working, only something with the temperature line was off. So I scoured the good old Ubuntu Forum for some answers. With arguably the best community support (even beats paid ones!) on the web, I was not disappointed. After some posting back and forth, searching and experimenting, I finally found the key to my issue. One simple key word/command had to be replaced. Took out “i2c” and put “hwmon” in its place and there it was! My conky was running perfectly again with all the info I rely on to check my system. And like your usual infomercial…”And that’s not all!”

While posting back and forth with one of the very many helpful people there, he gave me an idea to add my hard drive temperatures on conky as well. So I did and it worked like a charm. Not only do I have my conky back, I got something extra! This is Vness and I am a Ubuntu-holic!

Here’s my final Linux Ubuntu 7.10 aka Gutsy Gibbon Conky code:
background yes
use_xft yes
xftfont HandelGotD:size=9
xftalpha 0.5
update_interval 1.0
total_run_times 0
own_window yes
own_window_type normal
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
double_buffer yes
minimum_size 200 5
maximum_width 200
draw_shades no
draw_outline no
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders yes
default_color white
default_shade_color red
default_outline_color green
alignment top_right
gap_x 12
gap_y 48
no_buffers yes
uppercase no
cpu_avg_samples 2
override_utf8_locale no

TEXT
$sysname $kernel on $machine

Uptime $alignr $uptime
Load $alignr $loadavg

Hostname $alignr $nodename
eth0 $alignr ${addr eth0}
Mobo CPU Temp $alignr ${hwmon temp 1}C ${hwmon temp 2}C
HDDlinux $alignr /dev/hdb ${execi 300 nc localhost 7634 | cut -c53-54 ;}C
HDDwindows $alignr /dev/hda ${execi 300 nc localhost 7634 | cut -c27-28 ;}C

CPU $alignr ${cpu cpu0}%
${cpubar cpu0}

MEM $alignc $mem / $memmax $alignr $memperc%
$membar

/root $alignc ${fs_used /} / ${fs_size /} $alignr ${fs_free_perc /}%
${fs_bar /}

/disk $alignc ${fs_used /media/disk} / ${fs_size /media/disk} $alignr ${fs_free_perc /media/disk}%
${fs_bar /media/disk}

swap $alignc $swap / $swapmax $alignr $swapperc%
${swapbar}

$processes processes ($running_processes running)

${color white}Highest CPU:
${color de0b0b}${top name 1}${top_mem cpu 1}
${color white}${top name 2}${top cpu 2}
${top name 3}${top cpu 3}
${top name 4}${top cpu 4}
${top name 5}${top cpu 5}

${color white}Highest MEM:
${color de0b0b}${top_mem name 1}${top_mem mem 1}
${color white}${top_mem name 2}${top_mem mem 2}
${top_mem name 3}${top_mem mem 3}
${top_mem name 4}${top_mem mem 4}
${top_mem name 5}${top_mem mem 5}

${color}Networking:
Down:${color} $alignr ${downspeed eth0} k/s${color} ${offset 80}
$alignc ${downspeedgraph eth0 32,150 de0b0b de0b0b}
Up:${color} $alignr ${upspeed eth0} k/s ${offset 80}
$alignc ${upspeedgraph eth0 32,150 de0b0b de0b0b}

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Hard Drive Cloning Project Results

September 26, 2007 at 12:46 am (3d, Acronis, Blogroll, Brother DCP-115C, Feisty Fawn, Firefox, IDE, IDE cable, NTFS, action, add-on, administration, administrator, clone, compiz, compiz-fusion, computers, conky, cpu, cpu temp, cube, customize, dd, desktop, desktop effects, ext3, eyecandy, free, hard drive, hitachi, linux, maintenance, management, maxtor, media, mods, monitor, network, online, operating system, pc, plugin, programs, samsung, seagate, search, slave drive, stack, sudo, syntax, system, temperature, ubuntu)

Hard Drive Cloning Project

This is my first project of this kind. I’ve had many firsts since I started using Linux Ubuntu 7.04 back in April. Including my first time to install an operating system! The purpose of this was to move/clone my old 40GB Maxtor drive with Windows XP which was starting to fail. I have an 80GB drive which housed my Linux Ubuntu 7.04. I then purchased a 160GB Seagate drive. Of course I want Linux on the largest drive because that is what I use the most. Well, here are the results…

Successfully cloned an 80GB Hitachi drive which had my Ubuntu onto a new 160GB Seagate drive. I searched the Ubuntu Forums on how to do that. And I was not disappointed. I found a nifty command in Linux that does just that. I made sure the syntax was correct since I was in danger of destroying everything I’ve done on Linux. So I popped in my Ubuntu LiveCD and did this:

sudo dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb bs=4096 conv=notrunc,noerror

sudo – because of the permission error I kept getting
dd – the magical command
if – the source drive or partition
of – the target drive or partition
bs – determines the size of the tranfers (?)
conv – I have no idea but that was recommended

Again, I made sure that I didn’t get the source and target drives mixed up! Or else!

When it was done, I booted up my 160GB drive and voila! Everything was exactly the same. I had to reboot one more time to get back the drives to the correct /dev/hda tag. I didn’t have to do anything else. Ubuntu just did what it usually does. So the 80GB Hitachi with Linux was successfully cloned to the 160GB Seagate. Problem solved!

Now the 40GB Maxtor drive was another challenge. It was in NTFS format. The dd command did not work. I kept getting an input/output error message. I used the LiveCD to wipe out and split the 80GB Hitachi into 2 almost equal partitions. The ntfsclone command worked but for some reason I could boot up Windows XP on the 80GB drive even though all the files were there. I thought it was a Windows problem so I looked for a Windows solution. The 15-day Trial of Acronis True Image did the trick.

So now I can let the 40GB Maxtor drive rest in peace until I find a need for it. I hope not. Windows XP has been moved to my 80GB Hitachi drive and my Ubuntu is now on the 160GB drive with plenty of unallocated space for other Linux distros that I want to try out. I would never have done all this without the Ubuntu Community. Hats off to you guys!

Community
Thread here.

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