installing ubuntu

ok, i made a live cd of gparted and i made a 25 gig partition on my 80 gig hdd. the rest is left for windows xp. i wanted to try a linux based system so here i am. i made the live cd for ubuntu and like what i see. when i go through the install for unbuntu i chose manually edit partition tabe because i partitioned it but i did not format it. but im not sure what to do. gparted see my partition i made but when i choose it and hit forward it is asking me for mount point and root file system, and swap space. what do i need to do? i really hope i didnt screw anything up. for the mount point it has hda1 listed and then some stuff like swap and /usr. under partition there is partition 1 and 2. 2 being the 25gig partition i want to use for ubuntu.

i was also thinking i should have left a partition to share files so i dont have to put over 15 gigs of music on each partition. am i helpless and hopeless? i hope someone can help me. any help would be great.

 

you're in good shape so far, you stopped when you got confused to get help!

what you'll want to do is use the Ubuntu partitioner to create some new partitions within the free space you left.

Swap space is kinda like a backup for your RAM on the harddrive, so if your RAM fills up, information can be put into swap and then retrieved when needed. Windows handles this with a file on your main harddrive, Linux uses a separate partition.

On Linux, your filesystem starts at root (symbolized by a forward slash "/",) and everything builds off of that. Binary executables generally end up in /bin for system programs and /usr/bin for user programs. Libraries (kinda like Windows .DLL files,) end up in /lib and /usr/lib. You also have a "home" directory which is /home/ yourusername which is about equivalent to the Windows My Documents folder.

You'll need to set up a partition for the root directory, and everything will be built from there. You can also create a separate partition for the home directory, which is a good idea in case you have to format, you don't have to worry about moving your files. All of this is seamlessly integrated into the directory tree by defining what are called mount points, which are the actual directory names.

So, what you'll want to do is make a 1 gig partition for the swap space within the free space. Next you need to select the rest of the free space and make it into what's called an Extended partition, which gets over the limitation on IDE harddrives of only allowing 4 partitions. You can then create many logical partitions within the extended partition. My recommendation is to make one partition that's about 7GB for the root directory (basically where all the programs are kept,) and then dedicate the rest to the /home directory. If 7GB sounds like too little for programs, it won't be.

This should leave you with 1GB for swap, 7GB for the root, and 7GB for the user homes. Write down the various partition labels (hda2, 3, 5, etc.) and what mount point you want them to have. Then, just go through each of the new partitions and match them up with the appropriate directory name. If it asks you for a filesystem type, just pick "ext3".

I hope that's clear enough for you. Once you get the system installed, we can show you how to get Linux to read from your windows partition so you can listen to your music or watch videos or whatever.

 

i am getting the error "the test of the swap space in partition #2 of IDE1 master (hda) found uncorrected errors. If you do not go back to the partitioning menu and correct these errors, the partition will be used as is" partition 2 is the 1 gig space i made. i did not format it tho, should i formart this to ext3 as well?

EDIT: i just seen in the format menu "linux swap" is that what i should format the swap area as?

 

The swap must be formatted using Linux swap. The swap file is similar to the Windows page file, where the OS uses a chunk of HD space as it would use RAM when the faster alternative is running short.

 

You should format it to Linux Swap, just like you surmised It should all work for you then.

 

ok i finally got up and running again and i got dvd's playing using totem and i can play audio cd's. so i am slowly getting somewhere...i think. my next adventure is to be able to open my music library thats on the windows partition in ubuntu. i found my windows partition in the dev folder in the file system, but it has a big red X and wont let me open it. i found the help guide to make windows partitions available...however when i go to system, administrator, there is no "disks" listed as the instructions tell me to open.

 

is your Windows partition NTFS? If so, then you'll need to download and install NTFS-3G before you can write to it, because Linux can't write to NTFS partitions by default.

 

i installed ntfs-3g. but i still cannot access my windows partition and under administration there is still now "disk" option like the guide says there should be.

 

Make sure the partition in your /etc/fstab file is set to type ntfs-3g, and not ntfs, and you have installed the fuse user filesystem driver. Very important.

 

a better way:
http://flomertens.free.fr/ntfs-config/

 

That looks a little bit... labyrinthine. I don't like replacing a lot of official packages with secondary ones.

 

yes, for external devices, you need to replace pmount with a modified version.