Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with linux and install

How to continue using an almost new laptop

KokuRyu — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 09:50:26 -0800

I have an Acer laptop with an i3 chip and the standard amount of RAM, probably 4GB that I bought in 2011. Just over a year after I bought it, and just weeks after the end of warranty, the hard drive died. I'm wondering how hard it would be to buy a new hard drive and install Ubuntu or something like that. Is it possible? If so, how much of a pain is it to set up drivers? Would I have to manually install drivers for nearly everything (USB ports, wireless receiver, etc)?

Put /var over thar?

Edogy — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 10:00:49 -0800

How do I best set up Linux partitions & mount points on my old netbook with limited storage capacity? I have an old Asus Eee 900 (with the Celeron proc). It has a (terrible) 4GB SSD and a 16 GB SD card. I think I grok partitioning but I don't know how to set the mount points so that it uses the 16GB for storage of things that will expand over time. I keep having to reinstall the OS every few months because the 4GB drive gets filled up with software updates and user files, yet the 16GB drive still has multiple gigs free.

I have been running Ubuntu in the past but this time I'm installing Mint 13.

Can you advise me on what to do or point me to the proper reading to figure it out?

Upgrading hardware or spending money is not an option, and no need to warn me about poor performance from the terrible PHISON SSD or card reader as I am infinitely familiar with those issues and can live with it. Thanks!

How to use GRUB to install a second OS on an existing second partition?

samuel1613 — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 20:27:24 -0800

Have an existing install of REDHAT on a first partition, I have created a second partition and am trying to use GRUB to install a second OS (happens to be another version of redhat). Please help, or ask for more details if needed. From the GRUB command line how do I make it install on a selected partition.

Obsolete hardware + Linux = fail?

caution live frogs — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 07:56:47 -0800

Attention Linux gurus of MeFi: Attempting to set up an old Dell Latitude CS laptop as a Linux system (Xubuntu) for a coworker. Massive installation headaches ensue thanks to missing hardware. Any suggestions? The laptop is barely capable of doing much but all my friend wants is something she can use to browse the web. Basically a stone-age netbook.

The laptop was picked up used, and has no internal floppy drive, no internal CD drive. External drives are missing. It does have a Xircom 10/100 pcmcia card, but it refuses to netboot using that card even if "Cardbus Ethernet" is selected in BIOS as a boot device. One USB port, but won't boot from that either.

System was running Win2K, so I was able to use a Windows-based bootloader to get the machine to restart and begin installing Xubuntu over the network. All went fine until the end - machine failed to install GRUB. Tried LILO. Fail. Tried LILO on the primary partition instead of MBR. Fail. Tried reformatting the drive (which wiped out the Windows partition) and reinstalling GRUB and LILO. Fail.

I'm currently reinstalling the base system in hopes that the reformatting screwed things up - but not really confident.

So here's where I need help: I now have a machine that is running Linux from the install image, but I am afraid to reboot it as I have no backup method of starting it should it fail.

1 - what might be causing GRUB and LILO to fail? My initial thought was (a) the existing Windows partitions, which is why I repartitioned the drive, or (b) some weirdness with the disk itself (SCSI HDD) that is stopping GRUB from going to the MBR (but why won't LILO install on the / partition itself?)

2 - Any way for me to run the GRUB install manually, rather than using the install menu to do it? I am wondering if the installer is trying to send it to a drive that doesn't exist.

3 - If all else fails and I end up with a brick on my hands, should I be able to pull the drive out and fix the problem by plugging it in to another system using an external drive enclosure? (And if so, how do I do this without screwing up the bootloader on the system on which I do the repair?)

This makes me mad. I agreed to do the job before realizing that the damn computer didn't even have a floppy drive. I did a bare metal to network file server install in under 2 hours last weekend for my neighbors, and up until today was feeling like I knew what I was doing, but this one is reminding me just how weak my Linux skills are.

Which distro of Linux should I try?

n3rt — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 01:20:04 -0800

Which one of the multitude of Linux distros should someone who's never used Linux before give a go? I''m by no means a PC-phobe [or a Windows-phobe for that matter] but I've just done a couple of system backups and reinstalls of Vista, and am looking at my laptop [Acer Aspire 720Z with 2GB RAM, Intel Core-Duo] with a "hmm, what if eye, and wonder whether I should finally give a Linux distro a try.

My computing background was initially Amigas [hey, configuring Ami-TCP by hand was fun! To a certain extent... :) ] and I'm a graphic designer by profession. I already use a fair bit of Inkscape / GIMP so I'm not scared of new apps to replace anything, I'm just stumped at what to try from the various advice proffered by various techy-types here.

Any advice greatly appreciated - and play nicely! :) [Remembers the Amiga vs PC debate years ago...]

How can I use my PC's DVD drive from my netbook?

whir — Wed, 20 May 2009 12:47:42 -0800

Does software exist which will allow me to use my PC's DVD drive as an external USB drive for my netbook? I'm going a bit crazy trying to get OS X onto my netbook via a USB flash memory stick and have decided to try it with a DVD drive instead. I don't particularly want to fork out $50 or more for an external USB DVD drive that I'll probably only ever use for this purpose, and I've got two drives on my PC already.

Is there any Windows XP or Linux software that will allow me to plug the netbook into the PC (via a hub) and have the PC's drives run under the control of the netbook as though they were external DVD drives? I recall seeing "USB host" options in the Linux kernel setup, so I'm fairly sure this is possible to do in Linux, but I've been googling around for how to do it and haven't come up with anything.

As another wrinkle, I'll need the netbook to boot from the DVD drive, so it will need to be pretty "real" USB hosting, on a level that the netbook BIOS can grok.

Help a clueless person run a simple program

Rhaomi — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 13:31:18 -0800

A plea for help in installing/running a seemingly simple open-source program on a Windows box. I'm a big fan of the flash game Dice Wars, but after a few ~~dozen~~ ~~hundred~~ thousand playthroughs, I'm left wanting more. So I was intrigued when I learned of an indie remake of the game called DiceWarz.

Unfortunately for me, this game hails from the Linux universe, and as a Windows user I'm bristling at the unfamiliar context in which I've found the game.

For starters: the game data is found here. Seems like all the relevant rules and data files are there. There was no obvious installer, but I knew enough to recognize the "tarball" referenced at the bottom as a compact package of the needed files.

So I grabbed the tar, opened it in Izarc, and successfully extracted the game's innards to my desktop. Here's where I'm stuck.

I've got a folder with a mixture of things: a bunch of js files, a bin file, a configuration file, and an MS Word doc (which offers no help in actually running the thing). Given these files, what do I need to do to get the program running?

I'm usually reasonably proficient at this stuff, but I'm at a loss here. I don't have a lot of experience working with Javascript (which is apparently what the games is built with). And searching Google has led to horrifying open-source DIY jargon like this. It's hard to find what you need when you don't speak the language! And I would inquire at the site I got the files from, but even that is a confusing setup of directories and references to CVS's and BBS's that I just can't follow.

Please disabuse me of my ignorance! And many thanks in advance.

I do not want a Live CD, why can't you remember that?

tip120 — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 08:01:55 -0800

I am having problems making a persistent installation of Ubuntu on a usb thumb drive. I am attempting to make a persistent install of ubuntu 8.0.4.1 on a usb thumb drive. I am not looking for a Live CD on a usb drive.

I have followed several different tutorials (most notably the ones here and here*). I can, seemingly, get through the whole process without a hitch. When I start the target machine (a mini-itx with no internal or external drives, only the usb key), it will boot as if it were a Live CD. It asks for Live CD boot parameters, and no changes I make (simple ones at that, themes, or desktop background) are saved. The BIOS is set to boot off the usb key.

I feel I am missing something incredibly obvious here, but have no clue what it might be. I'm comfortable, but by no means a pro, with "the Linux," and have zero idea where to start looking for a solution.

I sent an email to the pendrivelinux dudes, but doubt I will hear back anytime soon.

*I realize this second link is for xubuntu, but that doesn't matter so much to me as making the changes to stick.

smash$ Xandros

trinarian — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 07:10:47 -0800

Is it worth changing to xUbuntu from Xandros? I purchased an Asus EEE 900 about a month ago. I've been wanting to make the switch to Linux for years and this finally put it in my lap. Like most MeFites, computers (or at least Microsoft software) are rather intuitive to me. That said, I've yet to be able to install a single application without tons of trial and error and with it a lot of time. I spent three hours today just trying to work around a Xandros bug to get Firefox 3 loaded, still with no success. Even rTorrent seems like another long slodge through terminal + forum/FAQ hell. The only thing I have managed to install was a JAR Chinese dictionary. Go me!

1) Is this something I'll just learn naturally in a few more weeks?
2) Will switching to xUbuntu make it easier to install programs?
3) Should I just install a copy of XP for when I want to do "real work"?
4) Why do repositories seem so out of date and have none of the software I actually want?

Configure Readline with wrong directory. Oops.

djgh — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 20:18:08 -0800

Configured Readline with the prefix 'ur/local' on OSX. Then installed Ruby in /usr/local, but with Readline. Would like to put everything in the proper place without damaging anything, so what do I do now? A history snippet so you can see exactly what I've done:



  313  cd /usr/local

  314  cd src

  315  ls

  316  cd readline-5.1

  317  clear

  318  ls

  319  clear

  320  ./configure --prefix=/ur/local

  321  make

  322  sudo make install

  323  cd ..

  324  ls

  325  clear

  326  curl -O ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/1.8/ruby-1.8.6.tar.gz

  327  tar xzvf ruby-1.8.6.tar.gz

  328  cd ruby-1.8.6

  329  ./configure --prefix=/usr/local --enable-pthread --with-readline-dir=/usr/local --enable-shared

  330  make

  331  sudo make install

  332  sudo make install-doc

Following Hivelogic's instructions, I did the above, failing to notice my typo. So now I have a /ur/local directory with what appears to be Readline inside, whilst Ruby resides in /usr/local.

I should mention that everything seems to have worked (Ruby works fine), so this is more to keep everything tidy and in the proper place.

I'm unfamiliar with the intricacies of configure, make etc., but would I be correct in assuming that I can't just take out Readline and reinstall due my invoking it when installing Ruby?

What should I do now to put Readline in /usr/local? Or should I just uninstall/unmake everything and start again (and how should I go about that - specific commands would be extremely helpful, due to my inexperience in this area)?

Getting the Ferret up to Speed

Jimbob — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 19:43:56 -0800

What are all the things I need to apt-get, in order to turn my minimal Ubuntu Fiesty Server install into the complete graphical OS? I've downloaded a VMWare image of Ubuntu Fiesty to play with (not yet willing to commit to an upgrade from Dapper on my actual computer). The image was a fairly minimal "Server" version - no Gnome, no Xorg, none of the other applications I've come to expect in Ubuntu.

So, what should I be apt-getting in order to get X, and a decent suite of applications up and running? So far, in my experimentations, I've got Xorg installed (apt-get install xorg), and can get the login screen up, but once I log in I'm left at a completely blank desktop - no icons, no menus. What's the next step?

The Blinking Cursor of Immense Frustration

phrontist — Thu, 03 May 2007 06:36:37 -0800

I'm trying to install Ubuntu Server on a just out of the box Dell machine. After completing the install the machine hangs (displaying only a blinking cursor), and subsequent attempts at reinstall from the LiveCD result in hangs as well. I downloaded the Ubuntu Server 7.04 i386 install ISO and computed it's md5 sum, which validated correctly. I ran through the install using the whole hard-drive on a brand new Dell Optiplex 230 server uneventfully. Upon the first boot, I got a blinking cursor after GRUB, after which it simply hung. I tried to boot again several times, in safe (or "recovery") mode, with and without the monitor plugged in, and combinations thereof.

I tried to run a verification on the disc, but it hung in the same manner as booting from the HDD did. I assumed I had a bad disc. I burned another and ran a successful verification (on another machine) first. Upon trying to install from it, it hung once again - same blinking cursor of frustration.

I've let the box sit for 15 minutes more than once to ensure it wasn't just some daemon taking a long time to come up.

Also, I get random characters and colored blocks (like old DOS-style ASCII blocks) when I let it sit for a bit.

Someone in the Ubuntu IRC channel reccomended using a LiveCD to re-install GRUB on the HDD, which was done to no avail. While the Ubuntu install LiveCD's hang as described after the ubuntu menu, the super grub disk worked fine.

My post on the ubuntu forums yesterday has gone unanswered. I've got to get this server up before Friday, when I leave town for three months. Help me MeFi!

Computer refuses to let us erase the hard drive

billtron — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 20:34:49 -0800

How can I wipe a hard drive if I can't boot from CD and there is no floppy drive? We want to install winXP on a machine with Ubuntu (eventual dual-boot). My friend's computer is not working. He installed ubuntu 6.10, and now it won't boot from CD. We have tried doing things to the grub, to no avail. We can't tell if the cdrom is hda or hdb or hd5hkjhjth. We can provide more details if this ends up being the best way to fix the problem.

There's another post on ask.mf, which explains lots of scary ways of accessing the hard drive through the internet or via a usb. Should we try them? Or should we buy a floppy drive for $5? Or should we take the hard drive out of his computer, put it in mine, and wipe it clean, then put it back and see if the CDrom will be read? We are at wit's end. Please help, ObiWans.

Installing Xubuntu on an iBook SE with a broken CD drive: possible?

jack_mo — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 04:08:38 -0800

Installing Xubuntu on an iBook SE with a broken CD drive: possible? I'd like to install Xubuntu on my old clamshell iBook SE (Graphite), but the CD drive on it is broken.

Would it be possible to install it from my other iBook? I'm guessing this might be possible over the network, but am not entirely sure how to go about it, and can't find any specific instructions online. (And I'm loathe to just jump in and try, in case I do something daft and end up installing Xubuntu on the wrong iBook!)

So, can I install over a network, or would I be better off borrowing a USB CD drive and trying to boot from the Xubuntu cd that way?

The old iBook is running OS 10.2.8 and the new iBook is running 10.4.7, in case that matters.

I just installed Ubuntu, now how do I install programs?

chuckforthought.com — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 10:48:04 -0800

I just installed Ubuntu, now how do I install programs? Right now im trying to install songbird, and I extracted it, but I don't see any notes about installing.

Yes, there is a hard drive there...

tdreyer1 — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 07:02:05 -0800

Debian won't find my hard drive! Please help! I have details so there's Ok. I'm trying to do a dual install with Debian ver 3.1 (for AMD64) on my PC ( also running XP Pro 64bit ). The installer initializes fine, but doesn't find my hard drive! I've looked online, but I can't find anything on my situation. Mostly, I can't find help with my specific hardware. I've used live cd's before, but this is my first install. Here's the specs on my computer:

Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe Wireless Edition Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 FX62 Processor
Biostar GeForce 7600GS Video Card (V7602GS51)
2x Kingston 1GB DDR2 800 RAM
Western Digital Caviar 16-WD3200KS 320GB SATA Hard Drive 7200RPM 16MB Cache (connected to M.B. directly)
Plextor PX-716AL/SW DVD/RW + CD/RW
OCX 700W Power Supply

ASUS BIOS Ver. 0504

Debian Ver. 3.1r2 for AMD64

Thanks in advance for all the help!!!

LinuxFilter: Install Linux on laptop from Floppy?

noahv — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 12:50:56 -0800

LinuxFilter: Install Linux on laptop from Floppy? Okay, so I have an older laptop (Gateway). It has a floppy and a CDROM, but the BIOS is password-locked, and I can't get in there to add the CD-ROM to the boot sequence. Therefore, I can only boot from floppy.

I would like to install Linux on the laptop (maybe DSL, maybe Ubutu). Is this as simple as creating a Linux boot floppy, and then running the distro installer from the CD? Or do I need to find a distro that will install from floppy (and CD?). If so, any recommendations?

Berkeley DB libraries

delfuego — Sat, 23 Oct 2004 11:16:41 -0800

Yet another dorky Linux question: how can I install an upgraded version of the Berkeley DB libraries on my RedHat Linux 9 machine without totally horking all the apps that are installed that rely on the older version? (more inside) I currently have the latest version of 4.0 installed, which is the highest version supported by the RedHat RPM system. Too many apps to conceive of have been compiled against that version; while I wouldn't begin to know how to find them all, I do know that a bunch (including my IMAP server, my webserver, and a few other system-critical services) use v4.0 for their support files. I now have two apps that need v4.2 in order to compile.

I compiled v4.2 using the latest source from the SleepyCat site, and installed it in the default location (/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.2/); that's relatively nonstandard for RedHat, so when I started compiling one of the apps that needs v4.2, I gave ./configure the relevant command-line options (LDFLAGS, CPPFLAGS). Configure completed without issue, but the compile step wouldn't complete because it couldn't track down all the header files. So then I realized that it probably makes sense to try to install v4.2 in the "standard" RedHat locations (/usr/lib, /usr/include, etc.) I have TERRIBLE memories of this failing miserably in the past -- totally screwing up old apps, bringing my system to its knees, that sort of thing -- so now I reach out to my AskMe buddies for help! Is there a way to do this which (a) allows newly-compiling apps to find the libraries easily, and (b) allows old apps to still use the v4.0 libraries without complaining?

Debian Linux Install

reklaw — Wed, 07 Jul 2004 16:04:51 -0800

What would be a good way to do an absolutely minimal installation of Debian Linux (or a distro based on it) and then install what I need as I need it using apt-get? The system would need to have decent hardware support (ie. work with my cable modem) but, apart from that, contain the minimum required to boot the system and run apt-get.