Ubuntu: Desktop (Wubi?) or Server edition for multi-boot?

Post Reply New Topic

Unless someone here suggests differently, I have decided to add Ubuntu alongside my array of M$$ operating systems in my machine. I have looked at "Mint" in the past, and now I think Ubuntu is where I want to go.

I have a Ubuntu "Desktop" download running at the moment ... but I have just now stumbled upon this:

1) For my multi-boot machine, I actually need "Server" rather than "Desktop", correct?

2) NeoSmart will work for me with Ubuntu "Server" just like it had with "Mint", correct?

Grub 2 works fine for my triple-boot.

If Mint worked for you, so will Ubuntu Desktop. Mint is just a slightly customized spin of the Ubuntu desktop distro. All of the core stuff is taken straight from Ubuntu.

I have Ubuntu Desktop running right here from the CD right now, and I might go through some of the setup questions to look at available options. However, I still first need to get another drive in order to have enough room now that I have put Win7 back in so I could burn this ISO file to disk ... and wow! Firefox just caught me writing "iso" in lower case letters and put a red squiggly underneath them and offered correction. More people in this world need Firefox, eh?!

Okay, off to play some more ...

You only use the server version if your computer is a server. Use the Desktop for everything else.

If you are worried about grub2 you can install Ubuntu 8.10 and then upgrade the os to the current Ubuntu version.

Also, if you like ubuntu you might also consider Fedora. Just a thought.

There is my dilemma, and that must be resolved before I can proceed. When I installed Mint a few months ago, I got to the part about partitioning and found a "custom" selection of some sort that let me install the OS without doing anything whatsoever to any of my system's boot menus, and yes, I have more than one ... and then I later used NeoSmart's "EasyBCD" to add Mint into the overall mix. However, I have just now gone all the way through the partition options both with "DeskTop" and with "Mint", and this time that previous "install to disk only" option did not even appear in "Mint" ... and I suspect the difference this time is possibly because Mint could not see any of my pre-existing operating systems last time.

Does anyone here know how to manipulate Ubuntu's installer to absolutely not do anything more or other than to simply place Ubuntu in its appointed spot?

I had a problem a while ago when an upgrade to Lucid Lynx from Hardy Heron went badly an the system broke. Anyway, I did a fresh install from the CD after backing everything up. When you do an installation from the CD, choose to make the partitions manually. When you do that, you can simply choose to format the partition you want to put Lucid Lynx on as well as designating your old swap partition to be your new one. Just don't resize or delete any of your partitions and the partition table will be left alone.

Does that answer your question?

No. The option I am looking for might be at "Step 8", but I got skittish and stopped at 7 right after doing the things you have mentioned. What I want is to install Ubuntu "onto the drive only" without its installer then also adding any notice or record of that installation anywhere within any boot menu. Mint let me do that last time, but I do not recall specifically where it let me do so. So, right now I am going to go into my BIOS and disable my internal hard drives and see whether DeskTop will let me install to an external drive without adding any kind of boot routine even to its own drive/partition. I want/need the installer to *only* place the OS in its partition, then close completely without doing anything at all related to booting that OS.

Is there a particular reason why you need/want Ubuntu over Mint? As far as I can tell, there is very little to decisively recommend one over the other, so if Ubuntu's installer is giving you difficulty, it may be better just to stick with Mint.

My Mint experiment a few months ago went well, but today's look at Ubuntu grabbed me a little more. In any case ...

I just did a DeskTop installation to an external drive while all my other drives were (and at the moment still are) disabled, and the "Do not add boot" option (or whatever it said) actually *did* come up at "Step 8" during the installation. But like the warning I had first posted here, the various types of loaders and boot options (like with Mint) are now gone from the overall installation process and nothing is even said about whatever kind of loader *will* be used if its solitary on/off default selection is not toggled ... but that does not matter to me since I want it to do nothing anyway ...

... but then that brings up this concern:

After the installer had finished and said it was time to reboot, I hit "Return" and the system just hung right there with the mouse pointer in the air ... and maybe that was because it was trying to write something to some drive other than its own? If so, I must know what that will be before I turn my drives back on while Ubuntu is anywhere nearby. Call me paranoid if you wish, but I am not about to let Ubuntu or anything else write anything at all within my existing quad-boot system. It will only write to its own drive or not at all around me.

Running from the disk to make that last post ended with a good shutdown, but then my date and time were off after I turned my drives back on and booted into XP. Did Ubuntu have anything to do with that?! I had that same problem when I first installed Mint some time back, but my drives had been exposed all the way through.

I do have enough room for Ubuntu behind Win7 for now, so I might just put it there later tonight or in the morning and consider a separate drive for it later on.

Okay, here's how it works..

You must install a bootloader or you can't access Ubuntu. Windows' bootloader only boots Windows' operating systems. Ubuntu will automatically detect Windows and add an option to boot to it in your menu.

As for the clock, you have to use local time (the time in your time zone) instead of UTC. The way 90% of OSes work is to set your clock to GMT+0 then add or subtract your timezone, however Windows just sets it to your timezone. I'm sure it's a standard somewhere, but Windows doesn't obey standards. It's explained in depth how to fix this here.

Well, I believe the Ubuntu installation went well, but now grub cannot find it ... and here is why:

The four Windows operating systems on my machine do not all see all my drives in the same order, but that is no big deal since each of them still sees the drives in the order they were seen during its (the specific OS') own installation. However, I just used NeoSmart's "EasyBCD" in Win7 to add Grub commands and Ubuntu to Window's BCD (Boot) menu, but Win7 (EasyBCD's running environment) sees my Ubuntu drive as my last and GRUB sees it as the first. So when I select Ubuntu at my boot menu, GRUB is being sent in the wrong direction and ends up with a command prompt on my screen just a second later.

Does anyone here have experience with BCDEdit?

I don't think you should be calling GRUB from a Windows bootloader.

I understand, at least in general, but please take note of the warning I posted at the begging of this thread ... then keep in mind that I already had *two* boot loaders (with one of them having already been altered twice) on my machine even before I installed Ubuntu. To wit:

Win98 was installed first and to drive "D", then Win2k was installed on "C" and it took over the boot process in order to make a selection between itself and 98. Then XP went in on "E" and added itself to all of that ... then Win7 went in and made a loader of its own with a linked option back to the loader for the other systems ... and I already knew from my past experience with a Mint installation (since removed) that "EasyBCD" was the best utility for dealing with all of that once again after adding Ubuntu yesterday ... and I do hope you understand my great caution there since I do not want to ever again have to go back to "square one" ... but, that is enough from me about all of that.

Here is what I need to fix at the moment, and taking care of this just *might* make everything cool here ...

[img][800:511]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5489953/bcdedit.jpg[/img]

The next picture can help explain how that "R" came to be there, and what I need here is for someone to help me change it to a "C". "EasyBCD" wrote that in there while I was in Win7 (and Win7 was pretending to be in "C"), and Win7 told "EasyBCD" my boot loader is in "R" ... but it is not! "R" is just a letter appearing on that boot partition while Win7 is hijacking the letter "C" for its own use. Just like everything else, my pointer to Ubuntu is at the beginning of the true "C".

[img][800:356]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5489953/order.jpg[/img]

If anyone is interested, the entire history of this situation can be found here:

http://www.techtalkz.com/open-source-li ... oting.html

Update:

One of the folks at NeoSmart had me install a newer version of EasyBCD to remove the Ubuntu entry and make a new one, and I did that ... but the Win7 boot loader still shows Ubuntu as being in an "R" that will not even exist until *after* Ubuntu or any other OS on this machine is actually up and running. So, I am still looking for someone to help me edit Win7's BCD.

You were/are correct, and now I know for sure!

My problem with the bootup was caused by mistakes I had made, and I discovered and corrected those mistakes while once again installing Mint and getting it to boot. The "add boot" box at Step 8 during installation must remain checked, and the Mint partition must be selected there ... then GRUB2 must later be selected in EasyBCD (in Win7 for me) while adding the Mint installation to the Win7 BCD. I had done all of that the last time several months ago, but I had since forgotten the details and now had to go back and look in the thread we then had here about that.

Ubuntu 10.04 ran fine for me from the disk I made with the downloaded ISO, but I could not get it successfully installed. It seemed to be doing fine all the way through, but then a bunch of i/o errors showed up on the screen and everything locked up after it had ejected the installation disk and said to press "Enter" ... and then EasyBCD could not find like it (EasyBCD) had found Mint.

One question: Can two installations of Linux (such as in this experiment of mine with Mint and Ubuntu) be on separate logical drives within the same extended partition? I had installed them that way, but then EasyBCD seemed to see Mint in both places.