Ubuntu

i want to know how set up ubuntu without formating the all of the hard desk and just format the partition that i will set up ubuntu on it ( and this my e-mile please cotact me <email address hidden> ) thanks

Asked by GODSMACK

Hi my name is Mahmoud i have have 160GB hard drive include four partitions ( 20GB - 15GB - 10GB - 101Gb ) i want to install ubuntu in 10GB partition without formating all the hard desk , just format the 10GB partition and leave the rest partitions without formating .
Is this possible ?
And if it possible i want you to write the steps for me . All of it please .

Another question , is ubuntu can run programs that it's extensions .exe ?

please e-mail me with the answer , <email address hidden>

Thanks

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Brewster Malevich
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Brewster Malevich (brews) said : 		#1

Yes, there are a number of ways to do what you want to do. Some are easy, some are hard.

I'd love to be able to write out the steps for you, but you'll need to provide more information about the names, format and locations of the partitions on your current hard drive.

It's extremely easy to do from the GUI in the live-CD installation of Ubuntu.

Here is one method:

Personally, before you use the live-cd, I would encourage you to ~erase~ the 10 gig partition you want Ubuntu on, and leave it unformatted. This makes that partition easy to identify when you install from the live cd.

Pop-in the live-installation-cd and then run the installation program (found on the desktop of the live cd). It's quite user friendly.

If you had erased the portion of your hard drive you want Ubuntu on, there is an option you select: "install on largest empty portion of my hard drive" (or something along those lines). And then continue with the installation process.

This is one of the more simple, hands-off solutions to your problem.

As for your second question:

Ubuntu itself does not run .exe files. I would suggest going for the native Ubuntu alternatives, in many cases they are more secure, free and more powerful. If you really want to run .exe you can through a popular set of software called "Wine" (easy and free to install). It isn't fool-proof and sometimes requires a bit of tinkering. How well Wine works depends on what you're trying to run. (see http://appdb.winehq.org/ ) There are loads of How-to Wine guides on the web. If Wine doesn't do it, then I would go for a dual-boot system, or maybe a Virtual Machine.

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GODSMACK (godsmack-dmx) said : 		#2

Thank you Spike for answering me , i will give you information about my hard desk and i hope it can help.

The hard desk include four partitions :
(partition C 20GB and NTFS ) (partition D 15GB and NTFS ) ( Partition E 10GB and NTFS ) (partition G 101GB and NTFS ).

The E partition are the third partition of the hard desk wich i want to install ubuntu on it .

The installation process are 6 or 7 steps i just want to know what choices i should take .

Thank you Spike

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GODSMACK (godsmack-dmx) said : 		#3

Thank you Spike for answering me , i will give you information about my hard desk and i hope it can help.

The hard desk include four partitions :
(partition C 20GB and NTFS ) (partition D 15GB and NTFS ) ( Partition E 10GB and NTFS ) (partition G 101GB and NTFS ).

The E partition are the third partition of the hard desk wich i want to install ubuntu on it .with out touching the other partitions and no problem in formating the E partition

The installation process are 6 or 7 steps i just want to know what choices i should take .

Thank you Spike

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Brewster Malevich (brews) said : 		#4

Are you using the "live-cd" installation or the "alternative-installation"?

The simplest thing to do is erase the E partition ~before~ you start to install Ubuntu. If you erase that partition (so it is 10 GB of empty space, not NTFS format) then you can use the "guided - resize the partition and use the freed space" using that empty space from erased E partition.

Do you know how to delete the E partition on your own?

If you don't know how to do that. We will need to try the "manual" partitioning, which can be a bit intimidating, but a good learning experience.

---

Unless you are in a big hurry, you might also want to consider waiting until the next version of Ubuntu comes out. 8.04 should be released in about 12 days.

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GODSMACK (godsmack-dmx) said : 		#5

First i can't find a way to thank you for what you are doing for me.

Second i'm using live cd .
So you saying that i should format the partition but not make it ( NTFS ) , i'm using windows xp so when i will format the partition i have two option to make it FAT32 or NTFS so i will make it FAT32 than run live cd than i chose the "guided option and use free space from E partition .

is this ok or there are somthing wrong

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Brewster Malevich (brews) said : 		#6

Hmmm... no that's not quite what we want.

I'm not so sure about how your hard drive is mapped out. MS Windows and Linux have two different ways of labeling things and we want to be sure that we format the right part of your hard drive.

Lets try this:

1)Run the Live-CD.

2)Once the desktop has loaded, click the "install" on the Desktop.

3) Run through all the windows until you get to the one asking "How do you want to partition your disk?". Here, select "Manual" and then click "Forward".

4) Now, ~do not~ change anything in this window, but write it all down and post it to me. The information we want is under "Device", "Type" and "Size" columns. Be sure that you don't make any changes to this stuff and cancel out of this window.

And then we'll see what we've got...

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GODSMACK (godsmack-dmx) said : 		#7

Ok that is it

  Device - Type - Mountpoint - Size - Used

/dev/sda1 - ntfs - /media/sda1 - 21476 - unknown
/dev/sda5 - ntfs - /media/sda5 - 16105 - 10100
/dev/sda6 - ntfs - /media/sda6 - 10733 - 4400
/dev/sda7 - ntfs - /media/sda7 - 111715 - unknown

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Best Brewster Malevich (brews) said : 		#8

Great! This is exactly what we need.

As I'm sure you've guessed:

Drive C = /dev/sda1
Drive D = /dev/sda5
Drive E = /dev/sda6
Drive G = /dev/sda7

Now we go back to the installation on the live-cd. Go through the installation and when it asks you about how you want to partition, select "manual" and then continue.

The thing is that a hard drive is only allowed to be divided into four physical partitions. This is just a rule of hard drive partitioning. But we can get around this by making a virtual, "logical" partition.

In the manual partition session:

Select /dev/sda6/ and delete this parition. (make sure you don't need whatever is on it because it's gone after this!)

Now we will create the SWAP partition. The SWAP is kinda like a virtual version of RAM, it makes Ubuntu faster when it runs calculations. 2 gigs is a good default size for your SWAP.
In the empty space from /dev/sda6/, create a new partition. A new window should pop up about the new partition:
It needs to be a "logical" and not primary partition.
New partition size should be '2000' (this is roughly 2 gigs).
You want the partition's location to be at the 'end'.
Under "use as" (this is what type of format we want), select "SWAP".
Select "OK".

We will create the partition with Ubuntu on it. There are many set-ups for this (I think a couple of books have been written about Linux partitioning). But you are not running a server, and we don't need anything too fancy.

In the rest of our empty space, create a new partition:
It needs to be "logical".
Let it take up as much memory as you can (default I think).
Its location should be at the beginning.
You want to use it as "ext3" (this is default format used by Ubuntu, it works very well).
And finally, under "Mount point" type "/" (no quotes). (This is the starting point of the entire computer file system. Linux is like Unix in that the entire system is setup as files and folders.)

And now you're done. Continue on through the installation process.

--

I am guessing that you also have MS Windows installed on your machine. So what you have now is called a "Dual-Boot" system. Whenever your computer starts, a screen will quickly pop-up. Don't worry! Your computer hasn't crashed. This is called the GRUB. You'll be able to select whether you want to start your computer in Ubuntu, or Windows or whatever you have.

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GODSMACK (godsmack-dmx) said : 		#9

Thank you Spike for this , i'm very glade answering me and i hope we get more conversions again .

                                                                                                                                                            Thanks

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GODSMACK (godsmack-dmx) said : 		#10

Thanks Spike the Dingo, that solved my question.

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Brewster Malevich (brews) said : 		#11

Hey, my pleasure! Enjoy! :-)