ubuntu inside windows

not sure if this will solve all your problems, but you can move your wubi installation to its own partition instead of running it inside windows:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WubiGuide#How%20do%20I%20migrate%20to%20a%20real%20partition,%20and/or%20get%20rid%20of%20Windows%20entirely?

Yes, i think nhasian is right there. Also worth considering are these pages but nhasian has the main page worth reading, my one is just an extra consideration at the same time

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsDualBoot

The Wubi is a bit wobbly as it essentially relies on Windows for a lot. As such it combines the worst of both OS's. A proper dual-boot combines the best of both and makes a very enjoyable, robust and flexible system. Well worth the effort

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootFromCD

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Just wondering if you've had any success with this and how it's going?
Please post additional questions as and when you want to. We like solving even trivial problems so please let us know.
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+addquestion

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Tom,
So I am wondering about how I should go about this: I currently have ubuntu installed inside windows (as we've already discussed). I have the ubuntu iso on cd. I put the cd in, restart the comp, and it gives me options to do. What should I do to get an actual dual boot going, not the ubuntu inside windows? Will I lose windows as well (and have to reinstall that too)? Should I get rid of the ubuntu I have installed inside windows now? I'm just a little confused about how to do this.

Also, I have a computer at school that's running ubuntu and I used to be able to ssh it from home but now when I try I get the following message:

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@ WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED! @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOMEONE IS DOING SOMETHING NASTY!
Someone could be eavesdropping on you right now (man-in-the-middle attack)!
It is also possible that the RSA host key has just been changed.
The fingerprint for the RSA key sent by the remote host is
d9:79:d5:c9:45:41:85:00:19:59:0c:e8:ba:99:76:31.
Please contact your system administrator.
Add correct host key in /home/jeremy/.ssh/known_hosts to get rid of this message.
Offending key in /home/jeremy/.ssh/known_hosts:1
RSA host key for einstein.colorado.edu has changed and you have requested strict checking.
Host key verification failed.

I tried adding that line to the document given above but nothing changed. Any ideas?

Well, last question first ;) Please post this as a new question
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+addquestion
I think it's most likely that you'll need to chat with the network-administrator at your school to see if anything there has changed but i don't know much about networking. People at the front-desk should be able to help with that tho :)

Back to the first question in your last post. No, it is quite possible too boot up off the Cd without installing anything. In fact it's the default option when using the Cd. In the world of linux we call this the LiveCd session. This page might help
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootFromCD

There is a huge amount of documentation available here
https://help.ubuntu.com/8.04/installation-guide/i386/index.html
and at other places but basically your needs are covered by 1 of 2 simple documents. If you can boot into Wubi then this page should help get you a proper dual-boot setup
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WubiGuide#How%20do%20I%20migrate%20to%20a%20real%20partition,%20and/or%20get%20rid%20of%20Windows%20entirely?
If you can't boot into your Wubi then use this guide instead and then afterwards we can try to get your data back from the Wubi. Don't uninstall the Wubi until you're happy that we've got everything out of it and into your proper Ubuntu
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsDualBoot

Sorry if this all looks baffling. Basically it's a lot more difficult to explain than to do. Just try the LiveCd out and don't go for any of the Install options :)

Really i am just wondering if you can boot into the Wubi?

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Tom,
I can boot into the Wubi. I'm sorry for the confusion. . . I'm rather new to this so I'll need rather explicit instructions on how to move the wubi to it's own actual partition. It said something about having to have the partition already made, which I'm also not sure about. Thanks for the help.

Let me know if I've got this straight: So I need to use gparted to create a swap partition (the same size as my RAM) and a new target partition which I can move ubuntu to? I did sudo apt-get install gparted and ran it, but I can't resize my ntfs partition because it's mounted as I'm doing all this. So I need to do all of this from a live cd, right? I'm just confused as to how I'm going to get my ubuntu wubi out of windows. Sorry I'm a newbie.

Hi, sorry for the delay. I've been away on a boat in the freezing cold for a few days. Was fun though:)

Assuming your Windows isn't Vista then use gparted fom a LiveCd, yup that's right and for the reasons you say. You can't resize a mounted partition and you can't unmount it if you're booted into it!

The guid nhasian gave should be the most help from all that's been said above
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WubiGuide#How%20do%20I%20migrate%20to%20a%20real%20partition,%20and/or%20get%20rid%20of%20Windows%20entirely
but as i keep saying to people don't get rid of your Windows - having it as the other part of a dual-boot (or as part of a multi-boot if you're like me on my old machine) makes the machine much easier to use as you can choose which OS you want to use today. Hopefully you'll use Ubuntu more than Windows most days ;)

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Hmm, it might be my amazingly bad connection but that link didn't work for me. Hopefully this on will
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WubiGuide#How%20do%20I%20migrate%20to%20a%20real%20partition,%20and/or%20get%20rid%20of%20Windows%20entirely?

lol, i had the same problem again. From
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WubiGuide
use section 8 "Misc", subsection 8 "How do I migrate to a real partition, and/or get rid of Windows entirely?"

Hopefully it's just my stupid connection. The server i go through is an ancient old and very slow laptop running Xp very slowly! lol, next week we hope to have it all sorted a lot better with a proper router :)

Good Luck again
Regards from
Tom :)

Tom,
glad to hear you had fun on the boat. Where'd you go?

So here's my current status:
My laptop is about 5 years old and only has an 80 Gig HD on it, and I had about 30 gigs windows and 30 gigs to the wubi, which left me really no room to partition the HD on my computer. So here's what I did: I used gparted and partitioned my external HD, giving about 30+ gigs to the ext3 target partition and about 3 gigs to the linux swap partition. I then used lvpm to migrate my wubi over to my external. It's there and everything. Once I moved the wubi to my external I booted into windows and deleted it to free up space. Now my plan was to run a live session, partition my actual HD and bring the wubi from the external into its own partition on the comp. Only problem is, I can't get a live session running! I have two ISO's that I burned a couple months back and neither of them seem to work. I stick them in the disk drive, reboot, and ubuntu starts up, asking me what language, what I want to do, etc. So I select "try ubuntu without any change to your computer". . . it's starts to load and then freezes and just sits there. I'm not sure what my other options are.

Tell me if you think this is a valid option: I could download a windows partitioner, partition my HD from windows and then install ubuntu into it's own partition. Would it give me that option? It would suck to have to reput everything on my linux side, but it wouldn't take too long.

I agree with what you said about windows. I love ubuntu, but I would really love a dual boot because I need solid works, itunes for my ipod, etc. So it would be great to have both.

It sounds as though the Ubuntu on the external drive is a proper install that you can boot into? If you can boot into it then using gparted in that would be the best plan. If not then we might be able to fix it so that you can boot into Ubuntu on your external drive - possibly just through changing the boot-order in your bios. It sounds like something odd is going on with your cd drive. If you really need a LiveCd session then it might be worth trying a different distro that is primarily made to run from a Cd and is therefore a lot lighter and faster to boot into. My favourite for this would be Wolvix. From the Wolvix DistroWatch page you can explore all the other linux distro (almost all anyway)
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=wolvix
Wolvix has gparted included in it's standard LiveCd session.

There are lots of options. 80Gb is plenty of space. I have managed to set up a dual-boot with Ubuntu and Xp on an 8Gb drive! Ubuntu normally needs 8Gb minimum and prefers about 15Gb to be comfortable. As linux can easily read Windows data but Windows can't see linux at all i tend to keep most of my data (movies, music, documents etc) on a Windows drive - the 8Gb machine has a slave drive with 1 big ntfs partition. Ntfs is safer than fat32 or fat16 but radically less safe than ext2 or ext3. An external drive is an excellent way of shifting stuff i want to avoid losing onto my main machine.

Mostly the question is - are you happy running Ubuntu from the external drive or do you really want it beside Windows on your internal drive? or both?

I would avoid using a Windows partitioner and i'll attempt to explain why .., They tend to make a right mess of things. It's best to have the OS's and the linux-swap partitions as "Primary Partitions" although it doesn't matter which drive. Each drive is only allowed 4 "Primary Partitions", due to some historical quirks and standardisations. If you have a drive that is going to need more than 4 partitions then you'll need to have the 4th partition as an "Extended Partition" (instead of a Primary one). This extended partition can then contain almost limitless amounts of partitions but they'll all be logical partitions. Anything on a logical partition will be slower to access so it's good for data and sometimes ok for linux-swap but not for your OS's as the machine will appear a lot slower than it needs to be as the read/write heads on the drive will need to look up addresses in 2 address lists rather than just 1. Windows tends to assume that you'll only have 1 partition and that will be for Windows OS + data. Windows partitioners tend to "freak out" when asked to make another partition on a drive. In typical Windows style it avoids keeping you informed and goes for the safest option - which is to make the 2nd partition an "Extended Partition" and they put the new partition you requested inside that. Looking at it with almost any Windows partitiner you wont be able to see the Extended Partition but any linux one will show you better detail.

Sorry that was a bit toooo verbose.

Simply avoid Windows partitioners. Try a different (and much lighter) distro, preferably Wolvix
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=wolvix

Check there isn't something helpful on
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootFromCD
to help with booting off the old Ubuntu Cd's. Also use the advice about the bios in there to maybe help put "boot off external/usb drive" as a higher priority than "boot off internal/master hard-drive" and see if that helps you boot into the Ubuntu you already have there.

If you can't get Ubuntu working from the external drive then consider installing it a second time but this time onto your internal hard-drive but try using a newer download of Ubuntu (if the old Cds won't boot then don't bother trying a newer one as you'd probably get the same problem)
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsDualBoot
If you can't clear 15Gb (ish) space at the end of your Windows drive then could you clear 1 or 2 Gb and install Wolvix? Wolvix should be able to use the linux-swap on your external drive but probably doesn't need a linux-swap at all because it's sooo light on resources. Whichever linux you install on your Windows drive will need to rewrite the drives MBR but this is almost always an improvement despite the warnings it usually gives and is fixable anyway. Wolvix is much easier to install than Ubuntu and when it gets to sorting out the grub-boot-loader it should pick up on both linux's (Ubuntu and Wolvix) as well as the Windows so just give each a sensible name - you can change these names later of course.

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

I went to Coventry along the 'famous' Oxford Canal - parts of it are the first canal ever built and it follows the contour lines on the hills. Later on it got straightened out with aquaducts, tunnels and cuttings so it has many side branches that are often quirky little boatyards and interesting moorings. Later still the "Grand Union" was built in a very impressively straight line that cut many days off journey times and a while after that the railways started to be built and took all the freight off the canals - leaving "The Oxford" almost entirely unused until the waterways started getting used by tourists. Locks are fun :)

Wow, sounds like you had a good time!

I currently am not able to boot into my external, but I have not yet tried the link you gave about setting booting into that above booting into the internal. If that doesn't work, are you suggesting I try running a live session of wolvix, partitioning my internal and moving my ubuntu installation from the external to the partitioned internal via wolvix? would wolvix let me do that?

lol, not quite ;)

Wolvix installs to a very small space on your hard-drive and it's good at sorting out multi-boot scenarios.

If you're not running Vista then gparted in the Wolvix LiveCd can resize your internal down by about 2Gb and setup a "linux-swap" primary partion of about 1Gb immediately after the Windows partition and then the rest as an "ext2 (or 3)" primary partition. Note down which partition is called what and use the Wolvix Control Panel (the icon with the crossed "spanner and screwdriver") to install to hard-drive. It has excellent instructions and is quite informative to help guide you through. At the end when it's sorting out the Grub-boot-loader let it write to the MBR and that should help fix everything :)

However if space isn't a worry and you can easily get 17Gb free (15Gb for Ubuntu and 2Gb for the swap) then why not go with Ubuntu on the internal drive? ;)

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

After where i said "However" in that last post would require a fresh install of Ubuntu from the Cd

Good luck :)

I would rather have ubuntu. I'm fine with reinstalling, but now the issue is: how do I get my internal partitioned if I can't boot from a liveCD? So if I boot live from wolvix it won't let me partition all the remaining space on my internal?

I wasn't really thinking of using Wolvix as one of your main OS's - i was just using it to sort the boot menu so that Xp on your internal or Ubuntu on your external would both be in the menu and easy to boot into.

Also as Wolvix Cub 1.1.0 is much smaller and lighter it's much easier to get a good LiveCd session working. Ubuntu is sometimes too heavy for this. I've often found it handy to have a cd of a distro like this around to help fix all kinds of different things.

If the Wolvix Cd doesn't boot then that would tell us something but i'd rather hear that it did work and that you've used it so that you can happily get into Ubuntu easily :)

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

If you are still having trouble with this then please post it as a new question. Only the most recent questions tend to get looked at so posting/re-posting a question just before america arrives online after work/school gives the best chance of getting a good few answers - such is the nature of the internet.
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+addquestion

If the problem has been resolved then please follow the link to the forum thread and mark it as Solved but please give us a clue how you did manage to solve it and also use the button under where you type stuff in rather than giving me karma credit points for just sending this note to you.

Apologies, good luck and many regards from
Tom :)