Ubuntu

GUI For FDISK and Mounting Additional Hard Drives

Asked by Drake

Has anyone made a GUI based program that allows a user to format a second hard-drive and mount it as a drive, rather than as a folder?

*** I know how to format and mount drives in terminal. ***

HELP ME IN MY QUEST TO CONVERT PEOPLE OVER FROM WINDOWS XP! Many Ubuntu/Linux noobs immediately run for their XP discs at the first sign of trouble... even though it means going back to an inferior program. The hard drive issue is one of my only sticking points when I'm personally trying to get friends and family to convert over from the dark side (windows xp). Terminal scares people making the cross over (from windows to linux), as they fear that they won't be able to do it (or will screw things up) without the help of a Linux Pro. Yet, if we had a GUI based program to help people format, mount, and recognize their additional hard drive, it may convince them to keep Ubuntu (and give it a fair try).

Thanks,
Drake

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pablitofuerte (pablitofuerte) said : 		#1

To format use Gparted, it is already installed on your system.
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/screenshots.php

For external memory media like USB sticks or SD/MMC flash cards: Gnome Format
http://live.gnome.org/gnome-format
# sudo aptitude install gnome-format

To mount disks and partitions:

PySDM is a Storage Device Manager that allows full customization of hard disk mountpoints without manually access to fstab. It also allows the creation of udev rules for dynamic configuration of storage devices

http://pysdm.sourceforge.net/#downloads

# sudo aptitude install pysdm

Another option, Disk Manager: Detect new partitions on startup, notifies you when it detects new partitions and allows you to fully manage the filesystem configuration. It used to be in Ubuntu repositories too.
https://launchpad.net/disk-manager
http://flomertens.free.fr/disk-manager/features.html

Another one; MountManager
http://code.google.com/p/linuxtuner/

# sudo aptitude install mountmanager

As you can see you have some GUIs, but you need to have some basics to know what you're doing, for example when you are formatting a hardrive with Gparte, if not .....

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pablitofuerte (pablitofuerte) said : 		#2

Anyway most of the times you would not need third apps, gnome will do the work for you (for example when you plug a USB stick). You will see your devices in the Resources (Places) section in the gnome panel
You can use also the drivemount applet:
Right click on the panel - Add to the panell ...

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Best Tom (tom6) said : 		#3

GPartEd is pretty and quite magic. It gives a huge amount more info more accurately than the Windows ones and doesn't default into making 2nd partitions into logical ones inside extended partitions as Windows ones seem to do by default even on 2nd physical drives. One problem though is that having partitioned a single physical drive Windows will then refer to the 2nd partition as a 'drive' so people new to linux are quite confused until they can work out the difference between physical drive and partition. I find taking the side of the machine helps clarify what's really going on.

GPartEd initially only shows the drive that the Ubuntu partition is on. I'm not sure what happens if you install Ubuntu with, for example the /home folder on a different drive but i can make a guess ;) To see the other drives that gparted scanned when it started up click on the button at the top right-hand corner, it usually says something liek "/dev/sda 20Gb Media" or something like that. It's really a drop-down list, not a button ;) and shows the other drives but only one at a time. I've found it excellent with USb-sticks but i've not tried it with cards and other storage devices.

Note that the G at the start often indicates that an application is made for the Gnome desktop which means it's the standard one fro Ubuntu (and Xubuntu which has an Xfce desktop) but not for Kubuntu which has KDE which is quite different. Installing Gparted in Kubuntu will try to drag almost the entire Gnome desktop environment into Kubuntu and so you'll see it asks if it's Ok to install a huge amount of extra packages that Gparted depends on in order to function properly, we call these sorts of extra packages "dependencies". So if you are using Kubuntu go for packages with the same name but with a K at the front instead of G or sometimes (as in this case) "Qt" instead of the G. Guess what happens if you try to install QtPartEd into Ubuntu or Xubuntu lol? The only problem with getting all these extra packages is that they take up hard-drive space which you may not have. Some people like to try out the difference between Ubuntu and Kubuntu and so just deliberately pull in both desktops so they can choose which one to use and keep switching backwards and forwards. There are many other desktops available too (not just Xfce, Gnome and KDE) and some of these can be fun to explore using.

Having installed QtPartEd or GPartEd just go up to the top taskbar and click on

System - Administration - Partition Editor

and then whichever one you have installed will open up ;) They look a tiny bit different but i had to keep flicking between them to spot the differences ;)

Err, for some reason although the partition editor is installed in a LiveCd session it isn't included in the hard-drive install. Most people wont need it after installing and when you install it's fairly important to be able to look at what's going on. I usually find it best to boot up from the Cd and choose the default option to "Try Ubuntu without changes to the machine" to see if that gets me to a working desktop that we call a "LiveCd session" because if it doesn't then it might be trickier to install Ubuntu to that machine so i would try a different one instead or else find out how to get a LiveCd session working. The LiveCd session is also good as a demo and to show off with :)

To install GPartEd (or QtPartEd) get to a command-line and

sudo apt-get install gparted

(or "sudo apt-get install qtparted")

should do the trick but i would prefer using Synaptic Package Manager which you've probably already spotted :) You can now run it from the command line by typing

gparted

but it's a fairly dangerous application so it can only really be run as SuperUser so something like

sudo gparted

or gksu gparted

would work better.

Blimey, sorry for such a long post!
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

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Tom (tom6) said : 		#4

Hmm, it sounds liek you could really do with learning a few gui ways of doing things you find easy on the command-line. The main one (imo) is to go up to the top taskbar and click on

Applications - Add/Remove Applications

unlike the Windows program of the same name this is hugely useful for adding programs and other types of applications. The left-hand panel is useful and the search tool at the top is handy. Applications that are already installed hav a tick beside them, to install something just tick it and when you've chosen all the things you want to install then click "Apply" in the bottom right. Pesonnally i prefer Synaptic, again from the top taskbar but this time click on

System - Administration - Synaptic Package Manager

This has 2 search functions and i prefer the "Search" button because that searches through the packages descriptions so i can be a lot more vague and only have a general idea of the type of thing i'm looking for. Try searching for "astronomy" and then "ham radio" lol.

Again both these gui ways use the command-line tool "apt-get" to do the real work and share the same information from the same sources but just present the information differently. As you'll have guessed from being asked for your password synaptic is capable of doing quite a lot more damage much faster than "Add/Remove Applications" but is also more helpful to a power-user like you. I would only show the family the "Add/Remove" one though. They need something safe like that, rather than download who knows what from random internet sites with all the security issues that go along with doing that sort of thing.

I hope something here helped!
Good luck and welcome to the Ubuntu corner
Regards from
Tom :)

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Drake (mr-drake) said : 		#5

Thanks everyone! This community is what truly makes Linux great! You are all awesome!

Revision history for this message
Tom (tom6) said : 		#6

Thanks for the chance to show off :))
Welcome to linux-land, especially the Ubuntu corner of it :)
Have fun, regards from
Tom :)

Ps i think "gksu" should have been "gksudo" i tend to use sudo but there seems to be some issue about gksudo being better (in Gnome)