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crash during install - reinstall on top of crash

Asked by wolfman

The installation Ubuntu 9.10 encountered a severe error and I was advised that the kernel was unstable. I want to attempt a reinstall, but the new install wants to create another partition for the reinstall in addition to the one that has the unstable kernel. I would like to be able to reuse the same partition that was created for the original install. I plan to dual boot and am currently running Windows 7 on a Dell XPS M1330. If I proceed with the reinstall the way the installer wants to do it I would have 30 GB of wasted space being used by a kernel that I can't even access. Is there a way to do this using the 9.10 installer?

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Tom (tom6) said : 		#1

Hi :)

Please run a LiveCd session from the Ubuntu installer Cd
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD
to see if partitions have already been setup but also to check that Ubuntu works well on your hardware.

Thanks, good luck and regards from
Tom :)

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Tom (tom6) said : 		#2

Hi :)

Yes the installer has a "Partitioning Section" at about step 6 or something. The bottom option is "Advanced/Manual Partitioning" it looks very different from the other options and when you select it there is a long delay while it re-scans your drives to check on what partitions are really there.

Presumably you want to try the simplest install of Ubuntu so just edit the linux ext3 partition and set it's "Mount Point" to "/". This partition will need to be about 15Gb. Ubuntu can read the data you have stored on the Windows side so it doesn't really need much more space.

If you want to install a slightly more robust way then creating a separate partition for "/home" keeps all your data & settings safely on that partition away from the programs and main part of the OS. In that case the /home partition needs to be 10Gb and the / partition needs to be 5-10Gb. It really only needs to be 4Gb but i like to give it a bit more space just in case.

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

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wolfman (wrwolfman) said : 		#3

Hi Tom,

Thanks for your prompt replies. I ended up sort of doing what you suggested in your second reply. First though, I went into Windows 7 and used the functionality built in to Disk Management to remove the Ubuntu disk partition that was created. This gave me an area of free space. Then when I did the re-install, I was able to manually create the primary and swap partitions and the install went to successful completion this time. There was one thing that was different on the re-install. During the initial install it attempted to import settings from Windows and it was in that portion of the install that I received the unstable kernel message. During the re-install, the installer said there wasn't a valid source to install any settings from and of course it didn't try to import anything. I don't know if anyone else had this problem during the install, but it would have been nice to have some of my Windows settings brought over.

Thanks again
Wolfman

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Tom (tom6) said : 		#4

Hi :)

Sounds like you were spared a few problems 2nd time then? If you were using Firefox in Windows then it should be reasonably easy to export the bookmarks and then import them into the Ubuntu one. Mostly it is going to be a case of doing exporting & importing 1 program at a time i'm afraid. Sorry about that but Windows doesn't always like co-operating with it's rivals.

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

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wolfman (wrwolfman) said : 		#5

Hi Tom,

I was actually able to export all of the bookmarks from Firefox and import them in one shot, so I guess I did something right. Thanks again.

Wolfman

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Tom (tom6) said : 		#6

Hi :)

You are welcome :) I think there is a community documentation page about exporting from MS Outlook to get the data into Evolution but i will have to look that up later if you can't find it and still need it. Are there any other programs you need to import setting or data for?

Regards from
Tom :)