System Freezes when trying to access CD DVD drive

Using Ubuntu 9.10 on my Quad core with 3 gigs Ram
duo boot w/Windows Vista

I think kernel is 2.6.31.19 anyway I upgraded from .14 to .19.

Please tell me if I need to just get a new DVD drive.
Mine are:

Optiarc DVD RW AD 7173A
HL-DT-ST-DVD-ROM GSA-HSSL

Any acces at all and Ubunt feezes.
And I really like Ubuntu.. :-(

Thank you.

Hi :)

Do you have the Cd you installed Ubuntu from in the first place? Could you try this guide
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD
to see if you can bootup the machine from the cd/dvd-drive. This should bypass any issues that may have gone wrong inside your install of Ubuntu. The LiveCd should get you to a working desktop that allows you to use firefox to surf into here.

If the LiveCd does work then please try this command

sudo fdisk -l

where " -l" is a lower-case "-L" and sudo will ask for your normal password, not your SuperUser one. Also sudo doesn't give any stars as you type.

If the LiveCd doesn't work then it could be a hardware problem. Is there any chance of trying an external cd/dvd-drive or 'borrowing' one from a different machine? Did the cd/dvd-drive work fine under Windows recently?

Also consider that there may well be 1 or 2 things that you don't immediately understand (even after bashing your head against the proverbial wall) or that just wont seem to work at all. Many people start their journey into linux-land with a dual-boot so that they can still access and use Windows until these sorts of problems suddenly seem to magically vanish. For me it was about 6months until i stayed in linux more than fleetingly, for most people it is usually a lot less. Mostly we have many years of Windows experience and it does take a while to adjust.

However, this does sound like a hardware issue to me so please check that by trying to run a LiveCd session. Please let us know how that goes, especially if you haven't got an Ubuntu Cd in which case we can try another approach :)

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Hi Tom,

So glad to hear from a living being. :-)

Here is what I have done since posting.
First your requested information is here:
---
Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0688a667

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 31803 255457566 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 31804 60801 232926435 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 31804 59678 223905906 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 59679 60801 9020466 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdf: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x44fdfe06

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdf1 * 1 16121 129491901 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdf2 16319 60801 357309697+ 5 Extended
/dev/sdf5 16319 60801 357309664+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
---
Since posting, I...
flashed the DVD burner with firmware,
unplugged one DVD to see if the other would work, it did not.
As you suggested, I booted to the Live CD which works wonderfully, until I insert a CD DVD in the other drive then it freezes,
this happens with Fedora, Ubuntu, and Mint
However, on my duo boot system Windows Vista has been and still is extremely happy with both these drives.
I was also able to write to one of my DVD's from inside Ubuntu on my HDD, but as soon as it said, "Successful." it froze,
it was successful because I checked the written data in Windows.
It seems once I access either DVD/CD drive I am on a timer. I have approximately 2 minutes until freeze ensues.

I have not tried unplugging my old CD drive from my XP machine downstairs, but I could do that too.
I have all the programs I like and everything set in Ubuntu and have been using the system solidly for three days.
Everything works, Network, Sound, Graphics, man I really want this to work.

Any suggestions would be appreciated including which NEW DVD drive is definitely compatible and available at a Best Buy.
But I have to have LightScribe capability for CD's I sell, or keep a Windows Partition. :-(

Thanks again and if you think it will help I can try the CD player downstairs but not until Thursday.

Bill

We got snowed in here so I was able to take an old Samsung CD/DVD out of an XP machine and plug it into my Ubuntu/Vista duo boot machine. Results...

As long as I unplugged the second DVD drive it worked wonderfully. I burned a data DVD, played a music CD, mounted and unmounted and basically kept it busy for an hour with no freeze whatsoever.

I will be going to Best Buy store as soon as the snows melt to buy 2 new DVD burners. I need Dual Layer and one to burn LightScribe labels.

It seems a shame that neither drive would work when they are 2007 drives, Sony and LightScribe HP I think. I will have to buy 2.

So I guess we can call this solved although Windows recognizes them just fine.

Does anyone at all have suggestions for compatible DVD drives before I go looking? I have checked online but most hardware sites assume DVD's will be compatible. Any tips at all would help and I would be grateful.

Thanks so much.

Hi :)

Freezing is normally a classic sign of ram issues, or other hard problems. You will soon see why i suggested checking the hardware 1st tho!

Now it's clearly not a desperate hardware issue but might be some slight bottle-neck somewhere and you have found 1 drive that does work so there is no need to try the cd-drive from the machine downstairs.

The first part is not so bad. Simply get to a linux command-line and enter

free -m

Note that the same command will do the same thing on any of the distros you mentioned there and also gives the same result whether from a LiveCd or from a proper install. The output should show the 9Gb of linux-swap that we saw from "sudo fdisk -l" but it should also show us how much ram your machine thinks is available. Please let us know the output in here.

The 2nd part can take ages so i suggest finding a good book to read or anything else to do while leaving it to get on with it. I left mine overnight. During booting up the LiveCd session you were given an option to "Check Memory" or "Test Memory", please run this. It does take ages. It not only checks your ram sticks but also marks any bad-blocks to stop them from being used. Even though it didn't find anything wrong with my ram it felt like the machine was a little more responsive after this check.

Keeping a working Windows for a few months or even a year or few is not such a bad plan. Now that you have started using linux you will learn a lot about how Windows works and people will begin to see you as a geek and expect help with their machines. It's handy to have a working Windows just to check where things are in their menus sometimes. Also some games and a few things sometimes work better in Windows at first.

Ubuntu can read data stored on the Windows side and it's fairly easy to make a soft short-cut, which we would call a "link" to places such as "My Docs". Simply right-click, choose "Make link" and then drag that to the Ubuntu desktop.

So i seriously recommend keeping Windows as part of a dual-boot for at least a few months until well after the "honey-moon phase" has worn off.

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Hi again :)

It has just occurred to me that you might have a neat work-around if 1 drive seems to work but the other doesn't work at all.

Whichever application/package you are using to copy cd/dvds should allow you to copy the image to a file rather than straight to another cd/dvd. Doing it this way and storing the file on your machine temporarily could halve the amount of bottle-necks and ease the pressure on the cpu. Once you have the file stored on machine it should be easy to copy the image, probably an iso image onto a number of different cd/dvds consecutively using the 1 cd/dvd-drive that does seem to work.

If re-using the same drive to burn the cd/dvd copies does work you might be able to try stepping it up and see if you can burn to both drives at the same time. I wouldn't expect this to work at this point, especially given the limitations you have described so far, but it might be possible & is probably well worth trying. Hopefully at worst you will need to reboot the machine and have 2 ex-cd/dvds that are only any use as "coasters" for cups of tea, or mini frisbees.

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Hi again again :)

Sorry i just realised i should explain what the last output meant. Feel free to completely ignore all this post as it doesn't contain any useful actions to solve the problem. Apart from the slight weirdness about linux choosing to call your 2 drives sda & sdf it all looks normal and fine.

It is more usual for linux to start at sda, then call the 2nd drive sdb, then sdc, then sdd and so on. Different types of drives have a different 1st letter, for example floppy-disc drives would be fda, fdb and so on. Until very recently the older ide drives were called hda, hdb, hdc with only the newer sata drives getting the "s" at the start. Now they are both called the same but treated slightly differently "under the bonnet". Anyway, the numbering does look a little strange, perhaps due to cameras or usb sticks have been plugged in during install (a good plan so the right drivers get installed) but i wouldn't worry about that right now.

Sadly, Launchpad messes up the formatting so we cant see these in the neat columns they were in but we can still work it out. I have a handy spreadsheet for helping with these ...

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 31803 255457566 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 31804 60801 232926435 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 31804 59678 223905906 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 59679 60801 9020466 82 Linux swap / Solaris

The 2 really useful columns are the first and last anyway.

Device shows how all the different partitions are mounted, and how we can get into the folders on each partition. So to see inside the Windows partition you would type

cd /dev/sda1
dir

Linux has a prettier way or seeing inside a folder using "ls" (a lower-case "LS") instead of "dir". The "ls" command colour-codes its output in most terminal consoles to show different types of files and folders in colours that eventually begin to mean something when you have seen them enough. In my usual terminal console they are just black&white tho so i may as well use "dir"

"System" in the last column shows that sad1 is an "ntfs" partition much favoured by Windows although they also use the less reliable fat32, fat16 and even more ancient fat. Fat = File Allocation Table. Ntfs is the first MicroSquish partition type that is journalised which makes it radically safer to keep data on. Linux can be installed onto an ntfs (or even fat) partition but a proper linux partition (usually ext3 or ext4) is far more robust than ntfs. I find it interesting that MicroSquish and other companies make a lot of money when their systems fall over (for example anti-virus security companies) and that MicroSquish refuse to use proven safer systems. Windows cannot even see the linux partitions and also tries to confuse the issue by calling partitions "drives". On your machine the 3 "drives" that Windows sees are sda1, sdf1 and sdf5.

If you look at the start and end columns you will notice that the "Extended" partition is hollow and contains a number of other partitions. On the sda drive the Extended Partition contains sda5 & sda6. Each drive can only have 4 Primary Partitions but a work-around was developed allowing 1 of those 4 to be an Extended Partiton which could then contain a large number of "Logical Partitions". On most machines there is now no noticeable difference between read/write speeds to primary or logical partitions. On some ancient machines i have seemed to notice differences but i haven't really studied this. There is still the speed difference between the start and end of the drive though. At the end of the drive the speed can easily be half that at the start of the drive. So on your machine Windows is given a significant speed advantage which it definitely needs and linux doesn't. Depending on the result of the "free -m" command there might be a neat way of giving your linux a significant edge without detracting from Windows too much but only if its an ancient machine. On a newer machine it would be a lot of risky work for no noticeable effect.

As always, good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Thanks Tom,

No, you didn't have to explain all that, although I appreciate it.

Memory is not a problem:

desktop:~$ free -m
                   total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3006 717 2289 0 46 322
-/+ buffers/cache: 348 2657
Swap: 8809 0 8809
desktop:~$

Ubuntu just doesn't like Gateway's choice of DVD drives. :-(
I have the old one working, but I need you to tell me which current Drive(s) will
work so I can buy one. I need Dual Layer and I need to be able to burn labels.
Any ideas? I tried to look online but everone says DVD's are always recognized.
I really don't want to waste money and time.

The reason I got the hd(f) is because I installed with two internal HDD's and later removed one
and I have an external HDD with two partitions. :)

On the bright side, I have these components all working:

HDDs internal and external.
USB Flash Drive 8 gigs
USB Headphones
24" wide screen monitor w/Nvidia
Network Card,
Satellite Internet System.
Sound Blaster Card
Firefox, Thunderbird (moved over my emails and profile)
and WINE is working.

Thanks for the tips too about accessing Windows Vista, it works good!

Any tips on DVD's are appreciated.

We are snowed in for two days.

Bill

Hi :)

Err, somewhere in community documentation are some guides about what hardware is compatible. It's not exhaustive and probably is not hugely up-to-date but try using the search feature at the top of this page
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Signpost

There were some other, more general linux, pages elsewhere i think but hopefully i might be able to look something up tomorrow.

Did you have any troubles getting the SoundBlaster card to work? I thought they were unsupported?

Regards from
Tom :)

Thanks Tom,

Not to worry, I won't hold you responsible if the DVD doesn't work right off. :-D

I have a SB Audigy, and it worked out of the box. Yay.

I have a Quad Core 3 gigs memory and I also have onboard sound, but Microsquish
sent an update which turned off the ability to record audio streaming. One day it was there,
the next day gone, there was no choice. So I responded with SB Audigy which gave the ability back to me. :-)

Night Tom. 19 degrees F here, snows blowing.

Thanks again.

Bill

Thanks Tom, that solved my question.

Hi :)

Ok, i have looked up a few sites
http://www.linuxcompatible.org/compatdbsearch.php?search=dvd&sort=1&asort=1
it was tricky to use their search tool but eventually i found it helped to be very vague and general.

The communtiy documentation
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupport
has a nice list of places at the bottom of the page. The first site listed is the one above.

I still couldn't find the lists i was looking for tho.
Good luck and happy hunting
Regards from
Tom :)

Hi again :)

I went to the Dell website but the first dvd-burner i clicked on only listed MicroSquish OSs in its list of compatible OSs. Luckily there was a feedback link at the bottom so i was able to politely tell them why i would be recommending their competitors.

It is worth trying to ask this question in
http://www.linuxquestions.org
as they have a wider customer base. Generally if a device works in one version of linux the nature of OpenSource is such that it will work well in all the rest. This isn't always completely true. For an entire hardware setup it is often best to try a few LiveCds before settling on the distro of choice for that particular machine. However, for adding just 1 component part into an existing working system there should be little difference between the differnt versions of linux. I found (&lost) a recent thread on linuxquestions.org but managed to copy this one here for you

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-hardware-18/what-dvd-recorderswriters-burn-dual-layerdouble-layer-dvds-under-linux-618505/

The lists i was looking for didn't cover optical drives.
Good luck and regards form
Tom :)

Hi again Tom,

I bought LG DL w/Lightscribe only to find it also would not work.
So...

I uninstalled Ubuntu 9.10 and installed Ubuntu 8.04.4 and Voila!
Everything is working. Both DVD's, Nvidia, USB, External Hard Drive,
Sound, Network, Everything. It is a BUG in Ubuntu 9.10, kernel 2.6,31.19.

I now have Ubuntu on HDD 1 and Windows Vista booting from HDD 2.

All is well at last!

Take care...

Hi :)

Hmmm, from the lists it looked as tho LG would be an ideal choice. Bug fixes and things are usually back-ported to the last LTS release first so it is usually the most up-to-date version.

The next release of Ubuntu is due to be the 10.06 which is the next LTS release. Due to be released at the end of 6th month in 2010 obviously.

I tend to find it a good idea to try out each new release as a LiveCd sesion first, and then install as a an additional boot in my dual/multi-boot before really commiting myself to it. I tend to keep a partition especially for trying out other versions of linux and testing odd ideas with anyway.

Once you get the /home installed on a separate partition all the installing/uninstalling becomes very much easier. Something else that will be a great is when the 10.06 release does arrive and i can move a few people out of the constant upgrade cycle for a few years.

Glad to hear you got it all working well at last!

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Quote: "Once you get the /home installed on a separate partition all the installing/uninstalling becomes very much easier."
Could you explain that cryptic (to me) remark? :-)

Also, I have my Hard Drive which is 1 terrabyte devoted to Ubuntu. That is way too big, but I have everything set and don't want to reinstall. Any way to resize and shrink the partition with linux on it already? Something simple like a program. :-)

If not well, I'll live with it.

Thanks,

Bill

Hi :)

Yes, there are a number of different options for your 1Tb drive right now.

Having 1Tb devoted to Ubuntu seems fine to me although perhaps the problem is that Windows can't see it at all? If you want Windows to see it then we have the most complicated answer available but i think it is something you could handle now you seem to have settled in to linux-land a little.

The main questions i have at this point are
1. How much free-space is left on the 1Tb drive or have you already completely filled it with data?
2. Do you want 'some' of this data available to Windows? (there's a few different ways to arrange this)

To answer your question about my cryptic remark ... the /home is roughly the equivalent of the Windows "Users & Documents" folder. Of course in linux it is very much more usefully well thought out. The main 2 advantages of the linux way are that
1. All programs store all the data & settings in your /home rather than trying to find some new different quirky place to squirrel away stuff.
2. /home can be setup on a different partition or even on a completely different hard-drive from the main OS + programs.

Also you can choose to make the /home partition easy for Windows to read although this would mean using the much less robust ntfs file-system rather than using the linux equivalents which have a significantly better track record. However, the point is that it can be done.

I have a funny feeling that the answer to this last part is quite trivial really although there may be a little extra wrinkle in it to stop you getting too bored with it.

If you are using Ubuntu or Xubuntu then the tool for resizing the partitions on the drive (the gui tool at least) is "GPartEd". If you are using Kubuntu the tool is "QtPartEd". If you prefer using the command-line for stuff like this then "PartEd" is the back-end used by both "QtPartEd" and "GPartEd". While these are included on the LiveCd under the top tasbar's menu

System - Administration - Partition Editor

mostly hard-drive installs avoid installing it. I would tend to recommend using a LiveCd to sort partitions out anyway as it avoids frustrations of finding the 1 crucial partition is mounted and thus can't be messed with.

Before getting into resizing partitions it might be better if we can work out a plan together as resizing takes ages, for a 1Tb drive i would be tempted to let it get on with it overnight and then see how it went after waking up.

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Egads no, I haven't filled it YET. :-)
I have 922 gigs free.

But it seems way too big, and so I would like to shrink it
and format part of it for extra files or maybe sbackup 's.

I have discovered that it cannot be done while it is mounted.
I guess I am a bit paranoid at using the live CD and picking the wrong partition.
I have set up everything the way I want in Ubuntu 8.04 and twice now after trying
9.10 first. I just am trying to learn a safe way to do this. All these Sda's and Sdb's
and Hd1's I'm a bit leary

Thanks,

Bill

Hi :)

That's all good :) Some background you don't really need at all ...

Until fairly recently

hda = 1st hard-drive, the h shows it's an old ide drive
hdb = 2nd hard-drive

sda = 1st sata hard-drive
sdb = 2nd sata hard-drive

But to simplify things a little for us weeu's most versions of linux decided to use the "s" for even the older ide hard-drives too and then just deal with the differences behind-the-scenes. Some purist distros still make a distinction between these types of drives. It is fairly easy to spot the difference as ide drives have "ribbon cable" about 2" wide and a multicoloured power lead with 4 wires poking out whereas sata drives have 2 cables both less wide than a finger-nail. However, i agree that most people should be discouraged from dismantling their machine now that linux is growing into the mainstream. Just taking the side off to take a look can be very informative for most people but there is then a risk of fiddling and killing components with finger-grease or the static charges we tend to have on our skin without realising it.

Windows also tries to dumb things down for stupid users by calling partitions "drives" so that a person with 1 physical drive may often think they have 2 or more drives because Windows shows them as having a "C: drive" and a "D: drive". Usually these will be 2 partitions on the same physical drive which people will see when they take the side off their machine.

Another confusion introduced by Windows is due to a lack of fore-sight. Their machines initially were all run off the floppy-drive so they called that drive "A: drive" because it was the most important drive on the machine (since it was the only drive). Then some machines got a 2nd floppy-drive which would be called the "B: drive". Linux called the floppy-drives fd0 and fd1 i believe although fda & fdb would fit in better with what we call things nowadays. The 2nd floppy-drive meant that you could leave the Windows (or other OS) floppy in but still save data onto the 2nd floppy without constantly swapping floppy disks around and getting in a real muddle. Then hard-drives arrived and so the most important drive in the machine was then called the "C: drive" to distinguish it from the out-dated floppy drives. Then Cd-drives arrived and were often called "D: drive" and a little later people started partitioning their drives or buying new hard-drives or both. So now Windows machines use this naming convention:-

A: useless old floppy-drive, most new(ish) machines don't have one
B: useless old floppy-drive, extremely unlikely for a machine to have one
C: the most crucial drive on the system, could be either sata or the older ide
D: could be a cd/dvd-drive, might be a partition of the C: drive, might be another hard-drive
E: and so on, same as the comment for D:

So now if someone wants you to look at their machines and is convinced they have 3 hard-drives you might find something like this

A: no drive
B: no drive
C: some old slow ide drive with their OS on it
D: a cd-drive
E: another partition on their old, slow and small ide drive
F: dvd-drive
G: super-fast & very large sata drive which Windows doesn't like talking too because its not C:

With linux on the same machine the history of how the machine itself was put together is a lot less relevant and the back-ground is almost entirely irrelevant. For Ubuntu, Mandriva, openSUSE, Fedora and most others you would find something like

sda1 = an old Windows partition with Windows OS on it, the ide drive
sda2 = a slightly less old Windows partition for data, the ide drive

sdb1 = a new Windows partition for data, the sata drive

dvd = the cd-drive
dvd2 = the dvd drive

Anyway, none of that is really helpful or relevant and it is a very brief overview just skimming the surface.
Regards from
Tom :)

Hi Bill :)

I have become a little confused again. You talk about 1Tb drive but last i saw you had 2 500Gb drives. Please could you do

sudo fdisk -l

again so we can have a look? It is very possible that the 2 drives are combined in some way, probably by raiding but it is unusual for that to be done properly in a way that linux recognises. Usually the are strung together in the bios in a software raid which manufacturers boast as being "Raided drives" when they really are a cheap imitation built to fool Windows people into spending more cash on them. Linux typically treats them as the separate drives they really are.

Anyway "sudo fdisk -l" will clarify that a little. Also when you are in linux and open up your "Documents" folder or something do you havea status-bar at the bottom that shows how much free-space you have left? If so please let us know what it says.

Thanks and regards from
Tom :)

Hi Tom! :-)

I'm sorry, I left out recent developments. Yes, I had 2 500 g Drives. But when I bought the new DVD drive I knew one of the 500 g drives was failing, so I replaced it with the new 1 TB Drive. Therefore, I now have a 1 TB and a 500 g also a 500 g External Drive. And two DVD drives, no floppy's. :-)

Thanks for explaining the difference between sda and hda. I installed my new Hard Drive and DVD and noticed the ribbon going to the DVD and the small red thin plug going to the two Sata Drives.

When I decided to install Ubuntu 8.04 because 9.10 wasn't working. I decided to test out the fast new 1 tb Drive. That was when I should have made the two partitions, but not wanting to install a third time I just checked use entire disk. Now I am trying to change things after the fact.

Anyway, I am going to be out of town until Monday, but here is the info you requested: First, at the bottom of the browser is:
20 items Free Space 851.2 GB.
and fdisk:

Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000ca059

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 120472 967691308+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 120473 121601 9068692+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 120473 121601 9068661 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0688a667

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 60801 488384001 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdg: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x44fdfe06

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdg1 * 1 16121 129491901 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdg2 16319 60801 357309697+ 5 Extended
/dev/sdg5 16319 60801 357309664+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Thank you,

Bill

Hi :)

Ahh, that explains it :) Good to hear you have a good amount of data-storage. Sorting it all out "after the fact" is fine, especially when you have so much free-space :) Yep the new dvd-drive is an ide one.

People that are really pedantic will point out that sata is a new style of ide just as DDR ram is a new style of Sd-ram but to make them easier to talk about i tend to ignore that level of precision.

Please get in touch when you return so that we can work at shifting things around sensibly then. Have fun this weekend!

Regards from
Tom :)

Hi again :)

Generally it is better to have 1 large partition on a drive rather than break it up into partitions. Imagine the dismay at using 1 partition for "tele series" just to find that the last episode of season 7 of "Voyager" (or something) just wont quite fit into the partition but that the other partition on the drive is almost entirely empty!

Also it is better to try to put the separate parts of the system on different drives to reduce the amount that the read/write heads have to skip over the surface, bouncing between data, OS + programs & swap all on the same drive can get tiresome. Ideally the OS + programs would be on a small, extremely fast drive although if it's on an SSD then you would want it's log-files to be on a different drive yet again. However for normal sata & ide drives we don't have to worry about that.

I think the easiest way to get the best performance from your machine might be to put a swap space onto sdb by resizing that single partition down by say 5Gb just to make sure it has more than enough space.

Then reduce the size of the linux partition on the 1 Tb drive right down to say 25Gb, again far more than is required. That would be a good time to remove the swap from the end of the 1Tb drive as you will have better swap elsewhere at that point.

The rest of the 1Tb drive can be a primary ntfs partition which we can then setup to be your /home. This would allow your data & settings to be kept safe and would also allow Windows to read/write the same data.

Once all that is done then the 25Gb space at the front of the drive could be split into 2 partitions which would allow you to have 2 installs of Ubuntu on the same drive so that you could really experiment with 1 of them while keeping the other 1 safe and easily usable. Hopefully with the experimental "sandbox" area you could experiment with other versions of linux too, such as Mandriva and others just to help you grok linux faster. Anyway, more of that perhaps by Wednesday.

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Hi Tom,

Busy week after getting back from the beach.

Well, I tried Gparted from a Live CD and resized
the 1 TB down to 600 GiB just to see if I could.

It worked! :-)

I'm confused after reading your "then we could do this and this and this and this..."

First I thought you said it was not good to have many partitions on one drive
and second, if I change my swap to the sdb 2nd hard drive of 500 gigs
which has windows on it, will Linux just search and find the swap over there?
Third, why NTFS for the /home stuff and where would that be, also on the
Windows Hard drive? And fourth, why would I want windows to have access
to the Home directory? I plan on giving windows the boot as soon as I find
adequate replacement software for linux.

Just many questions. :-)

Bill

Hi :)

Yes, 1 big main partition for data but a few tiny partitions for certain other things, such as for swap and for the main part of the OS.

I thought it might be worth keeping Windows on your system and i thought you planned to keep using it quite a lot at first. If you are not bothered about Windows not being able to access your data then it would be better to keep your data on a better format than ntfs. Almost anything is better but ext3 might be ideal.

Having the swap on a different physical drive than the / means that the read/write heads of the drives don't need to keep bouncing around the surface looking for the right position. This improves performance and reduces wear&tear on the drives, assuming your machine ever uses swap. I guess nowadays a bigger issue might be having the data on a separate drive although real read/writes to data tend to get queued up (cached) anyway.

I haven't read through my previous answers yet to see what plans i had back then lol
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

All right, so if I understand:

I should format a partition on 2nd HDD as ext3 and them move Home directory and everything in that directory to that 2nd HDD.

I should also move the swap drive over there, and what format?

I should then reduce what is left (kernel) and OS down to 25 g"s on the 1st HDD.

Is that right?

What do I do with all the left over unpartitioned space?

Or am I all confused?

Thanks,

Bill

Hi :)

Yes, you are understandably confused.

/home = your data&settings. This should be on the largest drive and should be 1 huge partition

/ = the programs & main part of the OS (including kernel). Ideally this should be on a different drive from the /home but it should be on the fastest drive. It only needs to be just over 4Gb although i would give it a bit more room, although 8-10Gb might be a bit excessive for it. Still at least then i would be completely confident about it.

swap = virtual memory = space for ram to use when/if it gets over-full. Since swap is on a hard-drive it is far far slower than Ram so it only gets used for stuff the machine thinks you wont need in a hurry. The swap should be on a different drive from the / but can be on the same drive as the /home. However, this assumes swap gets used a lot. In any machine with 1Gb Ram or over swap will not be needed much. If you have 2Gb Ram then you don't really need to think about swap at all.

Hibernate/sleep/suspend mode does use swap and copies the entire contents of Ram onto the swap space so you still kinda need a swap and it has to be at least the same size as Ram, preferably a tiny bit larger. If this is the only reason you have swap then it could be on the slowest oldest drive you have. Even people that don't want to use sleep/suspend/hibernate mode (such as me) sometimes have a swap purely "just in case".

So you can see that we have to accept that life doesn't work out perfectly and we have to make some compromise. The chances are that a new hard-drive will be the fastest drive and therefore should have your / on it. It is also likely to be your largest hard-drive and therefore should have your /home on it. Swap is probably irrelevant.

So, on my main machine i ended up putting the / and the /home on the same drive because it is soo much faster and almost double the size of the 'old' drive. On my older machine i put them on separate drives because both it's drives are approximately the same speed as each other.

You have to make a choice and whichever way you go is good. Having made the choice you are not stuck with it but its not something you want to keep messing with every few minutes.

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Ah, now I see. ;-)

Thank you for everything Tom, you have been a very large help
and I am grateful. I hope you have a nice and full life, and may
every good and perfect gift come to you.

Fair well.

Bill

Hi :)

Have you been able to test the new Ubuntu 10.04 before it gets officially released?
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/testing/lucid/beta1
Trying it as a LiveCd or as an extra dual/multi-boot would be ideal. Developers and everyone are keen to try to iron out any problems before 10.04 gets officially released so you might find faster & more effective answers to your bug reports which would make 10.04 work better on your system for you

Thanks and regards from
Tom :)

Howdy,

Yep, tested 10.04 as soon as it came out.
Used a Live CD and as soon as I inserted another CD
in the 2nd DVD drive, 2 minutes and volia - Frozen Solid!

So I have established it occurs with 9.04, 9.10, 10.04 and Fedora 12, and the latest Mint.

But 8.04 is good and 8.10 is good. It is a kernel problem.

Thanks,

Bill

Hi :)

I have linked both the bug-reports to this thread now :)

I was wondering if you have found out how to install an old kernel into a newer release of Ubuntu. It's got to be possible surely but i wouldn't have a clue how to even start looking for a guide about that. Perhaps it's just a kernel module? Perhaps it might be worth posting a question about how to install an older kernel ...
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/yelp/+addquestion

Another thing that might be worth trying is a much simpler and lighter-weight distro such as Wolvix
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=wolvix
Wolvix is Slackware based and therefore enjoys a much more pure linux experience as they avoid the need for tweaking packages or anything. Debian & RedHat family tweak pretty much everything so it would be interesting to see if Wolvix or another Slackware distro also suffers from this problem.

Don't worry if you don't even have time to check the Wolvix LiveCd but it could really help identify the source of the problem. I'm not sure what kernel the latest Wolvix uses on its LiveCd

Anyway, good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Don't think I haven't thought of the old kernel idea - I have. But I just completed compiling my first kernel ever and
that's as far as I've progressed. If no one fixes the kernel, I'll eventually have to track down where the module is and
try to put in an old module. That's past the scope of my learning, but i usually do what I have to do.

Steve has helped me to report this bug here:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/543883

So I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Thanks Tom,

Bill

Hi :)

Congrats on compiling your own kernel. I had a feeling i wouldn't understand your reply but it sounds good. I just wish it were easier and "just worked". This sounds like the sort of problem the 64bit version of Ubuntu runs into sometimes but i have never heard of stuff like this on 32bit. It seems to be affecting a lot of people and could pose a serious problem for linux in about 6months time.

Anyway, good luck and regards from
Tom :)

By the way, all versions work on my laptop,
it's an issue with light scribe technology I guess,
but I need that for my business.

Thanks for everything Tom.

Bill

> Your question #100270 on yelp in ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/yelp/+question/100270
>
> Status: Open => Answered
>
> Tom proposed the following answer:
> Hi :)
>
> Congrats on compiling your own kernel. I had a feeling i wouldn't
> understand your reply but it sounds good. I just wish it were easier and
> "just worked". This sounds like the sort of problem the 64bit version of
> Ubuntu runs into sometimes but i have never heard of stuff like this on
> 32bit. It seems to be affecting a lot of people and could pose a serious
> problem for linux in about 6months time.
>
> Anyway, good luck and regards from
> Tom :)
>
>

You're welcome.
Good luck chap :)

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