Baru je install Linux Mint 11 on this old PC that was running XP professional. I decided on a dual mode mode at the moment since I am still new to Linux and that XP license is paid for. However, I love it so far so I’ve enlarged the initial partition of 5GB I set aside for the linux TWICE! Haha It is now in the primary partition of my 80GB hard drive. To get there was a total HEADACHE. My initial partitions as 40GB NTFS (Windows primary), 34.5GB NTFS (Windows share folder), 5GB ext4 (Linux primary) and 512MB linux-swap (Something like windows pagefile). I then increased my Linux partition by reducing 5GB from share with the intention of pinching 5GB from the Windows primary later on. But I loved it so MUCH and I ran out of diskspace so fast that I decided to lock away windows to this new partition: 30GB NTFS windows primary, 10GB NTFS share, 512MB linux-swap and 39.5GB ext5 Linux primary. Though it seems I forgot to add the swap partition last night. OMG! haha oh well.. still abit of work to do then.
So what was the headache? When I repartition my drives, I couldn’t boot up Linux. It didn’t go to the usual multi boot menu. Thankfully, I could load Windows, so after quite a bit of searching and reading and trying, I found out that somehow my boot manager was displaced by the repartitioning. Okay so I tried to run GRUB having no idea what that is.. then I though partition software and disk rescue software would help but before that I installed 2 smaller distro’s (bandwidth issue) but they didn’t have any useful software in the installation and the distro was different enough from Mint that I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t even get on the internet. One was even command line I think. The distro’s was Damn Small Linux (DSL) and Slax.
So between the waiting for the various software to download (the Internet was agonisingly slow yesterday) and the fixes not working and having to log back on to Windows all the time (loading time ARGH!) and the constant restarting. I managed to get things right by downloading the almost same software I have. I at first downloaded the 1GB Linux Mint 12 but it wouldn’t work. Turns out that my flash drive was too small at 1GB also. Oh by the way, Linux installations are now how do I say it? They at first run from the disk? USB or CD or whatever, so nothing is written but you can pretty much use everything, the Internet and all. So then I found a 4GB USB stick but I started downloading Mint 10 just in case. Or was that after? Anyhow, even on 4GB stick. The OS loaded and all but it was SLOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWW seriously, it practically hanged! Turns out the OS is actually heavy coz I ended up installing it for real since I couldn’t solve the problem on my own, I thought the installation would load the multi boot manager for me. IT worked! like a charmed except that when I deleted the new supposedly temporary partition for MINT12, I ended up deleting the Multi Boot Manager (MBR) again. I was back to square 1. I then determined to learn more. I knew it had to do something with the multi boot manager but all my attempts at redirecting GRUB to the new drive(partition) was thwarted. 😦 So I went back to the classroom in this case, google 🙂 and looked for detailed instructions.. HAHA apparently you have to mount the partition of the linux installation FIRST. And then have it install GRUB to that location which is at the beginning of the partition. All I actually needed to do was the following
- download and install PLOP to a CD since my BIOS can’t boot from USB
- download and Run Linux Mint 10 (should have been 11) Live CD from the USB
- download GRUB through the terminal usingthe code: SUDO APT-GET INSTALL GRUB. It then says a lot of crap which I didn’t understand then but I answered yes when asked to proceed anyhow. Later I found out that it tells you what packages are not necessary anymore or something like that and I can get it removed by using : SUDO APT-GET AUTOREMO, which didn’t work due to permissions or something. I didn’t bother.
- find out about your partition locations and what it was called with : SUDO FDISK -L (I thought it was an 1 but it turns out to be small case L) mine told me the partition was in sda6, at first I thought it was sdb2 but apparently I didnt scroll up, sdb2 was the CDROM 🙂 hehe.
- You could mount the partition using: SUDO MOUNT/DEV/SDA6 /MNT, first time round, I didn’t notice the space which makes the next code looked weird but then I realized the /MNT is where to mount and /DEV/SDA6 is the what to mount. Anyway I read some other guides and decided to do as below
- Make a directory first with : SUDO MKDIR /MEDIA/SDA6
- Then : SUDO MOUNT /DEV/SDA6 /MEDIA/SDA6, better safe than sorry 🙂
- So apparently now that we are “in” the partition when you install GRUB it will work or something like that. I don’t fully understand yet. So you get this done by : SUDO GRUB-INSTALL –ROOT-DIRECTORY=/MEDIA/SDA6/ /DEV/SDA(no number) I am guessing that it tells GRUB-INSTALL program to install grub in the root directory of whatever device that is mounted at /MEDIA/SDA6 and that the device is a hard disk which is what SDA means. SDB is for CDROMs and DVD and I think the floppy too. I wonder what others are there. SDA at first I thought refers to the first hard disk u have so SDB would be the second, or partition but I wasn’t thinking right.
- Take out the PLOP CD and restart the computer. Voila all is perfect. EXCEPT it load automatically to linux, no menu either. I didn’t it at first only now as I write. But don’t worry I knew the solution beforehand and did it even though I didn’t know why.
- In my comfortable old installation of Linux 11 🙂 which is full of cool gadgets I’ve downloaded and installed, I ran the terminal and coded: SUDO UPDATE-GRUB which I think tells GRUB to update itself. Anyhow all sorts of things happened and it created a menu from all the installations available on my computer. YEAHOO!!!
Next was just deleting the Mint 12 partition and resizing the current partition.
I am quite satisfied. I didn’t get sleep but I managed to solve the problem and gained a better understanding of LINUX
Jom Belajar Programming! 
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