[CharlesS]

So, I downloaded the latest Ubuntu 9.0.4 distro, in order to install it on a spare partition that's just been sitting there doing nothing. Burned it to a CD, booted from it, started the installer... then freaked out a bit when I saw that the part of the installer that asks you to choose a partition to erase and install onto looks an awful lot like the screen in Apple's Disk Utility to actually partition a drive. Look at the manual options, there did seem to be a way to only format the extra partition, but it was just unclear enough to make me paranoid.

Questions:

1. Can Ubuntu install on a second partition without making me repartition the disk, thus leaving the main partition (and the data on it) alone?

2. Is the ext4 file system compatible with the GUID Partition Table scheme, or would it need to repartition to some other format, similar to how the Intel OS X installer wants to repartition an APM disk?

All my stuff is backed up, but that doesn't mean I want to spend the time restoring it all.

[jeroendiederen]

1. Yes
2. Yes, no need to reformat

Regards, Jeroen
Linux on your Apple Mac | iLinux

[CharlesS]

Are you sure about that? It says "The partition tables of the following devices are going to be changed: SCSI1 (0,0,0) (sda)" on the "Ready to Install" screen. I haven't changed the partition table at all - the partition I want to install this on already exists - all I want to do is format it while leaving the rest of the disk alone.

Also: Does Ubuntu really need a separate partition for swap space? Is there any way to have it just use the boot partition for that, like OS X does?

[besson3c]

CharlesS: whether it needs a separate partition or not is not really important because since Ubuntu is using LVM this would be a logical partition, not a physical one.

If you want to feel more comfortable about what you are doing, I would suggest setting yourself up a VM with two disks presented to it. Put whatever you want on either your primary or secondary partition, whatever applies here, and do a try run of the Ubuntu install to see if it touches your test partition. If this is not a Mac, I would suggest the free VMWare Server.

[besson3c]

Also, it looks like gParted > 0.3.9 supports HFS+ volumes. gParted is very, very cool. You can edit partition maps for any file system with gParted, including resizing, deleting, and enlarging physical partitions. In the future, if you ever want to just kill off a partition like that I would suggest the gParted CD. It has really earned my trust.

[CharlesS]

Ah good, I was hoping you'd show up in this thread.

I went ahead and bit the bullet, and fortunately it formatted only the partition that I wanted it to and left the rest alone, so all's well in that aspect. Unfortunately, I can't get the resulting partition to boot. I did some Googleing round, and people seemed to be saying that I should be able to boot from it if I set the boot loader to go on the partition that I installed Linux on (/dev/sda3 in this case). However, it's not showing up in the boot selector screen as a valid option. Did I do something wrong? Is there a little twiddling around I still need to do to get the Mac boot loader to recognize it as valid? Should I have used the ext3 file system instead of ext4 (ext3 seemed to be the default, but here I was thinking I should use the latest and greatest)? How can I get this thing working? I don't need to get it to be the default startup device, option-key booting is good enough for me. I'd rather not replace the default boot loader if I don't have to.

[CharlesS]

Okay, so it seemed the logical thing to do was to try to bless the partition:

sudo bless --device /dev/disk0s3 --setBoot --legacy

This did seem to get the machine to attempt booting off the partition, but all I'm getting is a blank screen with a blinking white text underline cursor in the upper left hand screen. Also, the Linux partition still isn't showing up in the option-key bootloader.

I was really hoping I wasn't going to have to resort to a third-party bootloader like rEFIt to do this... is there anything left that I'm still missing?

[CharlesS]

Update: So I found out that rEFIt can be burned to a CD and used from there, without having to actually install it on the hard drive. This seemed acceptable to me, so I burned a CD, booted from it, and went into the partition tool to sync the partitions as the Internet seems to say is necessary... and it told me the partitions were already synced, and there was no need to do anything. So I tried choosing the Linux partition to boot off of from the rEFIt boot loader, and it's just been sitting at a grey screen with the penguin logo in the middle for a long time now, and doesn't really seem like it's doing anything.

Argh! What do I have to do to get this thing to work?

edit: could it be the ext4 file system maybe? Perhaps I should format that down to ext3 and try it again?

[besson3c]

I would boot up without the splash image so that you can see what is going on. It sounds like it might be getting stuck mounting the correct partitions due to a messed up fstab. It's hard to say without knowing more though.

[CharlesS]

How exactly do I do that? I know it's Command-V on OS X, but I know very little about Linux.

[besson3c]

CharlesS: these instructions relate to Ubuntu, but they should work in any Linux distro that uses grub as its boot loader:

Quickzi: Get rid of the Ubuntu splash screen during boot

[CharlesS]

Ah... I never did get as far as that splash screen though, so I don't think that will work. All I've managed to get so far was a blank black screen with a blinking white cursor in the upper left (when I tried using sudo bless to set the startup disk) and a blank grey screen with a penguin in the middle, clearly intended to mimic Apple's initial startup screen that it displays before the splash screen comes up (rEFIt).

Is ext4 not a good choice of file systems? Should I try this again with ext3, since it seemed to be the default?

[besson3c]

From this page:

Ext4 Howto - Ext4

Right now there's not a stable version of grub that supports booting a kernel from a ext4 partition. It's recommended that you keep /boot in a ext3 partition.

If grub won't cut it (the Linux boot loader), I doubt rEFit will. Your boot partition definitely has to be ext3, but you could just set aside a few hundred meg for /boot - enough to store the Linux kernel, and install everything else onto an ext4 formatted partition.

Sorry for getting on the wrong track with grub, it is irrelevant here since you are using rEFit.

[CharlesS]

Ah, that explains it. Okay, I'll try it sometime tomorrow with ext3 instead and see how it goes. Thanks.

[CharlesS]

Okay, so I thought I'd take a stab at it tonight, so I put in the Ubuntu CD, rebooted with the Option key down, and... noticed the ext4 hard drive was showing up in the boot selector now?! And it boots too?! And I don't even have rEFIt installed at this point. What the hey? But now it's booting, and working.

Now I have a new question - my Bluetooth keyboard was working great with Ubuntu. However, Ubuntu's software update installed a bunch of updates, including one for Bluetooth, and now it won't pair with my keyboard anymore. It just sits there forever on "Connecting to CharlesS's keyboard now..." and eventually gives up and goes "Failed to connect to CharlesS's keyboard." This seems odd to me since this keyboard was working even when booted from the install CD. Is there any special software I need to go compile and install to get compatibility with Apple's Bluetooth keyboards?

[besson3c]

Glad you got it booting and working, maybe that wiki page I shared with you before is slightly out-of-date, it was just something I found with a Google search, I have no personal experience there.

I also have no personal experience with Bluetooth in Ubuntu, but if it was working before the problem should be correctable. Sometimes updates do break things in Ubuntu, especially when you install proposed updates rather than the recommended ones. Check out your Software Sources control panel to see whether your updates scan both sources. What I usually do is check your log files, particularly /var/log/messages when you pair. Linux systems are generally very good about generating a lot of helpful log data, so you should find some sort of error message or some hint there that you can Google.

I hope this helps!

[CharlesS]

I got the Bluetooth thing figured out, thanks to Google. Apparently you have to go into Synaptic Package Manager and remove everything related to "bluez". This seems to remove Ubuntu's Bluetooth support entirely, causing the keyboard to be picked up by the boot loader's BT keyboard support, or something. It's kind of a lame solution, because now I wouldn't be able to connect it to a BT cell phone, but oh well.

Now to see if I can get it to recognize my external monitor. It's only detecting the internal laptop screen at this point - it might need some driver or something for Mini DisplayPort. Google time...

edit: can't seem to find anything. This might just not be supported in the drivers yet. Oh well.

edit 2: Okay, turns out NVidia has some drivers on their website that are more up to date than the ones in the Synaptic package manager. So I tried to run their install script, and get an error that the X server is running, and that it needs to be stopped. I Google how to do that and find out that the command is "sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop". So I do that, and it does indeed stop the X server - but it doesn't get me a shell prompt. Instead, I get dumped into a console screen where my typing doesn't do anything. So I switch the computer off, boot into Recovery Mode to get a console prompt, and then the install script tells me that it needs to be running in init level 3, and that I can set this by typing "telinit 3". So I do - and it starts the X server. Joseph Heller would love this.

edit 3: Turns out what you need to do is indeed to type "sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop", and then when you get dumped to no-man's land you type control-alt-F1 to get to a login prompt.

[CharlesS]

So I installed the NVidia driver. Now I'm getting this error on boot:

Ubuntu is running in low-graphics mode

The following error was encountered. You may need to update your configuration to solve this.

(EE)NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVIDIA kernel module. Please see the system's kernel log for additional error messages and consult the NVIDIA README for details.
(EE)NVIDIA(0): *** Aborting ***
(EE)Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration.

Well, this is nice...

edit: twiddling around with the graphics settings got me to boot normally again, but NVidia's control panel claims that the NVidia driver is not being used. So I'm going to go reinstall all the NVidia-related packages in Synaptic in the hopes of getting this back the way it was.......

edit 2: Well, that didn't do anything. Even reinstalling the older drivers in Synaptic still results in the NVidia utility claiming that the NVidia drivers aren't running. Great. And sound doesn't seem to be working either. I'm about ready to give up on this.

[besson3c]

I would strongly suggest using the EnvyNG app for installing your NVidia/ATI drivers. It automates all of the NVidia install and config process and works well, generally. Video/NVidia/ATI/Xorg stuff is pretty hairy though, as you are finding out!

[Maflynn]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

So I installed the NVidia driver. Now I'm getting this error on boot:

Ubuntu is running in low-graphics mode

Why not install the restricted drivers from Ubuntu's Hardware drivers app.
system -> Administration -> Hardware Drivers and choose the NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (version 180).

as for gparted and hfs support, I've found as with others, you can only shrink a HFS parition with gparted not grow it.

ext4 is much superior to ext3 and while bugs existed initially for the that filesystem its now a stable option so much so, that the next version of ubuntu will be using ext4 as the default filesystem.


I have ubuntu running on my MBP and the installation/usage of it was quite easy and seemless. I really had little problems The link that I found to be quite helpful was this link help. Ubuntu
Not sure what computer you're trying to install it on but page may be helpful also ubuntu's forums are very helpful as well. I'd recommend reading and viewing them.

[CharlesS]

Too late - I already nuked and paved the partition and reinstalled it - I figured it'd probably be better to have the 64-bit version instead of the 32-bit version anyway (the reason I did the 32-bit version the first time was that I'd already downloaded it for VMWare which as I understand it is better off with 32-bit OSes. And I used ext3 this time, just in case ext4 had been causing some of my problems before.

Before I nuked it, though, I did try reinstalling the 180 drivers from the official installers and it didn't seem to take. Somehow installing the drivers from NVidia's site really hosed things. Eventually the whole OS decided not to start up anymore, which helped prompt my decision to nuke it. Anyway, when I initially did have the 180 drivers installed, they still weren't driving my external monitor, so I'm going to try besson3c's suggestion of EnvyNG and see what happens.

[CharlesS]

Success!!

The NVidia drivers installed by EnvyNG allowed me to activate my external display! Woohoo, I've now got dual-monitor support. And as a bonus, the login screen isn't displaying what I type at like a 72-point font anymore. Thanks, besson3c.

Now, I've just got to get sound working and I'm all set.

[besson3c]

Cool! When you want to make changes to your video, you need to edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf. This is one area where Mac users are spoiled, having a reliable GUI to manage this. Ubuntu has made some strides in defaulting to a failsafe mode, but it's obviously not nearly as nice as OS X yet. At any rate, when you manually install NVidia drivers, the changes made to your xorg.conf are pretty generic, I think. Envy does a better job of modifying this file. Everything else is the same - the driver version is unaltered, Envy just tweaks your xorg.conf for you. I would suggest backing up this file so that you have something to fall back to in case you have problems in the future.

What do you want to drive your sound with? USB speakers? Regular computer speakers? Laptop speakers?

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Too late - I already nuked and paved the partition and reinstalled it - I figured it'd probably be better to have the 64-bit version instead of the 32-bit version anyway (the reason I did the 32-bit version the first time was that I'd already downloaded it for VMWare which as I understand it is better off with 32-bit OSes. And I used ext3 this time, just in case ext4 had been causing some of my problems before.

Before I nuked it, though, I did try reinstalling the 180 drivers from the official installers and it didn't seem to take. Somehow installing the drivers from NVidia's site really hosed things. Eventually the whole OS decided not to start up anymore, which helped prompt my decision to nuke it. Anyway, when I initially did have the 180 drivers installed, they still weren't driving my external monitor, so I'm going to try besson3c's suggestion of EnvyNG and see what happens.

I run a whole swath of 64 bit OSes in VMWare Server, no problems, including even lowly 64 bit Windows XP.

[CharlesS]

Okay, following the directions at Maflynn's link, specifically entering this:

gksudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/options.conf

and then adding this at the end of the file:

options snd_hda_intel model=mbp3

Sound now works with the built-in speakers and with headphones. It doesn't send sound out through DisplayPort, but I wasn't really expecting that.

caused sound to work after a reboot. Unfortunately, it seems like my display settings didn't stick, and I have to set it up after each boot to enable the external monitor. NVidia's settings app has a "Save to X Configuration File" button, but when I click it, I get "Failed to parse existing X config file 'etc/X11/xorg.conf'!", so it looks like I'm going to have to figure out how to edit the stupid config file by hand.

[besson3c]

Or reinstall your driver via Envy. Don't use the "Save to X Configuration File" thing in the NVidia control panel, it is not terribly reliable. Be sure to backup your /etc/X11/xorg.conf when you find settings that work, and stick to those. This save to X button overwrites this file. What changes did you intend to make?

[CharlesS]

Well, my external Dell 2408wfp display was dark by default, and would become active if I turned it on in NVidia's settings app, but that wouldn't stick across reboots.

However, now I've got a new problem: it's back to going "[5.483498] Not responding" on boot again... what the hey? It was working fine a moment ago!

edit: rebooting it again worked... so it seems this thing is slightly sporadic about booting.