[Redenbacher]

I've been trying to partition the hard drive on my HP mini via USB Flash drive.

The reason being, I would like to dual-boot Ubuntu on my 1035NR. I'm also thinking about trying out openSUSE, just for something different as I've been using Ubuntu for over 2.5 years.

I've tried creating a LiveUSB through Ubuntu 8.10 on my desktop. When I booted up my Mini with that, the install utility would not read that I had windows, and wanted to wipe the whole hard drive and replace it with Ubuntu!

Not an option. What happened to the little slider for resizing the partition that the old ubuntu installer used to have...?

Anyway, I decided I would use a separate partitioner first. Naturally, I chose Gparted. The GParted documentation on creating a liveUSB was a bit difficult to follow, so I used UNetbootin to create a liveUSB from the .iso.

It booted up, but I get the error message "Could not find kernel image: gparted"

So then I used UNetbootin to create a LiveUSB of Partition Magic. Well that would get me to choosing a video code, and then would lock up and not proceed any farther.

I even tried the GParted LiveUSB on my desktop to see if perhaps it was my Mini that was causing the problem, but I received the same error on there. So that lead me to believe it was UNetbootin causing the issue.

I found a HOWTO on ubuntuforums, for making a GParted LiveUSB with Ubuntu, by mounting the LiveCD, copying the files to the USB, and installing syslinux. When I tried to boot that up, I received an error that said there was no bootable partition.

So I'm out of ideas, and I was hoping the community could help. I thank you in advance for any suggestions .

[Redenbacher]

Bump

[DVOM]

I use a Live USB with GPartEd but it's been about a year since I put it together. I believe that this page is the one I used for instructions:

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/liveusb.php

The only other thing I can tell you is that there's one menu with "failsafe" as one of the choices. I have to go with the "failsafe" choice at that point or it won't boot.

[saikee]

I don't understand what was to be achieved by the OP.

The partitioning of a hard disk in any size is no different and so is a USB flash drive. Gparted is called "Partition Editor" inside Ubuntu but it is not always available in every version but a user can always instruct the Package Manager to install it.

The problem appears to resize an existing mini hard disk so any Ubuntu CD should be able to do that and threre is no need to use a USB flash drive just to obtain a bootable Linux with gparted inside. So may be the notebook has no CDrom but that will be a big hurdle to install additional Linux later on.

If the OP has a bootable Ubuntu in a USB just click Partition Editor to read the notebook internal hard disk to resize it. The error seems to be related to installing Ubuntu immediately without first resizing it. Any Ubuntu can be used as a Live CD without doing any installation.

I recommend the existing hard disk backup first if possible, then have it resized and reboot to check everything is in order before installing a Linux on it. Also use the latest Gparted whenever possible because the reliability of the read/write operations of a NTFS is proven only in the last few years.

[Redenbacher]

Thanks for the replies, I appreciate the help

Originally Posted by DVOM

I use a Live USB with GPartEd but it's been about a year since I put it together. I believe that this page is the one I used for instructions:

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/liveusb.php

The only other thing I can tell you is that there's one menu with "failsafe" as one of the choices. I have to go with the "failsafe" choice at that point or it won't boot.

I just used the Live USB Helper that was suggested by the instructions in the link, and got a "Boot Failed" error. I haven't tried Choice 2.

Originally Posted by saikee

I don't understand what was to be achieved by the OP.

I'm trying to install Ubuntu on my HP Mini. I created a LiveUSB using the utility in 8.10 that is running on my desktop PC, and was able to boot up a session using that on the Mini.

The problem I'm running in to is when it gets to installing and partitioning the hard drive, I'm not able to edit the single 60 GB NTFS partition that is currently on there. There is no option to change the partition, other than using the entire 60GB partition for Ubuntu.

So that's when I decided I would use a separate partitioner to set up the HDD, and then install Ubuntu once the partitions were already there, or atleast set up one ext3 partition and use the Ubuntu partitioner to set up a /home and /swap.

It's this external partitioning process that's giving me problems... unless you can tell me how to get the Ubuntu installer to understand the fact that windows is installed and I need to shrink the NTFS partition to make room for ext3.

[DVOM]

saikee, these "mini's" don't have CD ROM's.

Red, you might consider trying the free VMware Player and downloading a free "ready to go" vmware image from here:

http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/cat/45

Just download, unzip, and use it, no installation/partitioning necessary. I've been running virtual appliances for a little over a year now, I've got XP, XP64, Win2K and about 15 flavors of Linux. Most are on an external hard drive from which they work just fine.

[saikee]

As I mentioned in Post #4 you can run Ubuntu as a Live CD. This means you can run it as a Linux operating system totally residing in the Ram and the USB flash drive.

If you click Administration there should be a program called Partition Editor. You can run it without doing any installation. If this program is not there you can click Synaptic Package Manager, search for "gparted" click marked for install and click apply. This will install the Partition Editor.

I believe if you run Partition Editor then it should allow you to resize the existing partitions.

You don't have to run the HD install program of Ubuntu. You can use any of its other functions without doing an install.

If you have a problem resizing the hard disk post here the root terminal output of

fdisk -l

[Redenbacher]

DVOM, VMware's not a bad idea, but I suppose my qualm is avoiding the use of windows enitrely, rather than running Ubuntu inside windows


saikee,
I see what you're saying. Use the Live Session to install Gparted, then use that to edit the partition. I hadn't thought of that! I'll give it a try as soon as I get the chance.

[Redenbacher]

Bad news . I booted up the Live Session, and ran GParted. The partition seems to be locked. It will not allow me to resize the partition. I also ran a terminal to run

sudo gparted

I can however reformat the entire partition, but that is not an option. Reinstalling Windows will not be easy as I was not given any kind of restoration tools that I know of, unless there is a small restoration partition that I'm unaware, but it hasn't shown itself.

Attached are some images of GParted, and as you requested, saikee, the output of fdisk -l

I apologize for the quality, as the only camera I have here is my phone.

[saikee]

In Ubuntu youcan get root privilege in terminal by command

sudo su

Post here the output of

fdisk -l

The output of fdisk -l /dev/sda1 appears to have some spurious errors which could prevent the disk being operated on because the OS does not know what to do with the errosr. The sda1 reports the maximum cylinder number of 7294 being exceeded this is clearly impossible.

You appear to have a doggy partition table. The next step is to repair it and clean out the spurious error. Thereafter you should be able to resize it.

[Redenbacher]

Ah, thank you.

I've also done some more Google research and learned that GParted by default does not modify NTFS partitions and requires a package called ntfsprogs in order to modify/shrink NTFS partitions.

So, I'll do a chkdsk in Windows to look for that error and attempt to fix it, I've already backed up all of my important files to a separate flash just in case.

I'll post my results afterwards

Thanks again!

[saikee]

Redenbacher,

If you provide the output of "fdsik -l" which I have asked repeatedly it will show up the starting and finishing cylinder numbers which should be just for sda1. I got the feeling fdisk will report the spurious errors.

fdisk is the most robust partitioning software as most other tools could abandoned a doggy disk but not fdisk. Thus you can use it to delete the spurious information in the partition table without affecting your sda1.

Gparted uses many packages in execution. It is the one that can reliably resize a NTFS partition.

[Redenbacher]

Ok, attached is the correct command this time. I apologize for ignoring, too much multitasking

I also noticed now that ntfsprogs is in fact (and has been) already installed.


I also found out that I can now resize the partition!
I had windows run a complete chkdsk and repair any errors, I suppose that did the trick?