Do I really need to recompile ORBit2?

Issue history.

As I have found Valgrind far more useful in debugging than GDB, I looked for a way to reconcile them. The first thing I thought of was that a huge suppression file could resolve the readability issue. Google led me to http://live.gnome.org/Valgrind, which advises recompiling ORBit2 with the --enable-purify option (and only has an Edgy Eft suppression file which seems ineffective).

I'm just wondering if all GTK objects require this library; if not, do I really need to recompile? I'm not just asking because it's an inconvenience; I'd rather not work with the lower levels of my system until I can reinstall Ubuntu, because that kind of activity seems to trigger more system decay.

Thanks!

You should have at least two (two is enough) linux installs on your hard disk if you're programming; that way you can screw around with one and still have one to fall back on (plus, one can be repaired from the other). I say this because you ABSOLUTELY MUST get over your fear of building system essentials from source, albeit this fear is completely justified if you haven't done it much yet, which is why I recommend you have one system to experiment with and another one you don't (or you could alternate, so that once you are satisfied everything is fine, you do the same thing on the other side). I have one system (which I prefer) that is all hacked up and much built from source, and then because I'm writing software that's distributed, I have a stock, straight-off the dvd distribution as well to test things on. This is also good for catching memory segmentation problems, which sometimes do not show up until compiled on a third system! Since I don't have a forth, who knows what slipped by the first three...actually I occasionally hear rumours ;)

Anyway, recompiling orbit should be no big deal. Here's a couple of things to take into account:

• build it first in /usr/local and run make check/test, but don't install it.
• drop out of X and into single user console mode (runlevel 3) since orbit involves internal networking upon which X depends. Then uninstall the orbit binaries you are replacing, that came with your distro. The packager (rpm or apt or whatever) will complain that you can't do that because other stuff needs orbit, but don't worry. In the future, it will also complain when you try to install a package that needs orbit, because you don't have the distro binary package installed, so you have to use some "force" option. But it is important to remove the old one, to ensure that your /usr/local version gets used (and it's much better to keep source built stuff in /usr/local than to try overwriting /usr).
• you are right to worry in so far as orbit may be configured in some particular way on your distro and your new version may be incompatible, however, it is easy to reverse the process; just leave the build directory intact and you can "make uninstall" (if you erase the build dir, you can also untar the source, re "make" and then "make uninstall" which if said source was previously installed, that will remove it). Then you just reinstall the distro packages.
• once the make is done and the distro binaries removed, "make install". VERY IMPORTANT: run "ldconfig". If you have not built any libraries (such as orbit) in /usr/local before, make sure /etc/ld.so.conf (or one of the /etc subdirs referenced by it) contains a reference to /usr/local/lib. Read the ldconfig manpage if you don't know what it does (it is run by your package manager automatically if you install a disto pack, but usually not by source compile installs).
• maybe reboot. I'm not sure if orbit has stuff controlled by init, hopefully that is taken care by the install but you may have to add something to an .rc script. Probably not.

I highly recommend learning to use "mc" or some file browser that works outside of the GUI (I actually prefer it in the GUI too), altho with most source builds you don't need to exit it. That's a lot to swallow, but again, you ABSOLUTELY MUST be competant with all this if you want to program for linux. There is no way around it. Leave your gtk project aside for a while and get dirty. I'll probably be here most of the afternoon if you need/want more advice from a kook, but like I said, I'm sure recompiling orbit is no big deal and should be painless.

Another great way to learn and get comfortable is to try "Linux From Scratch"; building bootable floppies was great too but harder now and most computers don't even have a 3.5"

ps. the absolute worst thing I have ever done was destroy the GNU C library itself, which left the system totally scrapped, but it was still easy to salvage data from the filesystem -- providing you have another linux system from which to do that.

I don't currently have any writable CDs available or I would have already reinstalled Ubuntu to reverse the decay I mentioned. Should I use the Ubuntu 7.10 CD I still have from my first install?

I'll ask a lot more questions once I have that second Linux installed.

EDIT: And the reconciliation I mention in the first post is between GTK+ and Valgrind... I obviously didn't proofread enough.

You might as well use the same disto twice if that's what you have at hand and are comfortable with, I guess. There is always something to glean by contrasting two similar but different things (eg, programming languagues), the question is how much difference you are willing to deal with. Just make sure you can boot into both of them, and mount one from the other. Eventually you may want to look at chroot, which will allow you to mount the other filesystem and run commands inside that from it's own tree.

I forgot to mention before that you can easily pthread gtk's main loop (ie., "gtk_init" does not actually have to be in main(). I say "easily" because that is the only thing I have used pthreads for and it required about four lines of code, eg.

Code:

---

in main:
        pthread_t gtk;
        if (pthread_create(&gtk,NULL,gtkloop,(void*)titles[0])) puts("ERROR");
        pthread_detach(gtk);

then somewhere:

void *gtkloop (void *title) {
        GtkWidget *window, *frame[2], *vbox[2], *hbox[1], *info, *slide[4], *speed, *follow;
        printf("gtkloop()...\n");
       
        gtk_init(NULL,NULL);

        window=gtk_window_new(GTK_WINDOW_TOPLEVEL);
...etc.

---

which might be a possibility if you want a CLI that uses an extiguishable gtk process, and you have already used pthreads. In truth tho, I have not done this much, so there may be complications I have yet to face.

I was also just glancing back at your last thread. Admittedly, it is not clear to me what you're doing and I'm only posing as a guru, but

Code:

---

if(o != (struct outline *)NULL)
                o->free(o);

---

You do realize that you don't need to free things at the very end of a program, right? The OS cleans up everything when the execution is finished (free is for preventing leaks while the program is still running).

OK, just to make sure... I don't need to back up my data before mounting a second Linux, right? I have a lot of stuff on here and, without writable CDs, nowhere to put it except maybe the Internet. (When I tried to dual-boot Ubuntu and Windows, Windows died and I lost everything. I don't want that to happen again.)

I don't think I've ever heard of pthreading... But isn't gtk_init supposed to receive the arguments passed to main?

Yeah, I know I don't technically need to free the outline. I won't keep that there forever, but it was a quick-fix to get Valgrind to shut up about it, and easier than writing a suppression. But I really do need to write a suppression for it instead, as well as for the only remaining non-GTK leak report (a similar issue).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jesdisciple

OK, just to make sure... I don't need to back up my data before mounting a second Linux, right?

---

If you've got it all installed now, you can boot one without affecting the other. To mount the other one, create a mount point and use something like "mount -v -t ext3 /dev/hda1 /mnt/other". You can now access the other filesystem through the mount point (you can add a line to /etc/fstab too*). I guess a good idea at that point would be to copy all your crucial stuff into the new partition. Again, don't worry too much, there is no risk of filesystem corruption in all this, the risk is that one system won't run properly after you tinker with it, so you just want to make sure:

1. at least one system can be booted in good working order
2. you know how to mount and access the other filesystem (easy)

I've never used Ubuntu but apparently it uses grub, so it should have modified your menu.lst properly. If not, you might end up only having one boot option, which is just a hassle you can fix (unless you were REALLY dumb and installed fresh onto the old partition). Sometimes the disk partition tool on the install CD's can get confusing because of Logical Volume Management, which most people don't need on their home desktop but get subject to anyway.

If worst comes to worst and nothing boots, don't panic and figure you have to reinstall and cannot save anything! There are options even then...the Ubuntu bootable CD almost certainly has a rescue mode where you can get a command line and use bash + things like mkdir and mount (you can mount a non-functional windows partition under linux, b.t.w, which it is a shame you didn't know that before, you probably could not have repaired it**, but you could have gotten your stuff off).

ps. get yourself a cheap 1-2 gig USB key and format it ext2 for backing up important stuff independent of the box! I think they are about $5 now.

*in which case use "noauto" to prevent Ubuntu from always mounting the other partition.
**it was not actually damaged, to be sure, it's just you overwrote the boot sector; grub sometimes needs help w/ windows

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jesdisciple

But isn't gtk_init supposed to receive the arguments passed to main?

---

It doesn't have to:

Code:

---

gtk_init(NULL,NULL);

---

also, you can pass them around:

Code:

---


#include <stdio.h>

void func (int argc, char **argv) {
        int i;
        for (i=0; i<argc; i++) {
                printf("%s\n",argv[i]);
        }
}


int main (int argc, char *argv[]) {
        func(argc, argv);
        return 0;
}

---

Well, I tried booting on the Live CD but Grub didn't give a 7.10 option. If I didn't go to Grub, it just booted normally. The last time, it did a "routine check of drives" but nothing unusual happened afterward. I'm looking at the data on the CD, and wondering if maybe it only works one time? That would be strange, but I don't understand what's going on otherwise.

I'm at least glad you're back! I was fearing the worst!

Like I said, I haven't used Ubuntu, so I can't say for sure that the live CD has a rescue mode -- you shouldn't need it anyway, it's a last resort.

So, does this mean that you did another install, or no?

No, I couldn't find any way to install... I've asked about it here.

Hmmm...no, the grub on your hard drive will not boot the CD (??hard to tell what you mean). You need to boot directly from the CD, which means switching the boot device in your BIOS -- I presume you know that.

If you are booting the CD, and you say it checked the drives and then "nothing unusual happened", where are you then?

Lemme just make sure we're on the same page: is there room on your hard drive for another partition?

Cancel that! I was entering the wrong setup program... I needed to push F2 for BIOS a little before I was pushing Esc for GRUB.

Alright, I chose manual partitioning, and I think my existing partition needs to be smaller: 19.1 GB (17900 MB) used, 51.4 GB (59047 MB) free. Interestingly, those figures seem incorrect if 1 GB = 1024 MB...

Anyway, I don't see how I can make a new partition... EDIT: Oh, I was in the installer not the partition editor.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jesdisciple

Anyway, I don't see how I can make a new partition...

---

The way I do it, to avoid idiosyncrasies in the CD installer software, is to use fdisk from within your existing installation. fdisk is CLI and fairly straightforward; you start it

Code:

---

fdisk /dev/hda

---

notice this is not "hda1", it's the whole physical disk. Press "m" to see the options menu and relax, you can create a whole "partition table" but fdisk won't commit anything until you choose "w" and confirm. The first thing you want to do is look at what already is ("p"). Then you create (again, it's not commited) "n"; you want a primary partition, presumably number 2 if there is 1 already*, altho you probably have a swap too so maybe 3 (you should have already seen everything with the first "p"). You pick the default first cylinder (just hit enter), then decide how big it should be (eg, "+20G"). Then you can look at the new proposed table with "p" (for print table to console). Probably the new partition will automatically be type 83 (Linux); if not use "t" to change the appropriate partition type. After that, you can just hit "w" to commit and exit or "q" to cop out.

DO NOT RESIZE OR MODIFY THE LISTING FOR YOUR EXISTING PARTITION!!!

You don't need to format anything any further, that will get done by the install. Now just use the boot CD again, and it will give you a choice of partitions to install into. If it ends up being not big enough or something, you can go back and delete and recreate with fdisk again; as long as there is nothing on the new partition you care about, obviously, since deleting/resizing/creating a partition is guaranteed to destroy the filesystem ON THAT PARTITION ONLY.


*hey! the windows partition you thought you lost might still be there...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MK27

The way I do it, to avoid idiosyncrasies in the CD installer software, is to use fdisk from within your existing installation. fdisk is CLI and fairly straightforward; you start it

Code:

---

fdisk /dev/hda

---

---

I tried that and it said it couldn't open it; then I noticed that GParted had opened /dev/sda but that got the same result. But I was still on the Live CD and realized you wanted me back in the old install. It failed there too until I used sudo.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MK27

DO NOT RESIZE OR MODIFY THE LISTING FOR YOUR EXISTING PARTITION!!!

---

I read a similar message at Ubuntu's how-to, but I didn't think I had room for anything more. And I got my suspicions confirmed by fdisk...

Code:

---

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xf404143b

  Device Boot      Start        End      Blocks  Id  System
/dev/sda1  *          1        9355    75144006  83  Linux
/dev/sda2            9356        9729    3004155    5  Extended
/dev/sda5            9356        9729    3004123+  82  Linux swap / Solaris

Command (m for help): n
Command action
  l  logical (5 or over)
  p  primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4): 4
No free sectors available

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MK27

*hey! the windows partition you thought you lost might still be there...

---

Nah... I think I resized it and that's where the problem came from, but either way I overwrote the whole drive with the current install.

Maybe time for a new hard drive! You could fit two installs on there (I dunno how much Ubuntu wants, probably at least 20-30 G), but that means resizing, and I can't give you any advice on that one. Or saving your critical stuff and reformatting the whole thing. In any case nothing you can do right now.

w/r/t ORBit, you can still try what I first advised anyway. The problem will be that working in console mode can be awkward if you are dependent on the GUI, so before you try it make sure you are comfortable with the command-line tools you need to use -- especially the package installer, which I think for Ubuntu is probably "apt". As long as you can uninstall and install the ORBit package that's on that CD in console mode, it's all good. That means mounting the CD with mount, finding the package with cd and ls, and then using apt. Like I said initially, you really have no choice -- sooner or later you will have to get comfortable with it. Really, the truth is that if this is a recommendation from GNOME, you are unlikely to break GNOME by doing it (but never say never!).

And, finally, I gotta say, In My Personal Opinion, you don't need to be sweating it out with valgrind and gdb so much, esp. with the gtk. There are no serious problems that you can't solve yourself** with a few well placed "printf's", and your awareness of memory issues etc. will develop as you gain experience programming. As long as you are aware of the issues, don't get excessive with the perfectionism. A bad program is just a bad program; it won't hurt you, your computer, your system, or cause the shuttle to crash. Sometimes you can leap as you look, fly by the seat of your pants, etc, see?

I'd been using linux for years before I started taking programming seriously*. That's a lot to tackle all at once, but do be sure to keep putting some time in getting to understand the OS on a raw level (like get some harddrive space to safely screw around in). Back your stuff up and don't be afraid to fail or else the Operating System will just become more and more of an "untouchable" to you. Which if you are programming a computer, that's gonna be real sad. Hack!

*I'm sure it was easier back then too, because in the "early days" linux was much much less user-friendly, meaning you really had to learn tish because there were no simple interfaces. Just booting straight into the GUI is actually a development (I still prefer not to). Sink or swim!
**and there's plenty that neither valgrind nor gdb will help with anyway

Well, completing this thread won't do much good right now so I've bookmarked it. When I come back, if I have problems should I respond to this thread or make a new one?

Thanks!!!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jesdisciple

Well, completing this thread won't do much good right now so I've bookmarked it. When I come back, if I have problems should I respond to this thread or make a new one?

---

It probably doesn't matter, new posts go to the top of the list anyway.

Quote:

---

Thanks!!!

---

Hey, if I could save someone the hours I spent (etc) then great. Must be your name, hahaha....also I am easily distracted from my current thriller, "Essential Linux Device Drivers". All C, ya know -- take care

MK27

Update: I have the data transfers all planned out; now I just need to go over the partitioning.

I'm going to use a business computer to download and burn the Live CD, as I don't have a burner. I tried to burn it today but was too late, so I must wait 'til Monday. Then I'll upload my 4.4 GB backup tar to filedropper.com under their 5 GB file-limit trial. If you have any suggestions for this process, I'm all eyes.

Now for my questions... Can both installations use the same /home partition? Is that a good idea? Also, I think I remember reading that Windows XP must be installed first for dual-booting; do you know whether that's true? Finally, how big should each partition be?

This is unlikely, but I might as well ask... Could I also use the same (or even a third) /home partition for XP? Is there any filesystem which is compatible with both OSes? Would XP even operate on 2 partitions simultaneously?

Thanks.

(bump)

Uploading 4.4GB? How fast is your internet connection? (upload)

That will take quite a while.... and a good 8GB flash drive costs about $20 now if you look hard enough.

They can use the same /home, but I don't think it's a good idea and don't recommend it. Programs also store their settings to /home, and if you have different versions of programs on your two installations for example... things can go bad. Also, that means you can screw up one installation from the other easily (as far as the user is concerned).

Installing Windows before Linux is recommended but not necessary. It just makes your life easier. The problem with installing Windows after Linux is that it will overwrite your GRUB (boot manager), making your Linux unbootable. That can be easily fixed by the Ubuntu Live-CD however. The Linux installer will add Windows as an option to GRUB if it detects an existing Windows installation.

Windows only knows FAT and NTFS. Both are supported by Linux (NTFS by the NTFS-3G driver), but I don't recommend using them for your /home partition, since they don't support more advanced UNIX filesystem features Linux programs may expect (UNIX ACL, symbolic links, etc). Using NTFS for a shared data partition should be fine.

As for the size of partitions, a clean XP installation takes 1.4GB on a fresh install, and if you try hard enough, you can get it down to about 700MB. And presumably you will need some space for your programs, too.

Ubuntu 9.04's default installation takes 2.1GB, but it can grow quickly if, like me, you enjoy apt-getting like there's no tomorrow... (I do have a 750GB harddrive, though).

Windows can operate on... 26 partitions I am assuming :D (Anyone know what will happen if it runs out of letters?). Windows won't recognize your ext3/ext4/reiserfs/XFS/JFS/... partitions, however (they just won't show up in explorer).

There is also a ext3 driver for Windows, but I don't think it's nearly as mature as NTFS-3G. That said, ext4 is amazing... my new Ubuntu 9.04 with ext4 takes less than 20 seconds to boot to login screen on my laptop. I don't think there's a ext4 driver for Windows, though. And if you enabled the goodies in ext4 (extents), it won't be backward compatible to ext3. Even Linux only got ext4 support (non-experimental) recently.

I'd concur with everything cyberfish just said.

Do you really need to back up 4.4 gigs?? Of what -- is that your entire drive? That's a bad way to backup info, because it probably means you actually don't bother to do it at all most of the time.

You don't need to back up anything that is part of the distribution. All you need to back up is the stuff in your home directory, and possibly configuration files from (eg) /etc if you've done some work there (keep track of files that you think fall into this category!). I have a 500G drive, and not counting about 30G of mp3's, all my "essentials" can fit on a cdrom (10 times).

No, the 4.4 gigs is just the home directory, with my profile and a 'sandbox' profile... that I didn't use much and which takes about 0.8 gigs. I can only find one connection speed, which is 100 Mb. So the upload should take a little over 10 minutes, if that's the upload speed.

And no, I don't have a habit of backing anything up... As I don't have a burner, it would have to be online, so do you have any site recommendations?

Here's how I've tentatively divided the memory... Any further suggestions?

80 GB hard drive
swap (ext4?): 0.25 GB
Ubuntu 1 (ext4): 26.5777 GB
Ubuntu 2 (ext4): 26.5777 GB
Windows XP (NTFS): 25.8776 GB
shared data (NTFS): 0.717 GB

Thanks!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jesdisciple

And no, I don't have a habit of backing anything up... As I don't have a burner, it would have to be online, so do you have any site recommendations?

---

Sure, but you have a usb port, and I would bet 99% of people here use usb keys. Two blocks away at a small hardware and department store they are like $15 for 4 gigs. Backing up to a key is as easy as it gets.

As for websites -- use gmail or something and send it to yourself (the storage limit at gmail is 5G).

re: formatting your harddrive -- i stopped using a swap space with linux a while ago; with a couple of megs of RAM or more it NEVER gets used anyway. Just to let you know, it's not essential, and will probably just end up as a wasted partition entry.

ps. IMPORTANT -- do a little timed upload of say 10 megs to check your upload rate, you are probably in for an unpleasant surprise.

I guess I'll extend the CD burning trip to look for a key at Wally World, maybe Radio Shack. (My town doesn't have much tech industry.) I don't usually think of keys as permanent storage, though...

I just remembered that I'm supposed to have 2 home partitions. I guess 10 GB would be a good size for those?

Should the upload benchmark be run against the stopwatch on my wrist, or do you recommend a program? (I hope it doesn't depend on one of my decaying modules.)

80 GB hard drive
home 1 (ext4): 10 GB
home 2 (ext4): 10 GB
Ubuntu 1 (ext4): 20.1 GB
Ubuntu 2 (ext4): 20.1 GB
Windows XP (NTFS): 19.4 GB
shared data (NTFS): 0.4 GB

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jesdisciple

I just remembered that I'm supposed to have 2 home partitions. I guess 10 GB would be a good size for those?

Should the upload benchmark be run against the stopwatch on my wrist, or do you recommend a program? (I hope it doesn't depend on one of my decaying modules.)

---

1) the /home directory does not need to be a separate partition and should not be unless you have a specific reason for it -- that's just a hassle and will probably mean more wasted space.

2) Use the arc of the sun ;) Just thought it worth mentioning; I have 10mb/sec (ie, pretty much everything is instantaneous), but the upload is usually more like 1mb/minute.

I have about 500kb/s down and ~50kb/s up. 1:10 is about the usual ratio.

Quote:

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I can only find one connection speed, which is 100 Mb.

---

That is the speed of your LAN. Your uplink is probably WAY less than that. Even if it's 100 Mb/s, the b here is bits, not bytes. To get it in the usual MBytes/s, you'll have to divide it by 8.

Unless you are paying a few hundred dollars / month for your connection... your uplink should be more like 50kbytes/s.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cyberfish

That is the speed of your LAN.

---

...? What exactly does that measure, then? This is the only computer in the network, and I would think "Connection Information" on the connection icon which indicates Internet connectedness would be for the Internet.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by cyberfish

Even if it's 100 Mb/s, the b here is bits, not bytes. To get it in the usual MBytes/s, you'll have to divide it by 8.

---

And I did so, after looking it up on Wikipedia.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MK27

1) the /home directory does not need to be a separate partition and should not be unless you have a specific reason for it -- that's just a hassle and will probably mean more wasted space.

---

From what I've read at the Ubuntu Forums, that's the conventional Ubuntu solution for not backing the entire /home directory up every time an upgrade/reinstall is required.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MK27

2) Use the arc of the sun ;)

---

:) I asked just because the stopwatch requires me to watch the upload, while a program which both performs and times it would be more accurate.

Well, the burning didn't work today. The computer at the first business I tried didn't see my CD-RW in the drive; the next one was restarted before the download completed. I wish I had known about the trouble with RWs before buying them...

As for the benchmark, I tried to find a 10MB directory and failed. The closest I found was 10.9, which compressed to 6.4. I uploaded the archive for 2m 54s.

2:54 = 174s
(6.4 * 8) / 174 = 0.294252874
So the uplink is about 0.3 Mb/s.

Quote:

---

...? What exactly does that measure, then? This is the only computer in the network, and I would think "Connection Information" on the connection icon which indicates Internet connectedness would be for the Internet.

---

That's the speed of your ethernet. It's 100 Mbit/s everywhere (newer ones are 1000Mbit/s). It's how much your ethernet card can handle. Your computer doesn't know anything about your internet connection.

Quote:

---

From what I've read at the Ubuntu Forums, that's the conventional Ubuntu solution for not backing the entire /home directory up every time an upgrade/reinstall is required.

---

Yes, but that's for people who have slightly larger harddrives :).

Quote:

---

As for the benchmark, I tried to find a 10MB directory and failed. The closest I found was 10.9, which compressed to 6.4. I uploaded the archive for 2m 54s.

2:54 = 174s
(6.4 * 8) / 174 = 0.294252874
So the uplink is about 0.3 Mb/s.

---

That sounds about right (37.5kbytes/s). As you can see, it will take quite a while to upload 4GB.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cyberfish

Yes, but that's for people who have slightly larger harddrives :).

---

Do you really think I would ever fill this thing, or even 20 GB of it, up? I know I have almost 5 as it is, but I don't install new programs very often and the data I directly generated needs to be cleaned up.

Quote:

---

Do you really think I would ever fill this thing, or even 20 GB of it, up? I know I have almost 5 as it is, but I don't install new programs very often and the data I directly generated needs to be cleaned up.

---

Well I don't know about you, but I have a few GB of music, ~20GB of "other things", including hard-to-find drivers for windows, programs, my projects, websites, homework, etc.

I also have a folder of ISOs of my CDs and DVDs for faster access and so I won't lose the discs. That easily takes up a few hundred GB.

My Ubuntu installation takes up ~5GB right now (just programs, excluding my home dir), and I have a few virtual machines set up, that take a few GB each.

So it's definitely possible to fill it up... just whether that's your usage scenario.

After failing to boot from a burned DVD-RW, I finally got a new disk from Canonical. Reviewing the conversation, I'd like some clarification...

• I've decided that I'm using a separate /home partition, but does it really help anything to have two if the usernames are different?
• When should extended versus primary partitions be used?

Thanks.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jesdisciple

When should extended versus primary partitions be used?

---

You cannot boot an extended partition, so don't put / there.

According to https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq the swap partition should be at least 999MB (my RAM) because I do sometimes hibernate, so here's my new arrangement:

Quote:

---

80GB
home (ext4): 10
Ubuntu 1 (ext4): 21 + 2.1 = 23.1
Ubuntu 2 (ext4): 21 + 2.1 = 23.1
Windows XP (NTFS): 21 + 1.4 = 22.4
shared data (NTFS):0.4
swap (ext4): 1

---

I tried to accomplish this in fdisk, but I'm confused with the cylinders. Must each whole cylinder be assigned to one partition? The sum of the cylinders is less than 80GB; where did the rest go?

Code:

---

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xf404143b

  Device Boot      Start        End      Blocks  Id  System
/dev/sda1  *          1        9355    75144006  83  Linux
/dev/sda2            9356        9729    3004155    5  Extended
/dev/sda5            9356        9729    3004123+  82  Linux swap / Solaris

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Thanks.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jesdisciple

I tried to accomplish this in fdisk, but I'm confused with the cylinders. Must each whole cylinder be assigned to one partition? The sum of the cylinders is less than 80GB; where did the rest go?

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It will use the cylinder boundaries, yes. As to that second question, I think you have misinterpreted something -- the fdisk output in your post is not missing anything.

[edit] a few of megs (less than 0.1%) is normal, i guess matsp's got the explanation. I think "80 GigaBytes" is a fair approximation by the manufacturer.

You have 78148161 blocks, 1KB each -> 80023716864 bytes. That means you are "missing" 2644992 bytes. Which I'm pretty sure you won't notice.

The difference PROBABLY comes from the difference between ACTUAL sector/head/cylinders and the BIOS-friendly 63/255/16065 CHS numbers. This must be used because of bitfields in the BIOS not allowing more than 63 sectors - bad design, the BIOS should just be given a sector number for which 512 byte block the disk is supposed to read, rather than the BIOS needing to be given the sector, head, cylinder numbers - the BIOS should be doing that conversion. But so be it.

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Mats

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MK27

It will use the cylinder boundaries, yes.

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Then that means I have to calculate the number of cylinders from that of MB, right? Either I'm being dense about the conversion factor or something's messed up in fdisk. EDIT: Yup, I was being dense. I'll explain in my next post.

Quote:

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9729 cylinders (1 cylinder = 8225280 / 1024 ^ 3 = 0.007660389 GB).
home (ext4): 10 / 80 / 0.007660389 = 16.317709192
Ubuntu 1 (ext4): (21 + 2.1 = 23.1) / 80 / 0.007660389 = 37.693908497
Ubuntu 2 (ext4): (21 + 2.1 = 23.1) / 80 / 0.007660389 = 37.693908497
Windows XP (NTFS): (21 + 1.4 = 22.4) / 80 / 0.007660389 = 36.551668845
shared data (NTFS): 0.4 / 80 / 0.007660389 = 0.652708368
swap (ext4): 1 / 80 / 0.007660389 = 1.631770919

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by MK27

As to that second question, I think you have misinterpreted something -- the fdisk output in your post is not missing anything.

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9729 cylinders with 8225280 bytes each:
9729 * 8225280 = 80023749120
80026361856 - 80023749120 = 2612736

That is still less than one in 10000 bytes on your disk. And I think it's as I explained above (you got a slightly different number than I did, but it's close enough).

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Mats

mats: Yeah, I was still typing when you posted. Anyway, here's a correction for the first section of my previous post. Does the index of each bootable partition matter? Should the home partition be moved down so I can boot?

And I just remembered another question; I'll ask it here so it's seen. How do I choose to use NTFS versus ext4?

80 GB, 9729 cylinders

sizes
home (ext4): 10 / 80 * 9729 = 1216.125 ~= 1216
Ubuntu 1 (ext4): (21 + 2.1 = 23.1) / 80 * 9729 = 2809.24875 ~= 2809
Ubuntu 2 (ext4): (21 + 2.1 = 23.1) / 80 * 9729 = 2809.24875 ~= 2809
Windows XP (NTFS): (21 + 1.4 = 22.4) / 80 * 9729 = 2724.12 ~= 2725
shared data (NTFS): 0.4 / 80 * 9729 = 48.645 ~= 49
swap (ext4): 1 / 80 * 9729 = 121.6125 ~= 121

ranges
home (ext4): 1 - 1216
Ubuntu 1 (ext4): 1217 - 4025
Ubuntu 2 (ext4): 4026 - 6834
Windows XP (NTFS): 6835 - 9559
shared data (NTFS): 9560 - 9608
swap (ext4): 9609 - 9729

You don't have to do math for this. I believe fdisk allows you to input in Gb -- but again, the table produced will adhere to cylinder boundaries and hence if you ask for 20.0 Gb, you will get something pretty close to that.

You can play around with fdisk, you know. Create the table and change it -- nothing is done until you choose "w".

I've never used NTFS with linux.

I can't find any way to input Gb/GB; the closest I see is the 'u' command which uses sectors instead of cylinders.

The fdisk 'l' (lower L) command hints that NTFS is possible, but I don't see any companion commands...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jesdisciple

I can't find any way to input Gb/GB; the closest I see is the 'u' command which uses sectors instead of cylinders.

The fdisk 'l' (lower L) command hints that NTFS is possible, but I don't see any companion commands...

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You haven't even tried to add an entry yet. Go ahead. It does not write *anything* to disk unless you choose 'w'. You can make up a whole table then quit, and it will be like fdisk never happened.

When you create a partition, you choose a starting sector. Always use the default, unless you want to leave a gap for some reason. Which you don't. Then you can choose the ending sector, but specified in +Gb.

u is just for changing the display units of the table, not for selecting the units of your input.

After you create a partition (but before you 'w'rite the table to disk) you can change a partition type ('t'). That is how you set the type. But you have to create a table entry first.

I forgot and wrote without changing types; I'll just run it again when Ubuntu is installed so I don't have to remember when I install Windows. I'll try to post an update tomorrow.

Thanks!

Never mind about waiting till tomorrow... When I tried to extract my archive with tar -xpPf it gave errors about insufficient space in the device. EDIT: Does it matter that the archive was at / and included /home (so the contents would have crossed partitions)?

Quote:

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Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00025eb6

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 2809 22563261 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 2810 5618 22563292+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 5619 8343 21888562+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 8344 9729 11133045 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 8344 9559 9767488+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 9560 9681 979933+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7 9682 9729 385528+ 83 Linux

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I also had a strange spell where neither the Ubuntu Forums nor these would log me in; Firefox simply didn't change the page. Both communities run on vBulletin.