ubuntu on dell inspiron 1720


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Hello,

I have a dell inspiron 1720 notebook. It has an nvidia 8400GS video card, 3GB of ram, etc etc..

I have tried to install ubuntu, both normally and on the safe graphics mode with no luck. After executing some kind booting scripts from /etc/rc/local it just stays there and doesn't do anything. I have tried googling and the information I have gathered has just confused me even more.

ideas?

thank you

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ok, guys, thanks for the help. but i have a question before I go on:

The issues are with the installer only, or will I have issues once in the operating system?

I made sure my system had an nvidia card because ATI sucks on linux, and I want to give this a fair chance for once.

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Does the Live Cd work (sound, correct video resolution and such)? If so, I would think that the installed OS would be the same (if not better with added driver support).

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I think I'm going to have to put this on hold.

I created an ext3 and a swap partition from inside windows using acronis disk director, but the text based installer doesnt see them, it wants to use the whole hard disk.. i dont know how to tell it to use the ones that are already made.. Im afraid of destroying all the data by mistake..

:(

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Just use the live cd ... boot it up and click on the install icon ... the partitioner will start and you can use the automatic, or manual option. Its pretty fool proof ... If I can do it ( and I'm pushing 60 ) you shouldn't have any problems!

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I think I'm going to have to put this on hold.

I created an ext3 and a swap partition from inside windows using acronis disk director, but the text based installer doesnt see them, it wants to use the whole hard disk.. i dont know how to tell it to use the ones that are already made.. Im afraid of destroying all the data by mistake..

:(

No, no, no! Where did anyone say to create the partitions?

Please, do not try to "help" the install. Boot the CD. Slide the slider. Install.

The reason it wanted to use the full disk is because when you created those partitions, you used up all the free space you made. There was no free space left, once again. :p

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that's the problem, i tried the live cd but it wouldnt boot because of some issues.. i was adviced to use the text installer, and thats what I tried now, the problem is, the partition selection process is not working out..

No, no, no! Where did anyone say to create the partitions?

Please, do not try to "help" the install. Boot the CD. Slide the slider. Install.

The reason it wanted to use the full disk is because when you created those partitions, you used up all the free space you made. There was no free space left, once again. :p

I tried the live CD, it didnt work. I did not use the entire free space, I made a 20GB ext3 partition, and a 4GB swap partition. I did not try to help the installer (theres no slider to slide, it's text based).

I will take a picture of show acronis shows my partitions, i'll show them to you in a second

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My point is to remove those ext3 and swap partitions.

Then the installer will see the free space and make itself at home in there.

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Removed partitions (swap and ext3), all I have is a big C: partition from which I want to make the others. The installer will that for me you say (note that the laptop also brought other partitions with recovery and another one called mediaconnect thats hidden). In the installer I have the following options:

Guided - use entire hard disk

Guided - use entire hard disk and set up LVM

Guided - use entire hard disk and set up encrypted LVM

Manual

If I used Guided it says that all the data on the disk will be erased.

if I use manual then I get to pick the hard disk scsi1 (0,0,0) (sda) 250GB blah blah. When I select it, it tells me if I want to create a blank partition table, if I click yes (I can undo this since I haven't committed anything) i get something really weird that seems that it's going to erase everything too.

I'm very confused and I think i'm starting to be annoying lol. I don't want to lose my vista partition so I don't know what to do.

Edited by Darksoft
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Yeah, do not choose the "use entire hard disk" option, unless you want to wipe the whole drive. :omg:

I wonder why it doesn't see the free space when you removed the ext3 & swap. :ermm: Is it possible to run a liveCD? Even in text only mode? If I can get the output of a fdisk -l (or sudo fdisk -l) then it would tell me all I need to know about your drive(s) and partitions.

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ok, I finally got the Live CD to boot without hanging.. I couldn't do that before. What I did was press F6 and then remove the "quiet splash" off of the parameters. It seems that the 64bit version has problems with the splash screen

Now i get into the live cd. I opened GParted and it sees the entire hard disk as unallocated space. I will post the results of fdisk -l in about 5 mins

out put of fdisk -l

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x18000000

   Device Boot	  Start		 End	  Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1			   1		  10	   80293+  de  Dell Utility
/dev/sda3   *		1317	   30074   230998633	7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4			  11	   30401   244115707+   5  Extended
/dev/sda5			  11		1316	10490410	7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6		   30075	   30401	 2626596   dd  Unknown

Partition table entries are not in disk order

how gparted sees things:

screenshotdevsdagpartedem9.th.png

Edited by Darksoft
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I don't like the look of that at all. :blink:

You have a OEM recovery partition (I assume) from cyl 1-10 (sda1, primary)

Then an extended declared from cyl 11 to the end of the drive at 30401 (sda4, primary/extended)

- that extended partition contains sda5 from cyl 11-1316

- and a primary(???) partition sda3 from cyl 1317-30074 (I have never seen a primary inside an extended)

- finally, sda6 is a strange "dd" type and takes the remaining space from 30075 to last cylinder 30401

This tells me a lot. The gparted screen, while pretty and taking up many K worth of bytes, doesn't tell me nearly as much. This is part of the reason that many *nixers like the command line so much - once used to the information, it really tells a better story. And does so with less bytes of data.

My opinion at this point: stop

Wait for someone else to weigh in on the strange partitioning (and why doesn't gparted see all of this, is it because of the primary declared within the space of an extended partition?).

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I will post an screen shot from windows, this will tell you what all those partitions are. One is mediaDirect, and the other one is a VERY wierd partition that I don't know what it's for. Hang on. I will post it in a minute.

acronisad9.th.jpg

I knew there was something weird going on, I'm not that dumb lol.

Edited by Darksoft
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I wasn't implying you were dumb. I was saying that the configuration was beyond my knowledge of what I know will work, and there were segments that I would call "nonsense" in their placement (a primary placed within an extended, where only logicals should go, based on my experience). An OEM recovery partition is also critical for recovering Vista in an emergency situation, so care must be taken to not disturb that.

I see the Windows display matching up with the "fdisk -l" output. But I still would be cautious about proceeding.

If I were to proceed, I would first defrag sda3 (the primary within the extended) to make sure that the filesystem was clean before doing any sort of adjust. Then I would shrink it down about 20GB less, if you can. This should make room for Ubuntu.

Then, boot the Ubuntu CD, and pray it sees that space within.

Like I said, I have never run across your partitioning scheme before. Very odd.

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wow this sucks so damn much.. I received a computer with messed up partitions.. I don't know what to do to fix them. Ive tried viewing them in various partition managing programs and they say the partitions are messed up.. I can boot vista fine, acronis disk director doesnt tell me anything is wrong, but there's obviously something wrong. God im ****ed off.

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Is this genuine factory partitioning from Dell? Or was this the victim of an XP -> Vista upgrade that somehow went wrong deep inside (even though successfully booting Vista)?

If you have backups of your partitions, you can wipe the crap with the extended, and re-create them in a proper structure, where there are no primaries declared inside an extended. Then restore the partition images into the properly located partitions.

And, as usual, any time you make these sorts of changes, you run the usual risks of data loss (no biggie if you have a backup) and non-bootable OS (again, no biggie, if you don't mind the extra work of re-creating your installs should the worst-case happen).

But I would look at fixing partitioning while keeping Vista bootable before trying to change things in there by adding Ubuntu.

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standard, hadn't touched the filesystem or partitions.

I took a deep breath and decided to try to fix the partition table, ended up fubaring everything.

positive side: I'll start from scratch and making sure everything is ok.

bad side: there's no recovery partition anymore and that makes me nervous.

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