How to Install Ubuntu 7.10

Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology –
Computer Science & Software Engineering

Overview

Follow these directions to install Ubuntu 7.10 on your laptop.  Ubuntu is a distribution of LINUX that is freely available from http://www.ubuntu.com/.

These instructions were originally prepared by the Linux Users Group at Rose. The original instructions can be found here.

The complete installation will be done with an Ubuntu Live CD. After completing the installation, you will be able to dual-boot your computer with Windows XP and a fully working distribution of Ubuntu. When you reboot your system, an Introduction to Ubuntu will give you an overview of how to operate and administer your newly installed system. You will be provided with instruction on how to configure Ubuntu for use in CSSE332 and on the Rose-Hulman network.

While working though this guide you will be without internet access at several points. It is advised that you have a wired network connection and that your system is connected to it. This will facilitate updating your computer after completing the installation process.

Before you begin your installation, you should print this guide.  Remember, you will not be able to access it at several points during the installation process since you will be without internet access. 

Pre-Installation Step

  1. Obtain an Install CD
    Download a local copy of the Ubuntu installation disk. (Using the local copy avoids using your bandwidth quota. But you can also visit the Ubuntu download site and select the Desktop Edition of Ubuntu 7.10 for off-campus installation.). We will be using Ubuntu 7.10. If you have a 64 bit machine you should download the 64 bit version while everyone else should download the standard version, which is a 32 bit version. Using your favorite disk burning utility, burn this image to a blank CD.
  2. Prepare Windows
    1. During the installation you will be shrinking your windows file system. It is generally a good idea to leave 10-20% of the file system empty after shrinking. By default, we will be using 10GB for Linux, so for a 60Gb windows partition you should make sure there is at least 15 Gb free before continuing. (10Gb + (60Gb-10Gb)*0.10).
    2. Once you have enough free space you should also run the Windows defragmentor at least once.  If you do not have enough free disk space available for your installation, back up some of the files on your system to free enough space for your installation.
    3. As when taking your computer to IAIT, you should make sure to back up any (and all) important documents before continuing.
  3. Reboot to the Live CD environment
    1. Once your Windows partition is ready, place the Ubuntu CD in the drive, reboot, and press Enter to Start or install Ubuntu. You will need to make sure that your BIOS is set to boot off the CDROM drive.
    2. Once started you will be booted into the Live CD environment, feel free to play around and see what Ubuntu is like before actually installing it. Once you're ready continue to Partitioning the hard drive.
  4. Note to HP nw8440 Laptop users
    If the graphical environment on the Live CD fails to load automatically you will need to load it manually. Once the system has started up as far as it will go, press the keys  <CTL>-<ALT>-<F2> on your keyboard simultaneously.  This will bring you to a terminal screen. From there kill GDM and start X11 manually by typing:  
    $ sudo pkill -9 gdm
    $ startx

Partitioning the hard drive

There are many ways to partition a hard disk, You can use different sizes and different layouts for partitions. In this example we will simply free up 10GB of space and create two partitions for the Ubuntu installer.

  1. Shrinking the Windows partition
    Before starting the installation it is necessary to partition your hard disk so that you can boot to both Windows and Ubuntu. Open the partition editor by selecting System->Administration->Partition Editor.

    To free up space for Ubuntu:

    1. Select the Windows partition. This will most likely be called sda1 or sda2 and will be the largest one shown.
    2. Select Resize/Move from the toolbar.
    3. Set Free Space Following to 10240. (10Gb)
    4. Click Resize/Move
    5. Click Apply to make the changes listed.
  2. Partitioning the freed space for Ubuntu

    There are numerous ways you can chose to partition your hard drive. The simplest configuration is to create two partitions for Linux. The first partition will be your root partition (mounted at /), and the second partition will be much smaller, a swap partition. The swap partition is where pages from memory will be stored when you run out of physical memory.

    Another way to partition would be to create three partitions for Linux: a root partition, a swap partition, and a partition for your home directory (mounted at /home). The advantage to this partitioning scheme is that if you ever decide to reinstall Linux or switch to a different distribution, you can tell the installer to not touch your /home partition, so all of your files will be saved.

    The following is an example partition layout: 

    Device      Size    Mount Point
/dev/sda1   75GB    (windows)
/dev/sda2   5GB     /
/dev/sda3   18GB    /home
/dev/sda4   1.5GB   (swap)

    The first column is the device that represents the partition. For the nw8440, the device which represents the internal hard drive is /dev/sda, since it is the first SATA disk in the machine.

    Creating the partitions that we need to install Ubuntu:

    1. Select the newly freed space at the end of the Windows partition. This will most likely be called sda2 or sda3 and will be the largest one shown.
    2. Select Resize/Move from the toolbar.
    3. Set Free Space Following to 1024 to 20480. (1 to 2GB)
    4. Click Resize/Move
    5. Click Apply to make the changes listed.
    6. format the larger of the larger of the two new partitions to ext3 filesystem and the remaining 1 to 2 GB to linux-swap filesystem.
    7. Click Apply make the changes listed.

Install Ubuntu

  1. Installing Ubuntu on your computer

    Click though the provided install guide. Most of the defaults should work well:

    1. Select English as the language
    2. Select Indiana/Indianapolis for city/timezone.
    3. Select U.S. English for Keyboard layout.
    4. When you reach the "Prepare disk space" section, select the Manual option instead of guided options and use the partitions created earlier as follows:
      1. Select the ext3 partition for the root directory and change the mount point to / (the root directory). The Ubuntu installer should automatically see the swap partition. (If it does not see the linux-swap partition, mount the swap partition as indicated in the installer window.) If you get a “system partition not formatted” dialogue asking to format the partition, clicked in the box in the format column for the / partition then clicked forward.
      2. Note: if you created three partitions instead of two, select the other ext3 partition and mount it at /home (for the home directory).
    5. Migrate Documents and Settings if applicable and/or desired. does Ubuntu migrate windows stuff?
    6. Enter an account information and your computer information. It is not necessary, but making the account information the same as your Kerberos information can make some things more convenient later on.
    7. Before finishing the install, make sure that the partition information is correct then click "Install".
    8. Read a magazine or do something interesting while Ubuntu installs.
    9. Eventually, you will be informed that the installation is complete, at which point click the "Restart now" button.
    10. Just before Ubuntu restarts, you will be prompted to remove the install CD. Make sure to do so in order to avoid booting back into the install CD.
    11. If Ubuntu detects Windows on another partition, it will present you with dual boot options using GRUB. The top option is Ubuntu. Choose it, or else just let the timer count down to zero.
    12. When your system boots into the newly installed Ubuntu, log in using the user name and password you selected earlier during installation.
    13. Congratulations! You are now running Ubuntu Linux.
  2. Note: Don't Panic!

    Note: If you get an error message when trying to boot Windows that says: "Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: <Windows root>\system32\hal.dll. Please re-install a copy of the above file," or anything else involving the file hal.dll, this means that your BOOT.INI file was corrupted during partitioning. To correct this error, obtain a Windows XP install CD, boot into recovery mode, and type "bootcfg /rebuild."

  3. HP nw8440 Laptops

    Upon booting into Ubuntu for the first time, you may get the same flashing screen issue as in the installer. Simply follow the same process as above to get into Gnome. The only difference this time is that you will have to log in when you first switch to the terminal and will need to use the command prefaced with "sudo". Then, once in Gnome, go to the top menu and choose "System->Administration->Restricted Drivers Manager". You will be prompted for your password. Check the box for the ATI accelerated graphics driver. Reboot your computer, and then your graphics should work fine. See the section on Restricted Drivers for more information.