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Dumbest thing I've done all day, maybe ever. When I booted my Ubuntu this afternoon I got, for the second time, notice of an upgrade available. The first time I was very suspicious, figuring that the message wasn't meant for people using X1000 versions.

But then I read notices here about a new 10.04.4 LTS and the availability of a 12.04.5 LTS. So when I got that upgrade available message again today I guessed maybe it meant one of those, and anyway, it did say it was an upgrade "for your machine." Whatever has been updating my software from time to time clearly knows my machine. Would it lie to me?

With lingering misgivings, I clicked on "Upgrade." Two or three hours later I clicked "Restart," and it didn't, quite.

My best guess as to what I need to do now is reformat the partition where Ubuntu is installed and then start over from scratch as I did last March. But in making sure I could even find the partition in question with Media Toolbox (at first I didn't even remember which disk it was on) I was startled to find two, a situation I don't remember:

dhx 659.437 GBytes, ... \00\00\00\00
dhx 49.618 GBytes, ... SWP\00

I guess the second is a SWAP partition and needn't be reformatted. It's probably going to take me a while to remember just how I did set things up back in March, unless maybe someone could remind me how I even found out what to do then.

First, thanks to up to 25 readers who have resisted the urge to tell me I'm too dumb to use Linux and should stick to Amiga OS4.

I got my friend Google to give me some hints. I found out that I must have started with a DVD, so I started through my stack of DVDs and soon found one labeled "ubuntu." A quick look revealed that it was something for the old SAM460 that I had never gotten very far with.

Continued searching and came across a big DVD holder labeled "AmigaONE." Nothing about Linux or Ubuntu on the box, but the background graphic is the same as the Ubuntu screen, so I knew I was on my way. There were some clips inside the box that had at one time obviously held instructions on how to use the DVD. I have no idea where my copy of them went, but with the help of Epsilon's Amiga X1000 blog I have been able to boot the DVD and type this. Eventually I will be able to reinstall this on disk and get back to the original state of affairs, more or less.

One interesting new thing is that I don't think any devices were listed in my Home folder before I installed for the first time. This time around I have three: "708 GB File system," "NTSF," and "KINGSTON." I am familiar with the last two, but I don't recall ever seeing anything like the first before. The "708 GB" is very reminiscent of the two "dhx"s Media Toolbox showed, of about 649 and 59 GB respectively. And guess what: it contains folders named "bin, boot, etc, home, lib, mnt," etc. I took a look at "home," and its content is what I had in the Ubuntu I killed; it had survived the fiasco! Many of the other files are empty, but I looked at usr/games, found a "Neverputt" therein, played it, and got penalized for knocking the ball off the end of the par 2 first hole. I'm a bit surprised to find a working game on a non-working version of Ubuntu! (Another, gorky17-demo, in usr/local/games!)

My idea of reformatting the larger dhx to make space for a reinstall looks like it won't work. Media Toolbox will let me remove the partition, but not format it. I suppose removing and replacing it will have the same effect. But there are some things I would want to save first, and I'm not 100% sure the DVD installer won't install right over it. I'll probably give it a try tomorrow.

Just in case anyone is still amused by my misadventures, here is my Narrow Escape. After poking around Install-Guide and the install program a bit yesterday afternoon, I decided it looked like the "Install Ubuntu ... alongside Ubuntu ..." option, which would not destroy any of the original files, might be the way to go. I installed it, but when I tried to restart later I got the same screen -- looks like a sheet of leather or something with diagonal stitches in it crossing in the center and elsewhere -- that I got with the previous install.

I didn't take "alongside" seriously enough perhaps; I thought it was going to install the replacement in the same partition. So now I have a brand new 680 GB File system, in addition to yesterday's 708 GB one.

When I looked at my disks later with Amiga's Media Toolbox, I was horrified to discover that I had two new dhx's on my main OS4 hard drive! But I checked carefully, and apparently nothing was overwritten. I apparently had 608 unused GB on that disk and Ubuntu Install cleverly glommed it all. That's the Narrow Escape part. I imagine I could boot it by changing the boot menu command, but I don't want Linux on that drive.

Then I took a look at the Something Else option. It seemed to say somewhere that if I chose that option, it was going to entirely redo sda and install in that reformatted hard drive. But it also allowed me to "select" sdb. If I did so, wouldn't it wipe that one out instead, and install there? And I was also able to select individual partitions, such as the dev/sdb7 partition that I had stupidly installed Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS on. Maybe it would install there, if that was selected?

I am about to find out. Just in case it decides to wipe out sdb entirely, I transferred anything on it that I really, really need to other devices. If it wipes out dba and everything else I really, really need entirely in spite of my selecting sdb7, well, nothing told me it wouldn't. But I can't imagine anything that stupid and vicious, so here goes.

Well, here is something stupid and evil in a minor way: when I was shutting down disk-version Ubuntu this morning, up popped a message: "Please remove installation media and close the tray (if any) then press ENTER:" The tray refused to open; I even poked a paper clip end into one of the holes on the front hoping it was for opening the tray when the usual button didn't work, but pressing Enter didn't do anything either, so I ended up having to turn the computer off at that stage.

Well, I guess I'm back. A bunch of problems were reported, in fleeting fashion, and Firefox refused to run for a while, and after I did some updates I kept getting asked for my password, so I gave my new one, which was repeatedly rejected, as was my old one. But Firefox seems to be working now. So, end of "Killed Ubuntu" story.

Phew! That's a really big story. If I understand it correctly, you installed Ubuntu on the whole second hard disc, didn't you? Could you post your partitions on your A1-X1000, please? Does Ubuntu really work now? Are you satisfied or not? Thanks a lot for writing the whole installation story here. Sorry for my late answer.

-- Christian

Bart,

Thanks for your installation story again. I've created the thread Important: Install instructions for the Live Remix DVD.

Cheers,

Christian

xeno74 wrote:Phew! That's a really big story. If I understand it correctly, you installed Ubuntu on the whole second hard disc, didn't you? Could you post your partitions on your A1-X1000, please? Does Ubuntu really work now? Are you satisfied or not? Thanks a lot for writing the whole installation story here. Sorry for my late answer.

-- Christian

I guess I made too big a deal of it, but I was a little bit scared. My first install two or three months ago and the reinstall were heavily based as much on Epsilon's write-ups as on the disk's install instructions. I was just a little slow on catching on to, and then really believing, what seemed to be said about the Something Else option, that I would be able to select a certain partition on a certain disk to install to. But it worked.

Ubuntu seems to work fine, but looks a little different from what I was used to, maybe. No big deal.

I don't know if the partitions are still of any interest, but I copy them in below. Is there any way of automatically listing them to a file? I copied by hand from Media Toolbox. (Hmmm, I see Tabs don't survive Copy and Paste to this forum's submissions.)

ST1000DM Z1D5 CC47 0, 0 Fixed hard disk
BDH0 0.113 GBytes, 116,203 MBytes (4959 cylinders) DOS\07
DH0 2.003 GBytes, 2050.781 MBytes (87501 cylinders) SFS\02
DH1 31.088 GBytes, 31834.500 MBytes (1358273 cylinders) SFS\02
DH2 150.536 GBytes, 154149.258 MBytes (6577036 cylinders) SFS\02
DH3 100.031 GBytes, 102431.930 MBytes (4370430 cylinders) SFS\02
dhx 633.584 GBytes, 648790.336 MBytes (27681722 cylinders) \00\00\00\00
dhx 1.876 GBytes, 1921.219 MBytes (81973 cylinders) SWP\00
DH10 12.280 GBytes, 12574.289 MBytes (536504 cylinders) NTFS

The dhx's on this drive are an accident. I was expecting the install to take place
"alongside" the old installation on the next disk. For some reason, the install
program very kindly chose to reinstall on an unused, unformatted(?) section
of the drive. Nothing was overwritten. I plan to remove both dhx's from this
disk and recover the space for whatever.

Hitachi JP6940HZ1A JP40 2, 0 Fixed hard disk
DH4 2.059 GBytes, 2108.367 MBytes (89958 cylinders) SFS\00
DH5 3.905 GBytes, 3998.531 MBytes (170605 cylinders) SFS\02
DH6 10.148 GBytes, 10391.719 MBytes (443381 cylinders) SFS\02
DH7 10.498 GBytes, 10750.125 MBytes (458673 cylinders) SFS\02
DH8 10.878 GBytes, 11.878 MBytes (475256 cylinders) SFS\02
DH9 182.910 GBytes, 187299.844 MBytes (7991461 cylinders) SFS\02
dhx 659.437 GBytes, 675263.391 MBytes (2167847 cylinders) \00\00\00\00
dhx 49.618 GBytes, 50808.891 MBytes (2167847 cylinders) SWP\00
SWAP 2.059 GBytes, 2108.367 MBytes (89958 cylinders) SWAP

This hard drive is from my SAM460. The partitions are SYSTEM:, Data:, Apps:, etc.,
which I kept just in case there were things that I wanted to copy over to the X1000
(and of course there were). DH9 had a lot of new stuff on it that I wanted to keep;
I copied a lot to flash drives just in case the Ubuntu install would overwrite the
whole disk. But Ubuntu was neatly installed just where I asked for it.

kilaueabart wrote:I don't know if the partitions are still of any interest, but I copy them in below. Is there any way of automatically listing them to a file? I copied by hand from Media Toolbox.

From an OS4 shell, try "info devices show size sort name > file.txt". It will only list the devices mounted under AmigaOS, though, not the dhx etc.

Best regards,

Niels

Do you suppose that once or twice a year one (especially if one is dumb) should review System:Documentation/C?

Thanks for that.

kilaueabart wrote:Do you suppose that once or twice a year one (especially if one is dumb) should review System:Documentation/C?

No need for self-punishment .

What I do is when I have a problem or a need for information, I start by assuming that the information is probably available somewhere in the Documentation hierarchy. Then I spend the necessary time finding it (which is, granted, not always as easy as it should be, but with the help of search tools etc. ...).

I wouldn't be able to remember the whole contents by heart anyway. As I was once taught: You can't know everything, but you should know where to look it up.

Thanks for that.

You're welcome.

Best regards,

Niels