Wanted: Someone who can install Ubuntu on my computer

[IveBeenBit]

I will give BTC1.5 to anyone that can get my computer to run Windows 7 and Ubuntu 12.10 in a dual boot setup. I will pay 3 days after it's set up if there are still no problems with the installs. If the price of Bitcoins goes above US$20 then I will pay the equivalent of $30 in BTC. To accomplish this, we can use remote desktopping and Skype to communicate.

This is probably more complicated than it first sounds. Here are the details. Take everything I say with a grain of salt, since I am not a hardware guy. This is all my best guess.

My motherboard has the Intel Z68 chipset, and I have a 64 GB SSD that I want to use as the Windows cache drive. This complicates the installation because it's sort of, but not really, a RAID setup.

Issue #1 -Installing the OSes:

Here are the hard drives that concern the OSes:

• 64 GB SSD that I want to use as the Windows cache drive
• 500 GB internal SATA 3.0 WD black drive

500 GB hard drive partitioning - this drive is for system files and applications only
This is how I want the 500 GB drive partitioned:

• ~200 GB for Windows 7 and applications
• ~30 GB for "future use" where I can do stuff like install other linux distros to play with them
• Remaining space for whatever is appropriate for Ubuntu

Additional info: It would be nice if I could access files the Windows partition from both OSes, but this is not crucial. Anything on the Linux partitions can be ext3 or ext4, whatever it takes.

Issue #2 - My data and backup drives
I have all my data backed up on another internal HDD. Before, I had problems installing Ubuntu because of the "fake RAID" set up (google fakeraid) and I think it left a grub on this drive, because when I have it plugged in, I get errors about Grub recoveries or something. So I will need the grubs cleaned out of this drive, I think. We may be able to boot the system, and THEN plug in the drive as I think SATA drives are hot plug inable. This way it would not interfere with the boot and maybe we can clean out the grubs that way.

I am not going to run fakeraid on the system anymore since apparently, Ubuntu cannot handle it.

Right now I do have Windows 7 up and running with the SSD cache drive doing what it is supposed to. I tried installing Ubunto, but the installer did not see the drive, even though I was able to partition the unallocated space with GParted.

You should have some experience with dual booting on a Z68 chipset and SSD cache drive, or at least google about it to get some ideas.

Nothing on any of the drives is valuable, so if you want to wipe them and start from scratch, that's fine.

Do you need to know anything else important that I left out?

When replying, give me a brief rundown of your experience and knowledge level.

[1714804950]

1714804950

[1714804950]

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[tacotime]

Wubi doesn't work?

[IveBeenBit]

Wubi doesn't work?

I have no idea what Wubi is. If you try it and it works, then you get BTC1.5. I'm really sick of playing with this thing and not knowing what I'm doing.

[Raoul Duke]

Wubi doesn't work?

I have no idea what Wubi is. If you try it and it works, then you get BTC1.5. I'm really sick of playing with this thing and not knowing what I'm doing.

Wubi is an installer from Ubuntu that works from inside windows.
When you are on Windows you just tell the system to restart with Ubuntu.
If I remember correctly you always have to boot to Ubuntu from within Windows, so, no direct boot to Ubuntu in case your computer is off. Not ideal, but maybe it suits you.

[Justin00]

I'll help ya for free if you like....

[IveBeenBit]

I'll help ya for free if you like....

I PMed you, but anyone else who thinks they can tackle this, still get in touch with me. I'm really hoping to get it done sometime this weekend.

[Third Way]

Can you log on to the PC though?

The best I could suggest would be to put Ubanto in a DVD/CD and before putting it on your dvd drive make a small partition for ubuntu

Microsoft windows will want to be the first thing to boot though.

Perhaps that causes the most issues when installing GNU/Linux it seems to me.

Good luck friend and free yourself with free software.

[Luno]

The short version is:

Boot geparted from CD or usb, It can shrink the Win partition so you have room for Ubuntu and whatever other partitions you need on your HDD.

Install Ubuntu as described on their page from USB or DVD. Choose the free space to install Ubunru on.

In windows edit Bootldr with msconfig to have the OS selection menu after POST.

done!

[Third Way]

Listen to Luno.

[wachtwoord]

The short version is:

Boot geparted from CD or usb, It can shrink the Win partition so you have room for Ubuntu and whatever other partitions you need on your HDD.

Install Ubuntu as described on their page from USB or DVD. Choose the free space to install Ubunru on.

In windows edit Bootldr with msconfig to have the OS selection menu after POST.

done!

Is it possible to use the Windows Bootloader now? Back when I made a Win XP / Ubuntu dual boot I used GRUB.

[IveBeenBit]

Thanks for the help, guys, but this is not a "standard" installation. My problems are coming from trying to use my solid state drive as a cache disk, which requires fake RAID, which Ubuntu hates. Do a google search on "Intel RST Ubuntu" and you will see. People have done it, but the explanations are way over my head.

Here are a couple other sites that sound interesting, but for me to figure out how to do it is over my head:

http://bcache.evilpiepirate.org/
https://github.com/facebook/flashcache

I'm really sitting on a nice computer and hardware and just trying to use more of its potential. I figure I can learn more about this linux stuff once I get it installed and start using it as my primary OS.

[Luno]

The short version is:

Boot geparted from CD or usb, It can shrink the Win partition so you have room for Ubuntu and whatever other partitions you need on your HDD.

Install Ubuntu as described on their page from USB or DVD. Choose the free space to install Ubunru on.

In windows edit Bootldr with msconfig to have the OS selection menu after POST.

done!

Is it possible to use the Windows Bootloader now? Back when I made a Win XP / Ubuntu dual boot I used GRUB.

Youre right, Grub asks if you want to dual boot, at the end of the install. you can do both, it depends if win was there first.

Actually i remember The installer in ubuntu asks you if you want to make a dual boot if it detects a win installation and then it will setup GRUB as i finishes. (I've never done a dualboot install of ubuntu, as I'm usually pissed with win when I decide I need some linux)

The danger for a noob is to fuck up the partitioning during the install, if it fails to auto partion your drive for dual boot.

But you have done a linux install before I sense?



You

[Luno]

Thanks for the help, guys, but this is not a "standard" installation. My problems are coming from trying to use my solid state drive as a cache disk, which requires fake RAID, which Ubuntu hates. Do a google search on "Intel RST Ubuntu" and you will see. People have done it, but the explanations are way over my head.

Here are a couple other sites that sound interesting, but for me to figure out how to do it is over my head:

http://bcache.evilpiepirate.org/
https://github.com/facebook/flashcache

I'm really sitting on a nice computer and hardware and just trying to use more of its potential. I figure I can learn more about this linux stuff once I get it installed and start using it as my primary OS.

Okay, another cheap solution is to buy another fake RAID controller on PCI That is compatible with linux.
I've done that with a MINI-ITX board that ran a FREE BSD file server with dual disks, It worked right away after struggling for a day with my first motherboard that had an incompatiple RAID controller IC.

If you are talking about RAID on SSD!! forget it, it will wear out in a month!!

Depending on how much space you want for cache, we are not talking swap partition here I guess, Stuff plenty of ram in it and run a ramdisk for cache, It's faster than SSD no need for RAID 0 and dont die suddently.

I don't think you want to do this, but just in case:
If you want RAID for redundency, then it should be on physical drives, and not on virtual drives especially on a single SSD drive.

I've done some flash booting install of different distros, from embedded arch linux and up. To make a reliable and fast, system, move everything to ram, also temp file writing from the different processes running. The data you need after a reboot is written to a persistent partition on shutdown. It can be on your Hdd.