Installing Kubuntu on a win7/Ubuntu dualboot

[Anonamous_Quinn]

So recently I've been trying Linux as an alternative to running Windows 7 on my laptop and after an extremely brief search I went with installing Ubuntu.

Now a few days on I'm not getting on with the Unity desktop and as an alternative would like to try out Kubuntu.

Now for the background. Windows 7 carved up my hard drive into two 250Gb portions, and I never bothered much with changing this. When I installed Ubuntu I partitioned the D: partition where I had more free space (and as a side note, forgot to do a defragment beforehand, let me know if that's going to cause trouble), 40Gb for Ubuntu, 210Gb left for windows.

Ubuntu ran fine but when I went back to windows I noticed that it couldn't see the D: drive any more, and windows disk manager listed it as being in RAW format, not FAT. Now all the data was backed up (and it dosn't have anything I'd miss much anyway), and the backup isn't needed yet because Ubuntu can access the data fine. I only mention this because I don't know if it will be a problem if I have to re-partition the hard drive again.

So, getting along with the question, how do I go about installing Kubuntu in this situation? Is it just going to be a case of puting the USB stick with the iso in and installing Kubuntu to the Ubuntu partition in much the same way Ubuntu installed, or is it going to be a bit more complicated?

Thanks for the help

[vinnywright]

Re: Installing Kubuntu on a win7/Ubuntu dualboot

the install of Kubuntu will go just like the Ubuntu install .

I am curious as to why windows can no longer see the rest of the D: drive

can you post the output of

sudo fdisk -l

from in Ubuntu

VINNY

[Anonamous_Quinn]

Re: Installing Kubuntu on a win7/Ubuntu dualboot

Thanks for the help, this is the output

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xc878b540

  Device Boot   Start     End   Blocks  Id System
/dev/sda1  *    2048   821247   409600  27 Hidden NTFS WinRE
/dev/sda2     821248  489207807  244193280  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3    489207808  898735045  204763619  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda4    898736126  976771071  39017473  5 Extended
/dev/sda5    898736128  968456191  34860032  83 Linux
/dev/sda6    968458240  976771071   4156416  82 Linux swap / Solaris

[oshunluvr]

Re: Installing Kubuntu on a win7/Ubuntu dualboot

Any ideas Vinny? It looks normal from that output. I assume the OP used the installer to re-size the disk and maybe it changed the identifier bit slightly?

Anon_Quinn: Do you want to fix this?

Are you done with Ubuntu and planning on wiping it out and replacing it with Kubuntu or do you want to install it along side Ubuntu?

As far as defragging goes - it always a good idea to do it before attempting to re-size a windows disk but it's not required. It just makes more space available.

How did you do you Ubuntu install - meaning what did you do to re-size the partition? I't usually recommended to use the Windows tool when re-sizing in Win7.

Gparted live might fix it but there are other ways. TestDisk can recover partition tables and fdisk can re-create them.

[vinnywright]

Re: Installing Kubuntu on a win7/Ubuntu dualboot

that looks right to me as well .....

but strange things can happen if one dosent chkdsk/defrag/chkdsk a windows partition befor resising it .
and with win7 it is best to do the shrinking with the win7 tools.

IF your shure of the partition you can reformat it(NTFS) ; sence you say you have backups of the data, with the windows tools or from in Ubuntu/Kubuntu or a gparted live cd.

as @oshunluvr asked "How did you do you Ubuntu install - meaning what did you do to re-size the partition? " did you do manual partitioning with the installer?

VINNY

[Anonamous_Quinn]

Re: Installing Kubuntu on a win7/Ubuntu dualboot

The questions in chronological order

I would like to fix it, though it's not high up on the list of things to do. I'm using Linux for the moment but I'd like to retain the ability to dual boot and access the data from both operating systems.

I'd like to install Kubuntu alongside Ubuntu initially, the more I read about Kubuntu the more I think I'm going to prefer it over Ubuntu, but I'd like to be sure first.

As for doing the partition I used the tool that comes with the Ubuntu installer, not any win7 tools.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Installing Kubuntu on a win7/Ubuntu dualboot

The questions in chronological order

I would like to fix it, though it's not high up on the list of things to do. I'm using Linux for the moment but I'd like to retain the ability to dual boot and access the data from both operating systems.

As for doing the partition I used the tool that comes with the Ubuntu installer, not any win7 tools.

It could be that the installer messed the partition boot record up. You can try any of the following:

1: Run sudo fdisk /dev/sda in a terminal and change sda2's partition type to RAW, save and then back to NTFS and save.

2: Run testdisk and attempt a partition table repair.

3: Run the windows 7 convert utility and convert the partition from RAW to NTFS.

After any of these attempts above, reboot into windows and see if it works. You did say you had your data backed up, but none of these solutions should kill your data. Once you have it working again, use the windows admin tools to resize the windows drives to avoid this problem.

As far as installing Kubuntu along side Ubuntu: I assume, since you're just checking things out at this point, you haven't collected a lot of data on your Ubuntu install. Likely you've only used 4-5GB for the Ubuntu install. I would boot to the Kubuntu LiveCD and shrink your Ubuntu partition to 10GB, create another 10GB partition along side and install to that. Both Ubuntu and Kubuntu will share the swap partition - in fact the installer should auto-detect and mount it.

A couple things to pay attention to: For whatever reason, the Kubuntu developers have decided we're not smart enough to install Kubuntu without also installing GRUB over and over. If you are OK with that, let it go ahead and do it. If you don't want to keep doing that, the options are:

1. Select the Kubuntu partition for the grub install: Look for the "Install boot loader" selection after the partitioning options.

2. Launch the installer with the -b option for no boot loader: To do this, you must boot to the liveVD and launch the installer from a terminal rather than with the icon. Open a terminal and type

sudo ubiquity -b

to do this.

Note if you choose either of the above options, you will need to boot into Ubuntu and run sudo update-grub and reboot to be able to boot into Kubuntu.

Eventually, if you decide to stick to one linux distro or the other, you'll want to shrink your windows drive again and create a separate partition for you linux data (/home).