SOLVED: mdprobe fatal error

[oracle1]

Re: mdprobe fatal error

I created two swaps not realising that only one was required and now I am not quite sure how to tell them apart. Also showing my windowsness what is an extended partition?

[doctordruidphd]

Re: mdprobe fatal error

sudo partitionmanager
or
sudo gparted

will show you how your hard disk is set up.

Basically a hard disk can have up to four primary partitions, which can be booted from. One of those primary partitions can be set up as an extended partition, which acts as a container for any number of logical partitions. So you can have as many partitions on your hard disk as you want, but you can only boot directly from a maximum of four. Logical partitions are fine for holding data, swap files, etc.

I do not know of a way to tell if a partition has been set up as logical, extended or primary from a CLI utility. Partitionmanager or gparted will tell you at a glance.

I'm assuming that if you can boot kubuntu at all, it is on a primary partition, so will proceed accordingly.

Check with one of the above utilities to make sure that's right.

If so, then follow the instructions in section 3 of the grub howto to set your hard disk to boot from the kubuntu partition.

If kubuntu is on partition 6 of hd0:

grub> root (hd0,6)
grub> setup (hd0)

But double check this with your system configuration before doing it. And be sure you have a live cd to boot your system with in case you kill it by accident (and make sure it works). If you have a live cd, you can fix pretty much anything grub can mess up.

By the way, debian and kubuntu can both use the same swap partition; you will need to edit the /etc/fstab file of one or the other of them so they both point to the same swapfile.

[oracle1]

Re: mdprobe fatal error

SOLVED: woooohhhoooo a clean boot thankyou very very much for all your help I now have this pc running perfectly. The time and effort given by volunteers is what makes linux work. Thankyou all for your help

[doctordruidphd]

Re: mdprobe fatal error

Glad you got it working.
Please go back to your original post and add [solved] to the title. That way others can find a solution if they have the same problem.