This howto tells you how to install a hard drive with existing data on it into a new computer. You could use a UI if you wanted, alternatively.

Find existing mount points

• See what we already have mounted.
  


reubenf@fridge:~$ df -k | grep /dev
/dev/sda1 14535584 3074640 10728384 23% /
udev 1815524 88 1815436 1% /dev
devshm 1815524 0 1815524 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda2 19380708 192860 18211096 2% /home
/dev/sda4 446745948 203020 424028236 1% /media1
/dev/sdb1 484535504 202800 459913504 1% /media2


Find all physical devices

• Now find the disk(s) that aren’t mounted. Note /dev/sdc1, below (which isn’t listed above).
  


reubenf@fridge:~$ ls /dev/disk/by-uuid/ -alh
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 160 2008-06-26 08:07 .
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 120 2008-06-26 08:07 ..
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2008-06-26 08:07 1d063f18-5d5b-4ab1-b93a-35af33706059 -> ../../sdb1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2008-06-26 08:07 20c4feb1-90e2-42ec-88a3-7936950deeed -> ../../sda1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2008-06-26 08:07 756f4338-d991-47e6-807b-0962f9f01cad -> ../../sda3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2008-06-26 08:07 b9eeeeab-e30c-48bb-ae6f-9ece052db597 -> ../../sda4
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2008-06-26 08:07 c8aec34b-a197-42fc-ae9d-481e0e20132f -> ../../sda2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2008-06-26 08:07 e19a4234-d7e3-45a7-b369-b6c1724ba0c6 -> ../../sdc1


Find file system type


reubenf@fridge:~$ sudo parted /dev/sdc1 p
Disk /dev/sdc1: 165GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: loop
Number Start End Size File system Flags
1 0.00kB 165GB 165GB ext3


Make a mount point for the partition


reubenf@fridge:~$ sudo mkdir /media3


Add line to /etc/fstab


reubenf@fridge:~$ sudo vim /etc/fstab
...
# /dev/sdc1
UUID=e19a4234-d7e3-45a7-b369-b6c1724ba0c6 /media3 ext3 relatime 0 2


All done. Reboot.

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Ubuntu Hardy has made wireless a little easier for laptop owners w/ the broadcom 1390 chipset. No more fucking around with ndiswrapper; just install a package, run a script, and you’re done. Installing the package should do the trick, but for some reason it failed for me (the firmware didn’t download), so you’ll probably need to run the second part too.


sudo apt-get install b43-fwcutter
sudo /usr/share/b43-fwcutter/install_bcm43xx_firmware.sh
sudo /etc/init.d/dbus restart


You’re done. You’re welcome.

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Here’s how to install libdvdcss2 and a couple other useful media libraries on your Gutsy box. Note that these may be “illegal”. Paste the following in your terminal.


sudo su -c 'echo deb http://packages.medibuntu.org/ gutsy free non-free >> /etc/apt/sources.list'
sudo su -c 'echo deb-src http://packages.medibuntu.org/ gutsy free non-free >> /etc/apt/sources.list'
wget -q http://packages.medibuntu.org/medibuntu-key.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2 w32codecs gstreamer0.10-pitfdll
echo "done"


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Setting KDE’s desktop icon text color has always, always made me insane. It’s not in the same place with all the other color settings, oh, no! To set most item colors in a KDE setup, you use the Control Center, select Appearance & Themes, then Colors. A simple easy-to-navigate interface for setting almost every foreground, background and select color under KDE. But if you want to set Desktop text color … well, that’s not listed. I always end up poking and prodding for a considerable while. I found it again, today, and wanted to put it up for me and others to find. So, to set the KDE (versions 3.4 and 3.5, at least) desktop icon text, from the Control Center select Appearance & Themes. Choose Background from the sub-menu. Yeah, Background. Who knew? Then, click on the Advanced Options button. There are three sub-panes in the resulting dialog. The first, Background Program is usually all I see before bailing out of that dialog. But keep looking. Further down, there’s Background Icon Text. Not Desktop, oh, no. And that’s not to be found in the general color settings tab, for heaven’s sake, no! Now I understand the reasoning behind where it is. But since for all the rest of the world, that’s the Desktop, why not call it that, or make it easy to find using the Desktop term. And, praise Baal, why not let people change that text color in the standard tool as well as in the special secret place!

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Part of the problem that I’m concerned about is that the vast majority of Ubuntu users are less experienced that say Debian users. That’s not a slight against Ubuntu users, but merely a statement of fact; Ubuntu has done a lot of good work to allow less experienced users to be able to install and use Linux. That is a good thing; a very good thing. But it also means that sometimes the protecting users against themselves is in fact a good thing. There is a reason why there are safety interlocks on lawn mowers; giving more control to inexperienced users is not always a good thing.

So if the filesystem is corrupted such that if the system is booted, the “mission critical” application would silently give the wrong answers, or perhaps trade the wrong stocks, or give the 1000 times the amount of X-rays necessary to the human body, would you really be doing the user a favor by giving them the ability to skip an fsck because they are impatient? For life and mission critical systems, usually the designers want to give less control to the users (who often are not sophisticated computer users), not more control.

If the system has to be kept running in order to keep some mission critical system going, then the right answer is to have backup systems and a high availability system (such as Linux-HA) which enables the backup when the primary system is not available. Skipping necessary filesystem checks just because “it might take too long” and allowing potential silent failures is Just A Bad Idea.

Then too, if you really want to avoid long delays due to periodic fsck’s, the right answer is to use devicemapper, and have a cron script fired during the off-hours (say 1am on Sunday nights, when no one is using the system), which takes a read-only snapshot of the filesystem, and then run the e2fsck against the snapshot once a week or once a month. If there are any discrepancies detected when checking the read-only snapshot, then the script should either send e-mail to the system administrator requesting scheduled maintenance ASAP to fix the problem, or if there is a HA system running, the script should signal the HA system that it is about to take the system down, then shutdown the applications and force a reboot and fsck of the corrupted filesystem. If no errors are detected in the read-only snapshot, then the read-only snapshot can be released and “tune2fs -C 0 -T now /dev/sdXX” can be used on the original filesystem indicate that it has been successfully checked. So there are clean ways of avoiding the slow boot-time checks while actually increasing the system reliability, besides letting a potentially clueless user skip a necessary system function out of impatience.

OK, latest update to this: the problem is still in gutsy. I haven’t yet run fsck on the images you suggested making, but will do so.

In the meantime, my laptop was a brick for 3 days during a technical conference, when I _really_ would have appreciated having it be functional, so I’m going to argue your points. Yes, there’s a bug in fsck which caused it, and sure, when you fix the bug, I won’t need the skip option…until the next time there’s a bug like this, when another user on another computer with some weird hardware or bios configuration hits a similar snag.

> Part of the problem that I’m concerned about is that the vast majority of Ubuntu users are less experienced that say Debian users.

So? As my friend points out, Windows users are a good deal less experienced that Ubuntu users, and yet *they* can skip scandisk. Heresy, I know, to compare scandisk with fsck, and yet there users have a choice. I think to deny users a choice is anti-freedom, and autocratic. Your thinking on this analagous to Microsoft’s forcing of system updates on its users; “we know best; this is for your own good; shut up and swallow it, buckwad.”

I am not suggesting that the option to skip fsck be so obvious as to make it easy for “noobs” to cancel it every time. In fact, you could even display horrible warnings when the user does skip it. But, if the user wants to completely wreck their computer by skipping maintenance steps, then let them. You are not their parent, nanny, dictator, or any other authority.

> So if the filesystem is corrupted such that if the system is booted, the “mission critical” application would silently give the wrong answers, or perhaps trade the wrong stocks, or give the 1000 times the amount of X-rays necessary to the human body, would you really be doing the user a favor by giving them the ability to skip an fsck because they are impatient?

But we’re not talking about computers that are monitoring nuclear power plants, or running vital infrastructure; we’re talking about average everyday joe who wants to check his email, show off some presentations at work, write documents, etc. Just as you wouldn’t require average everyday joe to fill out a 30 point checklist every time they boot the system to make sure everything is in order, you shouldn’t force “mission critical” level maintenance checks on him either.

> Then too, if you really want to avoid long delays due to periodic fsck’s, the right answer is to use devicemapper, and have a cron script fired during the off-hours (say 1am on Sunday nights, when no one is using the system)

This is not the right answer on a laptop, or an average user’s desktop. In these cases, the user powers down their computer on a regular basis.

There are two ways I could see doing the workaround (which is completely seperate to the issue of this bug), which would make power users happy, and keep your noobs in line:
1) Add a boot option that skips fsck. Perhaps “safe mode” on ubuntu would include this, perhaps not.
2) Add a thread that listens for a key sequence (ctrl c?); when it detects the sequence, display a nasty message, and only abort the scan if the user confirms that they’re willing to die for want of their system being properly fsck’ed.

Again, I understand the importance of fsck, and I understand that it should be run regularly. However, I also think that there are legitimate reasons for users wanting to skip it on occasion, and that you should provide for these, *from pre-boot*, rather than forcing the user to hack the fstab or use tune2fs *post boot*.

Thanks

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