ubuntu woes

I run ubuntu on all of my machines (about five ) and have used it on all of my macs as well (except for the oldworld ones)

you installed ubuntu on a small HDD probably, and ubuntu can seperate folders into individual partitions which make things like upgrades easier

if you use ext3 (basic linux filesystem), you can format drives like this

sudo mkfs.ext3 /dev/hdxx

where xx is location and partition of the drive

hda=Master Primary IDE
hdb=Slave Primart IDE
hdc=Master Sec IDE
hdd=Slave Sec IDE

SATA drives show up as SCSI drives, etc...

If you use ubuntu, I highly recommend two things:

> All files in one partition (option in setup)
>Using the whole drive for ubuntu

Also if you can, use the Desktop CD version as you can test before you install.

To use a second drive, first make sure it shows up in your BIOS. Then when Ubuntu boots up you can use dmesg from a terminal/command line to see if it's there, by using the info posted above. ie, use something like dmesg | grep hdb if you installed the drive as the Primary slave, dmesg | grep hdc if it's Secondary master (though your CD-ROM is most likely there) or dmesg | grep hdd if it's Secondary slave. If it spits out a few lines and the info looks like it's the drive you attached then you know Ubuntu can see it. If it was previously formatted to something Ubuntu can read it should show up in the menus under Places. If it's NTFS, you may want to go to Applications -> Add/Remove... and install NTFS Configuration Tool.

If you need to partition the drive you can install GPartEd which is a fairly nice partition editor. It's has some useful features like shrinking non-Journaled HFS+ partitions, among other things. If not use cfdisk, which is in Ubuntu by default. Then format it to the filesystem of choice by issuing the proper filesystem formatting command. You need to know the drive (hdX) and the partition number you want to format (hdxN), which is shown in cfdisk. So if you have a Primary slave drive and all it should have is one big ext3 partition, then you'd sudo cfdisk hdb and delete all paritions on it, if need be, and create a single large partition with a Linux FS type (generally type 83). Write the changes and reboot for good measure. Then do something like sudo mkfs.ext3 /dev/hdb1 if it's the first partition of the Primary slave drive.

Using GParted is a lot easier and is through a GUI, but most systems have cfdisk installed so it's good to know how to use it in a pinch.

Any recommendations on an ubuntu drive benchmarking utility?

hdparm

ok... built-in... cool... so, how's it work?

____
edit

nvrmind... I see...
sudo hdparm -tT /dev/hd

& I thank you!

It's also able to change many drive settings, including turning DMA modes on and off, which can be very useful when troubleshooting a system.

something else to do with formatting the drives. when i installed ubuntu, the drive permissions became "Owner: unknown; Permissions: read only", etc. that normal? i can change stuff around in my home folder, but it's a pain otherwise.

I've got no experience here. My main large 160GB ext3 drive is connected via FW to my mini, so OS X ignores most of the Linux permission settings. (I think)

i tried debian on one of my other hard drives in the computer today. it took 3 hours to install (install version that installs basic system and then gets the rest from the we), but it worked well from the 10 minutes i used it. glitchy mouse, but it's exactly like ubuntu except it has a TON of applications with all sorts of little codecs and such already installed! that, and it has a utility to format and mount hard drives for me. best of all, the computer completely shuts itself down with debian as opposed to ubuntu turning off the hard drives and leaving me to turn it off.

Your power issue is most likely an issue with the way they are setup to handle ACPI. You might check the setting in the Power Prefs, or check the laptopmode config file by hand. It handles power settings too.

For the mouse, is it USB or PS/2?

Ubuntu is geared more for a basic end user. Debian has many things that can easily harm a machine in unknowing hands (ie GPartEd installed by default)

well the mouse started working normally today. it's wireless, and i had it plugged in the usb 2.0 card, then i plugged it into the ps/2 with an adapter. worked fine either way, but at least now i have an extra port.

still had issues with formatting the second drive on debian. apparently something got screwed up with one of the drives (15 error with the slave plugged in, 21 with it unplugged). so i reinstalled on the master, and told it to format the slave as well. well the drive app didn't register any partitions on the slave. i'm supposing if i could just get it formatted somehow (still yet to see a linux os that does only formatting), then it might work without any issue. i can always try attaching it to my imac and running the partitioning tool on the os x install disc.

i still don't get a lot of this....
Can you load a linux OS on a mac? say a powermac quicksilver?
If you do, does it erase all your data?
Bit of a newbie here so give us a hand, cheers!

you have to reformat your hard drive to install linux. it has to partition the drive (or a partition you set for it) in a particular way. either way, everything is erased. the only way to avoid erasing everything is to install on a second hard drive, and then i believe software can switch between the two drives. of course, my pc doesn't do that, and i don't even want windows running on it.

i just hope installing on a newworld quicksilver is easier than installing on a wallstreet, because installing on the wallstreet was a miserable failure, not to mention a pain in the ass.

Modern versions of GPartEd can resize an HFS+ partition, so long as Journaling has been turned off from OS X first. Installing Linux to a NewWorld machine is not very tough at all. OldWorld is a PITA for sure.

trust me, it made me glad i was using my spare hard drive. of course, i don't think debian (i've since switched to that from ubuntu on the pc) takes to macs. it installed without any trouble every time, but the computer never recognized it. perhaps yellowdog which has been known to work on the wallstreet.

I'm running Debian 4 on a B&W G4 with no problem.

Peace,
Drew

correction: old world macs. i do have a newworld machine i can try it on, but that will soon be reincarnated as a picture frame and i think iphoto would be best for it.