[Cialug] Kubuntu install problem

[Todd Walton]

On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 9:01 AM,  <murraymckee at wellsfargo.com> wrote:
> I have two physical disks in my machine.
>        C: is 186Gigs with 7G unallocated
>        E: is 500G with 200 formatted as E: and 300 unallocated

It sounds like your problem is primarily with GRUB.  But you might
consider just reinstalling from scratch.  If you do, use Kubuntu 8.04.

I'm not sure what the screens look like or what words it uses, but you
can tell the installer to use your unallocated 300G of space and have
it create its own partitions so you don't have to think about it.
This is true for both 8.04 and the version you have.

Also you'll probably do well, at this early stage, to understand the
way Linux labels disks.  In the Windows world every partition has a
letter assigned to it.  In Linux they're labeled something like
/dev/hda or /dev/sda.  "/dev" means device.  They all start with that
by default.  "hd" means IDE disk, "sd" means SCSI disk, and "a" means
it's the first disk.  So your disks listed above are probably:

/dev/hda: 186Gigs with 7G unallocated
/dev/hdb: 500G with 200 formatted and 300 unallocated

Or /dev/sda and /dev/sdb if they're SCSI.  Then each partition on a
disk will be indicated by a number after the name of the drive.  Your
500G partition will be called /dev/hdb1 and the 300G will be chopped
up into /dev/hdb2, /dev/hdb3, and so on.

You can see this by booting into a Live CD (or your own install if you
get it going!) and typing, as root, "fdisk -l".  That lists all of
your drives and their partitions.  This method of labelling turns out
to be a little more flexible than the Windows way.

-todd