[Wolves] I installed kubuntu recently BUT.............

[Adam Sweet]

--- Bobby Singh <bs_wm at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Thanks all for all your responses.  
> Well kubuntu is trying to load up '.mdk modules'
> rather than it own ones.  I think its more likly to
> do
> with the way i config the bootloader.  I configed it
> in mandrake control centre using grub.  When you
> config through Kubuntu its MBR stops you accessing
> all
> your partitions.  Kubuntu is new so may have to wait
> for offical tryed and tested HOWTOs.  Well i am
> going
> to get my hands dirty (time to back-up all).

Its seems your system has got pretty confused. In the
nicest possible way, it's probably a user mistake. I
don't have experience of dual booting 2 Linux distros
on the same machine, but it should be ok so long as
you keep each installation with it's own set of
partitions (with the exception of /home which you
probably could share) and that you use one
installation to manage the boot loader, possibly
removing the bootloader from the other installation so
it doesn't overwrite the mbr in the event of version
update.

I'm not quite sure how you can boot into Kubuntu if
it's using the Mandrake / partition, but I would
recommend booting into Mandrake and making sure that
the Mandrake entries point at different partitions to
the Kubuntu entries. More to the point, see if you can
get the Kubuntu entries to point at the / partition of
the Kubuntu installation.

That should get you in the right direction. I can't
tell you how to do that, it's down to what
configuration of disks and partitions you have.

If and when you boot into Kubuntu after this, keep an
eye out for any kernel errors on boot as these will
help diagnose any further problems, you see any, look
at the files I mentiones earlier. Using the less
utility to look at them means that you can use the up
and down arrows to scroll through them.

In particular, try:

less /etc/fstab

to make sure that all of the disks and partitions in
your Kubuntu system are the ones you think they should
be.

Remember, hda is your primary master, hdb is primary
slave, hdc is secondary master, hdd is secondary slave
on a regular 2 channel ata motherboard which I'm
guessing you might be using. Partitions are numbered
from 1 upwards, so hdb1 is the first partition on your
primary slave disk. I won't bother going on about
logical partitions for now...

Grub uses a slightly different disk naming convention,
but I'm assuming Mandrake will have obscured this (I
haven't used it in a long time myself). You can tell
if it's using grub disk names as they start hd as
before but number the disks and partitions starting at
0 separated by a comma.

So a Linux disk name would be hda1 for the first
partition on the primary master, whereas for grub it
would be called hd0,0

Confused? Of course not ;) Just work out which naming
type it is using and then give the Mandrake boot
configuration program the right partition for your
Kubuntu installation, in the same format that it's
using.

> PS: Mandrake is my main distro but with the hype
> around ubuntu/kubutu i had to try it.  Besides i was
> thinking about changing to Debian before the hype. 
> I have version 3.0r3.  I may try this and do apt-kde
> for kde. Will i get similar problems with Debian as
> above (as kubuntu is based on Debian).

Until you have the hang of Kubuntu I would stick with
it. Debian will beat the hell out of anyone who isn't
ready for it, you would however learn a lot more about
Linux under the covers.

Hope I haven't confused the issue too much for you, I
tend to get carried away with explaining things.

Just try to get the boot information set up correctly
in Mandrake, then make sure /etc/fstab in Kubuntu
lists the correct partitions for your Kubuntu
installation and check the log files for errors.

Then report back :)

Ad

-- 

http://www.drinky.org.uk

http://blog.drinky.org.uk

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com