[Wolves] Hello - first post from me !

[Adam Sweet]

--- Tim Childe <tim.childe.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello
> 
> I've finally got around to posting here, but I
> suppose I better
> introduce myself first !
> 
> After years of on and off attempts at Linux, I've
> decided to give it
> ago again.  Mainly due to some bloke dropping in at
> our college to
> talk at my students and saying how good Ubuntu was
> compared to the old stuff !!
> 
> More personal waffle, blah blah blah......
> 
> So anyway, I've installed Ubuntu, and it's going
> sooooooooo much
> better than my other attempts.

Yeah, Ubuntu is a great system and Linux distributions
 as a whole have come on leaps and bounds in the last
3 years.

> 1) GRUB insists on booting Ubuntu as default, but I
> need it to default
> to my Win98SE system.  My 4 year old only knows to
> hit the power
> button, wait, click on the big E !!

You could teach him/her what the Firefox icon looks
like, make a desktop shortcut and configure automatic
login. Though it's not so easy on Ubuntu to do
automatic login. I think this is probably something
Windows has over Linux, kids can just turn it on see
the desktop icons.

As a side note, I wonder why it's an E for Explorer
and not an I for Internet. More sense, less
branding...

> I've tried editing the entries in the options on
> startup, but they
> don't save.  Is there a file somewhere like boot.ini
> in NT ???

/boot/grub/menu.list

Change the 'default' option to be the number of the
entry in the list of boot options, starting from 0. My
default option is 0 because I boot Ubuntu by default,
I have a few other options (recovery mode, memtest
etc). My Windows entry is the 6th in the list, which
makes it 5 when counting from 0. So if your system
were mine, you would put:

default        5

You might have to issue the command:

grub-install

as root to write the changes. It's a good idea to do
this anyway to see if grub complains, so you can
change it again before you reboot.

> 2) Ubuntu doesn't mount my FAT drives.  I got this
> working with RH a
> couple of years ago.  I remember it was MOUNT
> something or other, and
> to make it automatic I put the lines in a file
> somewhere.  I've failed
> with my attempts at MOUNT, and can't remember the
> file even if I remember how to do it !!
> Without my FAT drives i have to boot Win98 to do my
> work - which defeats the object.
> 
> My system has 2 HDDs
> First has 3 partitions (C,D, & E in Windows)
> Second is just for Linux and has whatever Ubuntu did
> when it installed

Make the target directories for where you want to
mount them with the mkdir command

mkdir /mnt/winc /mnt/wind /mnt/wine

You'll need to be root to do it in /mnt and still as
root:

mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/winc

the rest should be /dev/hda2 for wind and /dev/hda3
for wine unless they are in a logical drive.

If you want to check your partition names:

cat /proc/partitions

ignore the ones without a number on the end, they're
just to signify the disks themselves rather than the
partitions on them. Also ignore the on 'dm' ones, I
think they're to do with RAID, whether you're using it
or not.

I think suitable entries for in /etc/fstab to make
these partitions mount on boot are:

/dev/hda1       /mnt/winc/      vfat    user,defaults 
0   0

and so on. The 6 fields are tab separated. The user
option means you can use the partition as a regular
user, rather than only as root. Read the mount man
page

man mount

and look for the vfat section for further options
available to you. I think the uid and gid options mean
files are available to a specific user, as opposed to
the 'user' option. Check them out. You can find out
your uid and gid from the Users and Groups dialog in
the System > Administration menu. They should both be
1000 if you are the only non-root user.

OK thats enough for now. If you're blinded by science,
ask for clarification.

Good to have you onboard.

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