Unetbootin | Ubuntu 10.10 & 11.04

Tonight I figured I would try an experiment on using unetbootin to install 10.10 dvd image that equated to over 4.2 gigabytes which was just a bit to large for my 4 gig usb disk and I would rather not burn yet another dvd image and waste one more disk on what would otherwise be a temporary situation. For a test operating system, which was my objective with this situation. Which warrants by itself an explanation, as previously I had setup a triple boot that included Windows 7, Ubuntu 11.04 and Ubuntu 10.10 using standard practices.

Now this was setup over two disks one being 80 gig and the other 160 gig with numerous partitions over both disks for data and documents. Worked well for awhile that is until within the last few days it appears that 160 gig drive ended up dying as it has been inaccesible since. The end result and the way to finish up this thought is since then I only have a total of about 100 gigs over two drives now without the 160 which held windows 7 and it's data. I thought it appropiate that it would be the Windows 7 disk that died while the Ubuntu disks have survived. Yet even still I reset the system to now run Ubuntu 11.04 and Ubuntu 10.10 over dual boot.

The message is either the disk was in itself bad or something to do with the seemingly constant errors on windows 7 using Nvidia could have had something to do with it. The drive itself was supposed to be a replacement for what I thought was a messed up drive. As that is also part of it as the history of the drive is unknown or how long it has been since it was new. Along with any other prooblems the previous owner had with it. Taking that into account may explain this particular problem, but to keep it simple I would rather say it was the Windows 7 Install that caused the problems.

To bring this post back on track the eventual result was that it was necessary to do a clean install, starting with 11.04 which though relatively stable is nowhere near stable enough to be used on a production machine considering it does not officially reach a stable stage until April of this year. Yet I figured I would give it a try at this point in the development, which in itself should be a separate post that I will be posting at http://ubuntu101.wordpress.com In the not to distant future. After getting 11.04 instaleed using the standard wizardI realized that a few key componets that I needed were not yet available on that distribution, such as Virtualbox and a few others, not to mention some of the tools I use to write these posts on my HTC Wizard aka Cingular 8125. One particular tool that I have found works appropiately is My Mobiler using Wine which is a Windows Emulator to run apps specific to that operating system and supports a majority of applications but not all.

After the initial install was done, I remembered unetbootin that enables a faster and simpler way to install popular distributions by adding a new entry to the boot menu and enabling you to install it as it is just like a live cd without the need to burn it saving a cd and time. I used this amazing tool to install ubuntu 10.10 as a minimal installation with the very basics which I later found out was truly minimal, in the sense it was not quite enough for the system I am used too. Unetbootin made things much simpler besides the addition of necessary packages to make it more like the initial install of Ubuntu by adding a series of packages using Synaptic once I had set up the needed desktop system used aptitude and apt. Both of which are, terminal based programs that are effective when you know how to use them.

This post has gone longer then I had expected it will eiether be continued at;

- ubuntu101.wordpress.com
- ubuntu1012k9.blogspot.com
Stay Tuned.
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Raymond Marr

http://blog.homeofknatchwa.net
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