Help a Linux Nublet (Ubuntu)

Sid Meier's would be the same thing, just the full title. So it's the same game.

How can I add more workspaces?

EDIT:
I can't get Diablo II to run. When I try to run it, I get a dialog box stating:

UNHANDLED EXCEPTION:
ACCESS_VIOLATION (c0000005)

EDITRA:
Okay, Wine and Linux are confusing the smurf out of me, so I'm going to say smurf it for now. How do I go about installing Windows XP as a secondary OS?

EDITGA:
Alright, screw XP. I'm going to simply get my hands on an illegally downloaded legitimate copy of Vista and use that as a terribly boated form of Wine-for-idiots-like-me and do a dual-boot of Vista and Ubuntu.

Before you do that, you might want to try this:
Some people managed to fix that error in Diablo II by installing the latest nVidia drivers. To run the game, you must have WINE configured properly, as well. Run "winecfg" from a terminal. Windows version must be NT4 or higher. I'd set it to XP SP2. Also, create a cdrom drive letter (e.g. D:\) by clicking advanced, then setting the drive type to cdrom.

As for installing Vista, there are some things to be aware of. When you turn on your PC, the BIOS looks towards the boot sector of the first drive. The boot sector contains information (known as the bootloader) that enables your operating systems to be found and started. It's likely that you're currently using GRUB (Grand Unified Bootloader) to boot Linux. Windows uses a different bootloader to Linux, and the aggressive Windows installer likes to commandeer the entire partition, including the boot sector and install its own bootloader (winloader for Vista and NTLDR for XP) without preserving anything that's currently in a different bootloader. Basically, it assumes it's the only OS on the computer and destroys all other boot data.

So when you install Vista, it's going to put winloader there and it will be as if you no longer have Linux (except the disk space is still taken up :p). So there are ways to fix it - I'll tell you the easiest.

Ok, assume you have Linux installed and have just installed Vista.
- You need to boot from your Linux live CD, and start a terminal.
- You need to mount your Linux partition. You can likely use this command: "sudo mkdir /mnt/linux && sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/linux". The only thing that would change would be the "sda1" part, to match your actual Linux partition.
- You need to do what is called a "chroot". It basically allows you to jump from your live CD environment to your hard drive Linux installation. Here are the commands needed:

Code:

---

sudo mount -t proc /proc /mnt/linux/proc
sudo mount -o bind /dev /mnt/linux/dev
chroot /mnt/linux /bin/bash
source /etc/profile

---

- Then you need to mount your boot partition (if you have a separate one). "sudo mount /dev/sda2 /boot". Change /dev/sda2 to the correct boot partition.
- Then you need to reinstall grub. This is very simple; simply run "grub-install /dev/sda" where /dev/sda is the actual drive you installed Linux on. It should give you a message about Device.map, and give you some devices in parentheses of the form (hd0,1).
- Then you need to edit your fstab. This is the file which tells Linux where to put important directories at boot. Run the command "sudo nano /etc/fstab" to start the editing. Add this data at the bottom of the file:

Code:

---

title "Windows Vista"
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1

---

- Then reboot, and you should see a menu allowing you to choose which operating system to boot into.

If you post your partition table before formatting, I'll be able to make the instructions more accurate for your installation. You can get it using "fdisk -l" from a terminal. You're brave if you try this. It's unknown territory to many Linux users, but rest assured that the nature of Linux means anything that breaks can be fixed. If it won't boot, all we need to do is edit some files, basically. :p

Vista states that it can't be installed on my HDD because it isn't NTSF. How do I go about changing my HDD (or rather, part, since I only want around 30 gigs to be set aside for Vista's playground) to NTSF?


Also, here is what I get when I enter fdisk -I:

trevor@My-smurfing-Laptop:~$ fdisk -I
fdisk: invalid option -- I

Usage: fdisk [-b SSZ] [-u] DISK Change partition table
fdisk -l [-b SSZ] [-u] DISK List partition table(s)
fdisk -s PARTITION Give partition size(s) in blocks
fdisk -v Give fdisk version
Here DISK is something like /dev/hdb or /dev/sda
and PARTITION is something like /dev/hda7
-u: give Start and End in sector (instead of cylinder) units
-b 2048: (for certain MO disks) use 2048-byte sectors
trevor@My-smurfing-Laptop:~$

Oh, my bad, I should have clarified - It's

fdisk -l

Lowercase L. :p

Also, as far as resizing your partition goes, that could be a tricky - shrinking partitions has a few things to be aware of. Here is a simple description of how partitions work:

You can have 4 primary partitions on a disk, or 1-3 primary partitions and an extended one. The extended partition can contain additional partitions and is used because historically, disks were unable to contain more than 4 partitions.
Anyway, a partition is like a physical division halfway through the disk. You can think of it like a container, to hold data. The filesystem is the means to actually store the data. It essentially stores information about every file on the partition, enabling the OS to locate and perform operations on them.

The partition is the physical limit of one volume. The partition contains the filesystem, which contains file data. In 99.99999% of cases, the partition size is the same size as the partition size. However you may have different sizes if the filesystem or partition has been resized.

You may not store file data either outside a partition or a filesystem. When you grow a partition, that's fine, because you're extending the partition but leaving the filesystem intact. This means that you aren't encroaching on any part of the disk where files reside.
However, in the event of shrinking a partition to make room for another, you need to ensure that you shrink the filesystem as well as the partition, since you can't have a filesystem larger than it's container, or partition. It's like trying to fit 5 bottles of beer into one. So you need to shrink the filesystem, but the problem with this is that you don't know where the files are in the filesystem - You could be shrinking it down past some system files and then you simply lose them.

All that aside, you should be aware of that, but you don't have to deal with it all manually (you can if you want but I wouldn't recommend it :p). Use the tool "gparted" from the terminal (install with "sudo apt-get install gparted" if you don't have it already), and you should easily be able to shrink the partition down and format it as NTFS. :p

It says I need "root privileges" in order to run gparted (since it's a tool of mass destructions)...

Oh, just run "sudo gparted". Sometimes that might give you trouble, so you might need to do "DISPLAY=:0 sudo gparted" or even "DISPLAY=:1 sudo gparted".

Failing that, try "su -c 'gparted'" and finally "su" followed by "gparted". :p

Ah, thanks Face

EDIT: OMFG, WTF? I can't resize the drive I need to. It has this stupid lock on it or something.

I think the problem is that the partition you want to resize is mounted. Try doing the same thing from your Ubuntu live CD. I can't guarantee it'll work just like that, but it won't give you the same error. :p

Face, your advice was much appreciated, but I simply couldn't get it to work right - at the time. ubuntu felt the need to become hung up when scanning the mirror, and it wasn't until later that I realized I could ahve simply of disabled/disconnected my ethernet/wireless in order for ubuntu to move on and finsih its installation. So blegh on me.

However, I do want to extend a tremendous "OMFG I LOVE YOU BIG LONG TIME" to you for all you've done - in both this thread and the previous one. Even though not everything worked out perfectly, it's now up and going, and much of my Linux nubness was watered down by your watchful, helpful eye.posts.

So thanks.


And also thanks to all of the others that have bothered to post here as well.



And Vista, no matter how pretty you look or pretend to be, the fact that one of your updates smurfed my registry up so badly that I couldn't rename, restore, or remove files and folders from the Recycle Bin... I didn't like you already, and then you went and did that.

Luckily, the computer gods of the intertubes had already found a remedy for your piss-ass updates...



Oh, and ubuntu, I like you lots. If I didn't have a girlfriend, I would mount you immediately, har har har.




...someone shoot me.

*sniped*

No problem. I like a chance to be geeky. :p

Perhaps in the future you'll come back to Ubuntu. That's what I did when I first started using Linux, though my first distro was Red Hat (and a good reason not to stay with it :p). It's definitely something you should start off doing as an endeavour towards knowledge, rather than immediate productivity. :p

I'm still dual-booting with ubuntu, and may one day move completely over to it (when I understand WINE and other unfamiliar things found in Linux)

Oh you are! Awesome! :D I clearly skipped over these words:
[q=Nominus Experse]it's now up and going[/q]I must say, I'm impressed with how you've made it work for you. You haven't asked any dumb questions, so congrats on being resourceful and not demanding to be spoonfed like so many Linux noobs. :p

You can get XPee installed instead of Vista if you hate Vista. XP does recognize SATA drives no problem. What it doesn't grok from a direct-from-install-cd boot is AHCI. You can either put AHCI drivers for your hard disk on a USB key and use F6 during bootup to use those, or go into your BIOS and turn off AHCI. Depending on your BIOS, you may have to disable Flash Cache Module. Once XP is installed, download your drivers and you can turn AHCI back on.

Same thing happened to me with a new laptop. I needed to ditch Vista because of a bad gaming fps issue with the graphics card which I later learned could have been resolved with a simple hotfix instead of an hour-long XP install.

Also, Gentoo (or Sabayon) > Ubuntu. Ubuntu's nice, but not as nice as a portage distro.