Replies

Thank you, Gadget. I tried creating an image file to our corporate server and crashed it. IT wasn’t happy. What is happening is that Windows is continuously polling the drive and reporting that it needs to be formatted. I think, as a result, the connection is momentarily lost and I get continuous disk read errors. Appreciate your input.
Best regards,
Val

Hi vrisinger,

For data recovery I generally try to avoid using Windows because it tends to default to “needs to be formatted” rather than try and work through/around errors.

I would also take apart the external drive and try to read it with a USB-to-SATA adapter or directly via a SATA connection. Based on the symptoms, it’s possible that the USB-to-SATA bridge in the original enclosure has become flaky. Windows normally doesn’t disconnect from an unformatted drive unless the disk controller interface is bad or there are other mechanical problems.

Do you have a spare drive with enough space to hold a disk image of your 1.5TB Seagate drive? If you do, and are interested in trying the data recovery a different way, I can post instructions for using a bootable Linux CD/USB drive.

Chung

sh10443,
Unfortunately no. It was just an external storage device. Appreciate the response. Latest post mentioned TESTDISK. I’m going to try that next. After that I may use the drive for target practice.

Hi vrisinger,

Because TestDisk needs to write changes to the drive during the recovery, try PhotoRec (http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec) first.

PhotoRec is written by the same author and is very useful in situations where a file system on a drive has been corrupted. It uses a forensics technique called “file carving” to recover files from a disk. The downside with file carving is that it’s generally not possible to restore the original folder and file names, but other tools can be used to rename files using any available metadata contained in the files.

good luck,
Chung

fburg[INDENT]Chung – thanks for all the input![/INDENT]

You’re welcome.

I understand there’s no need to reboot. But running Windows under a VM or in a different partition seems to still require familiarity with something she’s not familiar with – ie Windows. No? I think ease of use vs rebooting are 2 different things.

Yes, even with a VM she’ll need to get accustomed to the Windows UI, but not necessarily the whole Windows environment. VMware has a feature called “Unity Mode”. and VirtualBox has a “Seamless Mode” (it’s been a while since I used Parallels so I forget what they call theirs). In a nutshell, it’s a way to run an application (e.g. MS Access) without the rest of the Windows desktop. When the application is minimized it turns into an icon on the host desktop. The application behaves as though it’s running outside of the VM.

Not sure I get this. Why am I building/testing a VM on my Windows PC? I have Access so why can’t I work w/o a VM on my machine?

You won’t need the VM during development but you’ll more than likely need to help your friend out with using Windows including patching and other unavoidable maintenance so it’ll be much easier to build, test and then copy a working VM for your friend.

This sounds great but I don’t quite understand it. With my Excel spreadsheets, I end up having to protect the sheets and cells that shouldn’t be touched and also color the cells. Of course, when I have to make a change, I forget that something is protected. So I’d like to understand this a lot better! What does the Access run-time do that prevents my friend from making inadvertent changes? (Of course, I assume, I still have to do lots of error checking.)

The MS Access runtime doesn’t allow changing the design of the database. In a way, it makes an Access database behave more like a self-contained application. There are fewer menu items and other things to deal with, and as an added bonus, the runtime is free to download and use so there’s no need to purchase a license (e.g. Amazon sells Access 2013 for $114 per computer).

I should also mention that the DB has to run on several MACs: she has one at home, one at the studio, and her daughter also can enter info.

Do I hear a server-based solution? We’ve discussed this and she’s really not in favor of it.

By the way, there are server/web-based solutions for dance-studio management but they don’t do some of the things my spreadsheets do, do other things she doesn’t want, and cost too much.

While I was writing up a reply I had done a little searching and found some of those web-based solutions. I figured that the tailor-made spreadsheet was likely a better fit.

Any info on the chances that the DB will need to be used on multiple computers at the same time? If that’s not an issue, using Dropbox or some other similar cloud storage solution might be a viable solution. Use the desktop sync client to keep the database file backed up and mirrored between all of the Macs.

But it wasn’t clear if any of these, including LO Basic, can access a program’s object model. If not, to me, this is a clear advantage to Access with VBA.

Also, I read a comparison of the development community for Open Office vs LO (can’t find the link). It didn’t really seem that either’s scripting language were that good. While LO seems to have active development whereas OO was less active, I didn’t come away with a good feeling that LO’s Basic was very useful.

The key thing to keep in mind is that both OOo and LO support multiple scripting languages in addition to a form of Basic. The Access2Base extension might help with the learning curve and help answer a few questions:
[INDENT]http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center/access2base
http://access2base.com/[/INDENT]

(it’s now bundled with the newer versions of LO.)

Desktop Database: FoxPro, LibreOffice Base, Microsoft Access
Database Application: FileMaker, 4D

I didn’t quite get the distinction between these 2 approaches.[/QUOTE]

Sorry, I couldn’t think of a better label than “Database Application”. Both FileMaker and 4D offer multi-user client/server configurations that support desktop (via a runtime package) and web-based clients. FoxPro, LO Base and MS Access are all-in-one solutions that are suited for desktops. For multiple users, the database files are often placed on network shares (a configuration that Microsoft discourages for both FoxPro and Access). FileMaker and 4D straddle the line between desktop databases and database servers.

In a database application, formatting (aka. presentation) is handled separately from the data.

I assume you’re talking about reports for presentation (or, worse case, queries).[/QUOTE]

Yes, reports and queries but also on forms.

Chung

Hi All,

Thanks for the responses.

From what I’ve seen from the responses:

Hi Fred,

There’s already been great input from others so I thought I’d fill in some of the blanks and offer some additional suggestions…

– Questions 3-5, per my original post, on VMs vs Partitioning: thanks for the recommendation of Parallels (never heard of it). But I had spoken to a number of people who recommended a partitioning solution (need a copy of Windows in either case). So would appreciate anyone weighing in on that option.

Many folks recommend partitioning because they often don’t understand virtualization so they naturally go with what they know. There are certain instances where partitioning is a better solution such as when working with bus interfaced hardware that requires direct access, but for general uses like running software, a VM is better both for user-friendliness and user convenience:

[*]With partitioning, a user needs to reboot from his/her preferred operating system into another OS that might not be as familiar. With a VM there’s no need to reboot.
[*]With a VM, it’s easy to copy-n-paste and share files between the host and guest.
[*]A VM can be easily backed up and moved from computer to computer by simply copying the folder containing the VM’s files.

Parallels is an excellent option. VMware Fusion (http://vmware.com/) is also a great choice and competitively priced. But before purchasing either one, give VirtualBox (https://virtualbox.org/) a try. Parallels is for the Mac (there used to be a Linux version). VMware Fusion is compatible with VMware Workstation/Player for Windows and Linux but the GUI isn’t the same and there’s no VMware Player for Mac. VirtualBox uses a similar GUI for Windows, Macs and Linux which will make it convenient for you to build/test a VM on your own Windows computer and copy it to your friend’s Mac whenever it needs to be updated. Having similar GUIs will also make it easier to help your friend over the phone.

If you decide to go with a VM running Windows, consider using Microsoft’s free Access Runtime (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=39358) instead of purchasing the full Office for Windows. There’ll be less risk of accidental changes to the database app and the VM will have a much smaller disk footprint.

– I’ve considered downloading LO Windows to my PC, where the development would get done. My concerns with this approach are:
— how similar Base is to Access in terms of development. I don’t want to have to go thru a large learning curve (hence the original questions on VMs or partitioning).

Conceptually, the process is the same: tables, relationships, queries, scripting, forms and reports. LO Base supports SQL and so does MS Access (for the most part). The difference in scripting language(s) is likely the biggest hurdle.

— whether Base has some kind of scripting language like VBA. I saw on the LO site at https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Feature_Comparison:_LibreOffice_-_Microsoft_Office that LO has a version of Basic but its not clear it’s object oriented to the LO components. For example, in Access, I have written code to check for a valid zip code entered in a form for adding a new person (anything not 5 or 9 digits, etc); this code is automatically invoked when making an entry into the zip_code field.

LO Base supports more scripting languages than MS Access so if you already know C++, Python, Java and/or CLI it might be an easier transition compared to learning LibreOffice Basic.

BHardy:
– I see that Filemaker Pro is available for both Windows and OS X, as is LO, so that’s a plus. I’ve heard of it going back to ancient times of PC history.
– I noticed you didn’t include Forms in your hierarchy; also not sure where macro scripting languages fits into your hierarchy.
– I probably need to go down to at least reports in your hierarchy unless scripting goes down to DB Mgmt tools or 3GL support

So I’d say that I need the following:
– a way to import an existing Excel table to use in the DB. If I lose some formatting along the way, I don’t think that’s a big deal.
– something that works on both Windows and MAC that includes scripting

LO definitely fulfills the two requirements above. FileMaker offers a free trial but might be a bit pricey for your friend’s application. Another database application tool is 4D (http://4d.com/). Here’s how I would categorize the various database options:[INDENT]
Desktop Database: FoxPro, LibreOffice Base, Microsoft Access
Database Application: FileMaker, 4D
Database Server: DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL

[/INDENT]
I consider FileMaker and 4D as the halfway point between a desktop database and a database server. Both are more powerful and flexible than MS Access and LO Base, but don’t scale a well as the standalone database servers.

What worries me about LO Base are the 2 entries I see in the comparison chart:
– “Importing data sources (tables) from within the database application” having to be done thru Calc given that the existing “DB” is in Excel (so Excel to Calc to Base?)

Chances are that the spreadsheet tables aren’t directly suitable for importing into a database table (e.g. missing column headers, no primary key column, etc.), so going from Calc to Base is actually less complicated because Calc supports a long list of file formats and import options. Within Calc, the tables can be massaged into proper tables for Base.

– “Imported table from spreadsheets – keep fields format” which is “not supported” but probably not a big deal if I only have to reset the format once

Excel and Calc record both the value and the format in a spreadsheet cell (e.g. a value of “1.00” could be displayed as “$1.00”) while database tables record the value and data type. During import LO Base does try to auto-recognize the data type for a column but it’s limited to numbers and text. In a database application, formatting (aka. presentation) is handled separately from the data.

access-mdb

Base isn’t a database like Access, which is self-contained.

I’ve always thought that might actually be a bad feature of Access, if I understand this “feature.” So my understanding of this is if I have 2 “identical” spreadsheets in terms of structure and I want them each to be an Access table (eg, one table/spreadsheet is “2014 results” and another is “2015 results”) but I’ve defined queries that operate independently of which source provides my data, then with Access I have to either jump thru hoops to switch spreadsheets for the table source (and 2016 is not that far out) or I need to define 2 Access files and switch the table in the copy. In my mind, what I’d want is something like Word’s Mail Merge where I’ve defined a report with “merge fields” (which are independent of source since they all contain the same fields) and I just have to tell Word which Excel file to use this time (or not make any change if it’s the same as last time).

In my case, my friend has a “Master File” for the 2015-2016 school year (in Excel bcs that’s what she knows), had one for 2014-2015, and will have one for 2016-2017. So if having the table source NOT part of the DB is what you’re talking about, I think that’s actually a plus.[/QUOTE]

By default, LO Base stores the entire desktop database in a single file much like MS Access does. Likewise, it’s possible to reference external tables such as ones hosted by a database server (MS Access calls these “attached tables”).

But now that opens a question to my Access-constrained mind: For this application, there would be several tables (in Access-speak) since not all the data is needed all the time. For example, the Master Student file contains basic info about the student: name, address, city. The student takes several classes (right now, 16 cols are devoted to classes in that flat Excel spreadsheet since no one takes more than that but that was just increased from 12). Per Access-speak, I’d have a separate Class table with a record for each class that each student takes. I’d also probably have a table for Class-Definitions (day of week, time, duration, cost, studio, type of dance, etc.). Can Base handle this multiple tables or is there no real need for it?

Yes, LO Base can easily handle multiple tables. Please correct me if I’m misunderstanding, but it sounds like you’re asking about database normalization? If so, then it’s a good idea to try to do that whenever possible. There are times when it’s alright to bend the rules a bit to avoid having overly complicated database relationships.

And if I do have all those tables set up for 2015-2016 somehow, how do I start over for 2016-2017? For example, looking at the Class-Definitions, the Mon 6pm in Studio 1 might be for tap for an hour this year; next year that same slot might not even exist (there’s a 5:30-6:30 jazz class in Studio 1) or the 6-6:45 slot on Monday in Studio 1 might be for ballet. Do I have to create the Class-Definitions table OUTSIDE of Base? While doing so might not be hard, I’d want to create some code to do some sanity checking – for example, a class in not longer than 90 minutes (or whatever max is set) and that the type of class is a valid one (not mistyped).

Without seeing your friend’s current Excel spreadsheets it’s difficult to picture how the various tables relate to each other, but personally, I would avoid managing separate tables for each class year. Instead, use a key to identify the year that a record represents unless the database schema will change a lot from year to year.

Rather than dealing with user typos, use drop-down lists of valid choices whenever possible. The lists can be generated from database tables for easier updating.

I think that’s about it. Appreciate all the suggestions and help.

Fred

Another option to consider if you’d prefer to stick with MS Access is Access web solutions for SharePoint. It might be overkill, but it does offer a way to run a MS Access application in the cloud. Your friend could use any modern web browser and Internet access without having to install any additional software on her Mac:

[INDENT]http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/22231.sharepoint-online-a-no-code-solution-to-create-and-customize-access-service-app-using-access-2013.aspx[/INDENT]

Chung

Hi. Can anyone here suggest a backup program that:

[*]can backup (not just file sync) to a network drive or FTP location
[*]wait silently if/when the target location is not available/accessible, until the location is available to perform the backup, without popping up error messages (or prepare the backup files at a temporary location and then transfer them when the location is available)?
[*]is suitable for a home networked environment (I’m happy to pay money for software licences, but don’t want to buy more hardware or convert my desktop computer to Windows Server)

Scenario: My wife is a part-time teacher, and has a personal laptop that she uses for both professional and personal purposes, but at home she might only use it 1-3 times per week not every day. We have a NAS at home (QNAP, lower end of their range) that is on 24×7 and that we use for backups of our desktop computer. I’d like to set her laptop up to do regular automatic regular backups when she’s at home (and hence can access the NAS), but I don’t want it popping up error messages if she’s using the laptop at school where our NAS is unreachable.

If it has to be manually triggered when the laptop is at home, then it’s unlikely to be done regularly or consistently.
Because the NAS is generally on 24×7 at home, so it should be ok to use “we’ve connected to the home network” as part of the trigger. Her work doesn’t offer any backup/recovery or file storage.

I’ve found one or two file-synchronisation tools that look like they’d do the job. But for a few reasons I really want this to be a proper backup solution, not just file sync. It occurred to me that I could do file-sync to an area on our desktop computer and then trigger a backup from there, but that seems inefficient.

Can anyone offer any ideas for suitable solutions? Thanks!

(If it makes any difference: wife’s laptop is Win8.1 but will move to Win10 eventually, has separate accounts for admin/work/personal use. Desktop computer is Win7. NAS is a QNAP TS-212E with network file shares and FTP capability. Home network is usual mix of gigabit ethernet and wireless.)

Hi Paddles,

I recommend checking out CrashPlan (http://crashplan.com/). Although CrashPlan offers a paid cloud storage service, they make it a point of encouraging users to also make use of local backups. The backup software can be used for free and only requires registering a name and email address to receives status alerts for backups.

The backup software is completely silent so there are no pop-ups or other distractions. The default setting sends an email alert whenever no backup was successful for 3 days and a status report once every 3 weeks.

On your wife’s laptop, map a network share from the QNAP and set it to auto-connect, then configure a target folder as a backup destination. There can be multiple destinations so you could backup to the QNAP, a portable USB drive and/or even the desktop computer.

Backups can be optionally encrypted and the default setting keeps multiple versions of changed files.

Chung

At the risk of showing my age…

The old school solution to a situation like this was printer emulation. Many printers used to explicitly emulate a different make and model of printer. The price was usually a loss of certain advanced features, and what was worse (from an IT perspective) was that it was never clear if the printer was functioning in native versus emulation mode. Unless you checked and knew how to check.

HP is still a very popular printer manufacturer and Brother distinctly less so. Could the Brother printer emulate an HP printer? If so, you then tap in to the HP printer support the WOW PC has, including drivers and all the rest.

The downside is, I’ve not seen much published on printer emulation in YEARS. Though I’ve been out of the line of work that dealt with this topic for a very long time.

Nowadays most printers (especially laser printers) speak PCL and/or PostScript and use a USB interface, so fortunately, printer emulation generally isn’t needed.

The USB specification has a “printer class” that defines how a connected printer communicates with a host computer. Printer drivers might include support for extra features such as paper handling, toner saving, print quality, etc. The drivers will also include the printer parameters for the unprintable area, print resolution, and so on.

For basic printing, HP’s LaserJet III PCL driver will work with a lot of laser printers models. PostScript is even more portable than PCL because a PPD describes a printer.

I typed as root in the command line:
sfdisk -A -f /dev/sda1
and this is the output

My bad, I made a typo…

The “1” at the end shouldn’t have been included:

[INDENT]sfdisk -A /dev/sda[/INDENT]

Thanks for all your help, Chung.

You’re welcome.

I’ve looked at the various “Carbonite” type off site backups.
I have a Windows Home Server and want to have an off site backup.

I have about 3TB to back up – would Amazon S3 or Google backup be worth considering? I would do a full back up and then an incremental back up daily.

It’ll depend a lot on the available budget and network bandwidth (for the initial full backup and size of the incremental backup sets).

For storage cost, the biggest difference between Amazon S3 and Google Drive is that Amazon charges for transfers (up/down) and directory listings so there’s no fixed monthly pricing. A quick comparison:
[INDENT]Google Drive
[/INDENT]
[INDENT=2]Capacity: 10 TB
Storage Type: n/a
Monthly Cost: $99.99
Notes: Next lowest tier is 1 TB.[/INDENT]
[INDENT]
Amazon S3[/INDENT]
[INDENT=2]
Capacity: 3 TB
Storage Type: Glacier Storage
Monthly Cost: $30.00
Notes: “Glacier Storage” is the least expensive plan, trading slow access to files for data recovery in exchange for a flat rate storage cost. Monthly cost doesn’t include access fees.[/INDENT]
[INDENT]
Amazon S3

[/INDENT]
[INDENT=2]Capacity: 3 TB
Storage Type: Reduced Redundancy Storage (RRS)
Monthly Cost: $71.20
Notes: Monthly cost doesn’t include access fees.[/INDENT]

TomJ‘s suggestion of Amazon’s other cloud storage service called Cloud Drive (https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/unlimited) for $59.99/year is a good one. It’s much more cost effective than both S3 and Google Drive because there are no storage tiers and access fees. The downside is that the overall reviews are mediocre because the backup client is barebones, especially compared to the competition.

Also for $59.99/year, is CrashPlan (https://crashplan.com/). It covers unlimited storage for 1 computer including external drives. The backup client is very nice and it uses deduplication (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_deduplication) and compression to reduce storage requirements and network bandwidth.

Uploading 3 TB of data could take several months. For home Internet connections, upload speeds are often much slower than download speeds. It’s also a good idea to check on any data caps from your ISP. For example, AT&T has a 250 GB/month data cap (going over it could result in a notice and account cancellation). Amazon and Google don’t offer a “seeding” service, but CrashPlan does (https://support.code42.com/CrashPlan/Latest/Backup/Seeded_Backup). For a one-time fee of $124.99, it’s not cheap, but it would reduce the initial backup by at least 1 TB (due to deduplication and compression, it might actually hold more than 2 TB of data).

Chung

Hi,

Following the recent article about Linux, I thought I’d install it on an old desktop machine I have.

Having looked into the various Linux systems, I decided on Ubuntu.

The problem is that the installation went okay, but having installed the OS, I can log in, but when I try to actually do anything, e.g. enter something in a cell in the Open Office spreadsheet, as soon as I press the “Enter” key, I get a blank screen, and the only thing I can do is unplug the machine, as it won’t respond to anything else.

I hope this makes some sort of sense, and wondered:

a) If anyone else has come across this issue, and

b) If anyone has any idea as to how to resolve it?

Thank you.

It definitely sounds like a video driver problem. Try this…

[*]Repeat the steps that cause the screen to go blank.
[*]Press key combination [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [F2] to access virtual console #2 (aka. “tty2”).

If you can get to a virtual console, then the computer isn’t hung, which is good. Next…

[*]Log on at the command prompt.
[*]Grab some info about the system by running the following commands:

[INDENT]lsmod > /tmp/lsmod.txt

lspci > /tmp/lspci.txt

dmesg > /tmp/dmesg.txt

cp /var/log/Xorg.0.log /tmp/
[/INDENT]

If the graphical interface isn’t stable enough to use Firefox to post the log files, assuming the computer isn’t so old it doesn’t have USB ports…

[*]Switch back to the graphical desktop: [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [F7]
[*]Plug in a flash drive (the file manager will automatically start up).
[*]On the left under Devices, click Computer and navigate to the tmp directory in the left pane.
[*]Copy the log files to the flash drive.
[*]Click the eject symbol to the right of the flash drive.

If even that’s not an option…

[*]Switch back to the virtual console: [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [F2]
[*]Assuming that the flash drive is the only removable media plugged in, run the following commands except hold off pressing [Enter] on the second command:

[INDENT]cd /tmp

cp lsmod.txt lspci.txt dmesg.txt Xorg.0.log /me
[/INDENT]

To save a bunch of typing, tap the [Tab] key 3 times to complete the second command. The second command will finish up with the pattern /media/username/volume_name/. For example, if your login name is “peterlg” and the volume label on the flash drive is “KINGSTON”, the line would look like this:

[INDENT]cp lsmod.txt lspci.txt dmesg.txt Xorg.0.log /media/peterlg/KINGSTON/[/INDENT]

Hit [Enter] to copy the files to the flash drive.

[*]Eject/Unmount the flash drive:

[INDENT]umount /me[/INDENT]

As before, tap the [Tab] key 3 times to complete the second command. Hit [Enter].

If you could post the log files it would help with diagnosing the exact problem. There’s usually a suitable fix, but occasionally some older (and some newer) computers have funky hardware that there might require a compromise (e.g. no 3D graphics acceleration).

Chung

My mother (90 years old) purchased a “Wow all in one computer” from the people associated with the AARP about a year ago. This computer runs on a version of Linux. Unfortunately they have crippled the system to such an extent that it can only use an HP Inkjet printer.

How can I get the piece of junk to use a Brother back and white laser?

I have worked with the command line on Windows with the help of people telling me what to do

I have VERY LIMITED tech skills, however I can follow very detailed step by step instructions if everything is put in the proper order as if you were instructing a first time computer user. I would also have to be told how to even get to the command prompt on this computer.

My mother and I would be most appreciative if you could help us.

Looking over the packages for Tiny Core Linux, I see that it’s using CUPS (https://cups.org) for printing services. Given how popular CUPS is (Apple also uses it for OS X and eventually bought the rights to the code), it’s not likely that the folks at WOW! Computer would replace it with something else.

One of the neat features of CUPS is that it has both a command-line and web interface. There’s a chance that the web interface hasn’t been disabled so start the web browser and paste/type the following web address:

[INDENT]http://localhost:631/[/INDENT]

If for some weird reason there’s an error that says “host not found” or something similar, try it like this:

[INDENT]http://127.0.0.1:631/[/INDENT]

CUPS is usuallly paired up with Foomatic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foomatic). There are thousands of printer models in the database (http://openprinting.org/printers) and Brother printers are particularly well supported given their popularity with Linux users so you most likely don’t need to install any additional drivers or system packages.

The web interface is pretty easy to navigate. There are wizards for adding, modifying and deleting printers. The unknown is whether the default login has enough permissions to make the necessary changes.

Based on the screenshots on the WOW! Computer website, I doubt there’s a menu/shortcut to get to a terminal window for a command prompt. The virtual consoles in Linux are also likely to have been disabled, but it’s worth trying if the web interface for CUPS isn’t an option.

Chung

Chung,
Quite an extensive reply with a lot of observations. Thanks. I will try and answer some of the questions but will get back to some of them later.

I am self taught in what I do and not very knowledgeable in a lot of areas. (71 years old)

From personal experience, I think people who are self taught tend to be better at computing then many who have a formal degree.

The boot loader is Grub legacy. I prefer it over Grub2 since no one uses my computers but me. When I install a new distro I just chain load it from the grub menu.

Oh yeah, GRUB legacy was much easier to manually edit the configuration. I still use LILO on some of my systems.

I have used virtual box some in the past but never studied it or learned enough about it to be comfortable trying anything but the default settings. And sometimes it didn’t seem to work with the default settings.

Earlier versions of VirtualBox weren’t as polished as it is now so things are a lot better. One of the nice things is that PC virtual machines run a real BIOS so it’s basically like working with a real computer and all the hardware that goes with it, but in a virtual world. From your previous posts, I have a feeling that you’ll end up liking it even more than multi-boot.

When I look at the partitions in the kde partition manager, I too notice that there are two partitions flagged as boot. Grub Menu.lst is located on /dev/sda6. If I remove one of those flags, which one and what is the best way to go about it?

Because you’re using GRUB as your boot loader, there’s a small bit of code in the MBR located on /dev/sda. It’s enough to bootstrap the boot loader so it can access /dev/sda6 for the rest of the files needed to bring up the boot menu. From there, GRUB can chain load any of the other configured boot partitions.

The active/boot flag on /dev/sda6 isn’t needed. Most of the common partitioning operations can be done faster via a command-line so I would use the “sfdisk” (most Linux distributions have it installed by default). To fix the active/boot flag all in one pass:

[INDENT]sfdisk -A /dev/sda1[/INDENT]

From the sfdisk manpage, the “-A” (or –active) option says “Make the indicated partition(s) active, and all others inactive.” This will clear the flag for every partition except the first one.

I have used gparted, easus in windows and another one in Windows to manipulate the partitions. Amazingly, everything still works.

Even after the PC BIOS has been around for more than 30 years, partitions and booting is still part science and part magic.

Given the vintage of the OptiPlex 960 and the fact that the first partition starts at sector 63, there hasn’t been a need to deal with sector alignment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Format). Lots of fun! :rolleyes:

Since I started this thread, I have installed Linux Mint Mate, and Makulu. Gparted lets me increase the logical partition from the unallocated space.

I probably should do like you said and include everything past the windows partitions in the extended partition and re-install what I want. Thoughts for another day

Thanks again,

My main thing that I use this 64 bit system for is Windows 7, Quickbooks, and Excel. My day-to-day computing that I do is done on a 32 bit system with PCLOS KDE as the main distro. For me the 32 bit system seems a little quicker. I have several distros on the 32 but system as well as Window XP. I keep them updated but just like to keep learning and seeing what is out there in the Linux world. The only reason that I bought the 64 bit system was it was a decent price and came with Windows 7 already installed as well as the installation disks. I have a couple of Quickbook customers that had Win 7.

Generally speaking, 32-bit is definitely faster on older computers. 64-bit apps are larger so they require more disk and memory I/O. Even though Intel’s Core 2 Duo processor is native 64-bit, disk I/O is the main bottleneck. Of course one big downside to 32-bit is being limited to 4 GB of RAM, with the actual available RAM hovering closer to 3.4 GB after video overlays, etc.

In case you’re interested, there are several community run repositories of ready-to-use virtual machines of many popular Linux distributions for VirtuaBox:

[*]http://virtualboxes.org/
[*]https://virtualboximages.com/
[*]http://sourceforge.net/projects/virtualboximage/files/

Have fun!
Chung

Here is what Chung asked for. Sorry for the delay in answering.

It’s no problem.

fdisk -l /dev/sda

I put your partition table dump in

Code:

 tags to preserve the formatting for easier reading:

[CODE]Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xb9715f43

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *          63     4176899     2088418+   7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2         4176900   265538384   130680742+   7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3       265538392   349429814    41945711+   7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda4       349433793   544327679    97446943+   f  W95 Ext’d (LBA)
/dev/sda5       349433856   377450495    14008320   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6   *   377452544   408918015    15732736   83  Linux
/dev/sda7       408918573   433963844    12522636   83  Linux
/dev/sda8       433963908   516939569    41487831   83  Linux
/dev/sda9       516941824   544327679    13692928   83  Linux

A few observations about the partition table…

[*]Technically, there should only be one partition marked active/bootable at a time. Having more than one can cause problems because the BIOS assumes that there is only one default partition so it’s best to avoid it.
[*]The extended partition (/dev/sda4) ends at sector 544,327,679 instead of being close to 976,773,168 (for various reasons, it won’t always be exactly on the last sector). Unfortunately, this limits the sum of all the logical partitions to ~97GB.
[*]It’s odd that except for the 1st and 2nd partition, the remaining partitions have unallocated sectors between them.

I suspect that there are enough errors that the graphical partitioning tools (usually based on GNU Parted) in Ubuntu, Mint and Fedora are deciding that it’s too risky to try resizing the existing partitions to make room for more partitions. Disk partitioning is a complicated process so the tools err on the side of caution.

Options…

[*]Many years ago, Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora and other Linux distributions moved away from mounting partitions based on static device names (e.g. /dev/hda1, /dev/hdb3, /dev/sda1, /dev/sdb1) to referring to partitions based on their file system labels, and then to the current practice of using UUIDs so even if you reordered the partitions they would all still boot just fine. In a nutshell:

[*]Backup the existing logical partitions. (Acronis, Partimage or another cloning tool that supports EXT2, EXT3 and/or EXT4 file systems is ideal.)
[*]Resize the extended partition to include the remainder of the disk.
[*]Restore the Linux installations from backups.

[*]Delete the existing extended partition, create a new extended partition that occupies all the free space, reinstall PCLOS and Sparky Linux plus any additional Linux distributions you’re interested in.
[/LIST]
A couple of questions…

[*]What’s the name of the bootloader? (e.g. XOSL, GAG, GRUB, loadlin, Acronis OS Selector, Windows Boot Manager)
[*]What partition tool(s) were used to create the current partitions?

On a related note…

Based on your interest in trying out many Linux distributions, virtualization (e.g. VirtuaBox – http://virtualbox.org/) might be very useful.

Unlike multi-boot:

[*]There’s zero risk of inadvertently making your primary OS unbootable.
[*]Provides better isolation between OSes — it’s more difficult for malware to migrate from one virtual machine to another virtual machine.
[*]More efficient use of disk space.
[*]Many other benefits …

Depending on what you use your Windows installation for, it might even be worth considering using Linux as the host OS and set up Windows 7 as a guest OS alongside your other Linux installations. Windows 7 is generally fine as a virtual host, but I’ve found Linux to be better at handling the extra system load when there are multiple virtual machines running.

Looking over the system info you posted earlier, you’ve got more than enough hardware for virtualization. Not all of Intel’s Core 2 Duo processors supported hardware-assisted virtualization (aka. “VT-x”). It’s not required, but it makes running virtual machines more efficient, especially multiple ones at the same time.

[*]In Windows, use CPU-Z to view the supported instruction set. Look for “VT-x” under CPU -> Instructions.
[*]In Linux, just run the command “grep vmx /proc/cpuinfo”. If it returns nothing, then it’s not supported. (For AMD processors, replace “vmx” with “kvm”.)

Chung

I am running Windows 7 64 bit on a MAR desktop (microsoft approved refurbisher) or something like that. I have also repartitioned the hard drive and have installed two linux distros.

I have tried to install several other Linux distros but they don’t see the hard drive or partitions when I get to the page where I am supposed to choose where to install the distro.

I have done internet searches and posted this problem on a couple other forums but so far I haven’t found anything that might be a reason for this.

The two that I have installed are PCLOS and Sparky Linux. I haven’t kept a list of those that don’t see the hard drive but they include Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, and several others.

I am just searching for ideas as to what might cause the problem. I have looked at the bios and tinkered with it a little but am less than comfortable doing stuff to the bios because I could easily cause my desktop to not boot.

I would be glad to hear any ideas about how the problem might could be solved. Thanks

Hi houndhen,

Could you boot up either a Linux live CD or one of your existing Linux installations and run the following command as root:

[INDENT]fdisk -l /dev/sda[/INDENT]

(If specifying “/dev/sda” causes an error, use “/dev/hda”, but it should only be the case with really old Linux distributions.)

thanks,
Chung

Not sure what you are saying. 1st, it is Raid 1 – 4 tb total – 2 tb usable. 2nd, the whole point of an external for backup is so you can disconnect it and not lose anything if your internal goes bad for any reason (including malicious intent). Whether the external is a Raid system or a single disk or an online service I don’t see how it is unsuitable for backups. Or are you thinking the Raid is my main disk and I am depending on the raid to keep everything safe without copying it anywhere else? If so then I would agree with your point.

Hi wiiiindy,

If I counted correctly, you’ve got 4 copies of all the files you value plus a 5th copy of selected files stored offsite in a bank deposit box. Personally, I think you’ve got the backups covered (… except unless you live right next door to the bank and there’s a risk of a large sinkhole :)).

Ideally, you’re also using either WD’s backup software or something else with version control to provide the ability to roll back to previous versions to help with data recovery after malware like CryptoLocker. Any malware that deleted and/or tampered with your files could eventually affect your backups.

I wasn’t able to confirm via WD’s product manuals if there is any kind of checksum feature to detect possible “bit rot” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_degradation). With larger capacity drives, the higher data density increases the chances of it happening. In a RAID 1 setup, if the primary drive were to have bit rot it would be quietly duplicated to the secondary drive.

Chung