I recently had someone contact me about a problem they had with their Netbook. They followed my install instructions (see previous post) and all worked, but then one day he got a GNOME Error 17 upon booting. The Ubuntu install I provided was to use the slave 8GB drive as the boot and root, and the master 4GB for their /home folder.

After going to BIOS, the 8GB drive no longer showed as an option; therefore, leaving you with the 4GB drive which (see above) has no boot information. So now what?

Easy, we need to trick (per BIOS) the IDE controller. So if you disable both drives, when you reboot, it will ask for a bootable device. Then restart, F2-Setup, and then you will now see your 8GB drive. Trick complete.

I was recently attempting to get into Safe Mode within Windows XP. Usually simply hitting F8 works, but I was using VirtualBox emulation, and WinXP was not capturing my mouse cursor/keystrokes during that particular boot cycle.

I just simply went to Start>Run>msconfig

From here I just clicked the "Boot.ini" tab and checked /SAFEBOOT

Installing Verizon Wiress USB card on Ubuntu 9.04:

1. System>Preferences>Network Connections
2. Choose "Mobile Broadband" tab, click "Add".
3. Pick your carrier: "Verizon"
4. Number: #777
5. Username: 1112223333@vzw3g.com [put your phone number in the first area, no dashes]
6. Password: vzw
7. Under the "PPP Settings" tab... leave as is... and then you can choose to connect automatically if you'd prefer.


Troubleshooting: If your card did not work, you can revisit the "PPP Settings" tab and uncheck all of the authorizations, and then it will work.

Other carriers... this method will work with any carrier besides Verizon Wireless... without the need of their clunky proprietary software/applications. You'll just need to get the domain for the username, find the password (it's "vzw" always for Verizon), and that should be it. Keep in mind when you perform #3, you'll just need to pick the actual carrier from the list (should cover the spectrum).

This discussion is dealing with the Asus Eee PC, model 901. This model has 2 SSDs, the master is 4GB and the slave is 8GB. The master is faster, yet smaller [4GB]; whereas, the slave is slow, yet larger [8GB].

After a little research, I found that you could not simply swap the master/slave relationship in BIOS... although I did find out that you could remove/install a jumper if you'd like to open your system up and mess around with the motherboard.

If you have this model, or another Netbook with limited space and 2 SSDs, then this is for you. Even with the original software it came with, Windows XP, your were plagued with limited space. Strange thing is, ASUS, didn't seem to integrate the 2 drives in a way that was beneficial or streamlined for the user. Your 8GB (slave) was about as helpful as plugging in a USB stick.

1st Attempt! FAILED!

I downloaded UNR, and burned the image to a USB stick, from my other Ubuntu-based laptop. I then booted from that stick on the Netbook. I noticed the BIOS would recognize the USB stick as a device (such as an internal hard drive) so when you designate "Removable Device" as your primary boot... it usually wouldn't work. So I'd have to go into BIOS and pick from the recognized list my Sandisk Cruzer stick. Then it successfully booted. I ran a test on the stick to test the contents, and I'd get failures... which is a flag to not install and reburn img to USB stick. I did so, same deal... I'd then download the img from various sources (as Ubuntu provides many mirrors to do so). No luck! So I defaulted to Ubuntu Standard. No errors, thus I succeeded to the install steps. I chose to format the master [4GB] drive so the boot info would no longer exist, I then formatted the slave [8GB] for a full install to the entirety of the disk. I was attempting to make the 8GB/slave drive the primary drive. Install went thru, then within about 2 boots or so, GNOME ate the dust. I went to the BIOS and attempted to reshuffle the boot order.

2nd Attempt! FAILED!

I booted from the USB drive with Ubuntu Standard. Went thru the motions, decided, to install on the 4GB/master thought it was decided by the ASUS gods. All went well... I had about 1 GB or so remaining on my 4GB master, and my 8GB slave was like a paper weight, equivalent to a USB key. After a couple of boots, Ubuntu ate the dust. I began to get boot errors, and my system wouldn't shut down properly leaving me to hold-down the power button. Back to the drawing board.

3rd Attempt! SUCCESS!

This time I did some research. I found that GNOME could be installed on a separate drive, when learning about a dual-boot between XP and Ubuntu. I then decided to manually format my 8GB slave drive and 4GB master drive.

Here's the breakdown:
- Master drive [4GB] I install a 500MB "swap" and a 4GB "/home".
- Slave drive [8GB] I installed a 500MB "/boot" and a 8GB "/".
- I formatted the drives in the flavor of ext4; whereas, before I formated as ext3.
* I put the boot on the slave,,,, I had to (after deleting each drive's full partition) partition a "/boot" first on the slave before doing anything on the master, because if I did the /boot last I got an error about the master not having a boot (even though in the end, if ordered correctly, I wasn't warned about not having a /boot on the master).

After this, I immediately went into BIOS, fingers-crossed. I situated the boot priority to the slave, since the slave now having boot information, I could now spot it in BIOS. I took the master out of the boot priority completely. I also took the master out of the bootable options as well. I saved, and exited.

Since the IDE controller goes to the master first when booting, it shot to the slave in the boot process, and worked. When in Ubuntu, I noticed the 4GB master was integrated... because my home folder was the actual 4GB master drive, proved by checking the properties of the folder. I then checked the properties of the file structure and I was a little over 8GB. This is great because I've integrated both drives without the need to boot up one or the other from the system upon logging in. Meaning... I had about 12GB of integrated storage.

I noticed zero performance flaws, and it matched the boot-speed of my super powerful laptop and matched performance on typical applications.

I struggled figuring out how to install UNR on VirtualBox... problem is the only thing that is provided with a UNR install is an image file only to be turned into a bootable USB stick/drive. VirtualBox does not support bootable USB devices. So i found this post... and I'll paste the intructions here as well, in case the link ever goes dead:

You'll have to convert the IMG file into a VirtualBox VDI file... then create a new virtual partition, and then create a slave drive, and load that newly created VDI file. Crazy!

To explain #3, to get to the location, I just put the IMG file on my desktop and typed "cd ~/Desktop" to locate my file. I just wanted to put this for Linux users who aren't versed in terminal commands.

http://blog.ibeentoubuntu.com/2009/05/playing-around-with-ubuntu-netbook.html

1. Install VirtualBox, either by downloading from Sun's site or by installing the FOSS version from the repository.
2. Download the .img file from the UNR download site. Use BitTorrent if you can -- it's faster and easier on the mirrors.
3. Convert the.img file into a VirtualBox .vdi file. In order to do that, you'll need to use VirtualBox's command line. Open a terminal and cd to the directory that you've downloaded the ubuntu-9.04-netbook-remix-i386.img file to. When there, issue the following command:
VBoxManage convertdd ubuntu-9.04-netbook-remix-i386.img ubuntu-9.04-netbook-remix.vdi
This will leave you with the original file and a new file, ubuntu-9.04-netbook-remix.vdi.
4. Create a new machine in VirtualBox with a 4GB hard disk, choosing "Linux" as the operating system and "Ubuntu" as the version. Give the machine between 512MB and 1GB RAM. Increase the video memory to 16MB. Finish and close the wizard.
5. Add the Netbook.vdi file as a second hard disk. Open the "Hard disk" tab of the machine's properties, and click the plus icon, setting the new drive as "Primary slave." Select the ubuntu-9.04-netbook-remix.vdi file, adding it with the Disk Manager when requested.
6. Boot the machine and hit F12 to choose to boot from the second hard disk. You'll need to press "2."
7. Choose your language and to "Install Ubuntu Netbook Remix." I won't explain how to do that here. You can give it the whole disk. It should be a simple, if slow, process.
8. Reboot the computer. You'll be in the UNR interface, but it will be dog slow because of the generic VESA driver being used. Luckily, there's a way around that problem.
9. Install the Guest Additions. While the machine is running, go to the machine's VB menu and choose Devices -> Install Guest Additions. If you are using the open source version of VirtualBox, you'll probably be prompted to download the Guest Additions .iso file, which will take a few minutes. The disk will appear in the right-hand menu bar. Click on it to make sure the CD is mounted. Open a terminal (in Accessories) and type the following:
cd /media/REACTOS
sudo ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run
10. Install updates. You should be prompted for this. I won't detail it.
11. Reboot and use the computer. Mine is still a little slower than it should be, but it's OK with the Guest Additions installed.

I had a helluva time figuring this out, and the documentation is limited. This is for XP in particular, but I'm sure it's pretty universal with Vista if you take into consideration the obvious differences in OS interfaces. VirtualBox being Sun's OS emulation software for Ubuntu 9.04.

Once you've loaded your XP OS into VirtualBox... you'll need to "Install Guest Permissions" to activate the video drivers and take advantage of the on-the-fly window resizing that updates the resolution, as opposed to a fixed window size.

1. Start your installed XP OS from VirtualBox, and then in the top menu, after the system is idle, choose: Devices > Install Guest Permissions.
2. Exit out, and actually shut down the OS within the emulator, and not freezing it for later.
3. Within the main window, choose File > Virtual Media Manager.
4. Go to the CD/DVD Images section, and you'll see "VBoxGuestAdditions.iso". It should be over 25MB. If it's less, it's corrupt. If it's less than 1MB, click it, and choose Remove. And then start back at #1.
5. If #4 worked, then you'll need to go back to the Hard Disks tab. And choose Add, and then choose the actual file you just created by successfully adding permissions. Find it here when it asks you: usr\share\virtualbox\VBoxGuestAdditions.iso". You could also just load the ISO from the CD/DVD menu.

So now you've initiated the drivers for file sharing and video drivers. If you've noticed nothing has changed that's because you've got to answer the submission from within XP.

1. Start XP via VirtualBox.
2. Right-click the desktop, choose Shortcut.
3. Go to Network Neighborhood, and choose, View Entire Network.
4. You should see a Vbox drive automatically, if not, expand a few connections. Select it, and hit OK.
5. Activate this new shortcut on your desktop that you just created.
5. Within this network shortcut, you'll find some drivers. Activate the 32-bit, or 64-bit, depending on your setup. This will initiate sharing and your video card. I can't remember if you have to Restart.
6. From this point, you can go back to the main settings window in VirtualBox.
7. Select your OS, and then click the Settings button.
8. Set up your share folder, pretty intuitive here.
9. Start your OS.
10. Within XP, right-click your desktop and create a shortcut, view entire network and you should find your share folder, and then you can map it to a drive if you choose to.

Update: 6/12/09:
- Installing Guest Permissions on a Virtual Ubuntu is easy, as once you install it, it appears as a mounted drive.

Good luck!

I wanted to document the installation of an HP Printer (in this case C5550) via bluetooth the Linux/Ubuntu 9.04 OS.

1. Ubunutu Button > Add/Remove:
2. Make "Show" say "All available applications"
3. Search "HPLIP"
4. Download the application.
5. Restart
6. Ubuntu Button > Accessories > Terminal
7. Type in: hcitool scan
8. Copy the address, looking something like: 00:40:8C:5E:5D:A4
9. System>Admin...>Printer is just a frontend to CUPS. You can access cups at: http://localhost:631/
10. In Firefox, go to http://localhost:631/
10. Add Printer, choose HPLIP Printer when it asks, and when it asks for "URI", just paste your numbers and remove spacing and colons: bluetooth://00408C5E5DA4

Note: the number above will obviously be different. The process described will make several built-in PPDs available to you other than HP... although I only tested the HP Photosmart C5550. Also, please note they'll use generic model classes, mine being C5500.

Note: If you don't have "Printer" available to you as stated in #9, you can add that frontend from the Add/Remove section (see #1).

Good luck!

It's official... as of June 1, 2009... I'm done with Windows and Microsoft, FOREVER! Yes!

Just reformatted my mega drive and installed Ubuntu 9.04. I'll probably detail a brief 1-2 step guide later on my trials and tribulations of this undertaking, but for now, I'll just enjoy this freedom.

I can now safely compare Windows to OSX to Linux:

Windows, is like one of those crazy Japanese cars with the oversized muffler, slammed ground effects, and sweet rims,,,, but in the end, you're just dressing up a shitty car. Cars such as this lack luxury and the smooth ride. Sure, you can tinker with anything in Windows, and there are so many possibilities. But possibilities only because it's the de facto standard. Now this is just my opinion, but again, you can take a shitty car and soup it up to take on a Ferrari... but what a waste of time!

Mac OSX, ohh how pretty! Yeah, well, it just seems like such a hunk of software, and even with the fastest configuration, you're still a notch below what a PC can do. Don't get me wrong, I was a Mac fanboy for sometime, but man, those Mac people, they're so into it. Dude, it's just a computer, relax. Besides, I've never felt the speed of OSX, and although it's beautiful... oh yeah, talking cars here. So I compare OSX to a German car. Such luxury, such beauty, but the shelf life, yikes! Trying taking your '92 BMW to the mechanic, or even better trying updating your OSX a year later and watch how you feel the necessity to upgrade your system because it moves like a turtle. Macs are so overpriced and overrated.

Ubuntu is like you've taken a time-machine into the future and this is how it should be done. Everything is intuitive, and where it should be. The buttons/interface, after viewing, you're like, yeah, that's how it should have been done. Linux is like a F1 car, it can destroy any car in it's path... but it's forum for driving is only in the bowl (not street legal), so your software visibility is limited. But, we're talking Linux here... so what if you could drive that F1 and put that souped-up car in your garage? That's what I did, I have an emulator built in, super fast, that runs my Windows XP, Vista, etc. My next goal is to attempt to run OSX on it as well. The best part is that this software is free.


Lastly, my Linux boot-up is so fast, fastest I've ever seen, I feel like I have a Flash drive. The intro is so killer, and the bongo drums for your username/password, and then the musical Halo-like intro theme, WOW! The screen effects blow Mac OSX to bits, not to mention the built-in screen savers. When attempting to find support on issues, you'll be dealing with strictly the nerdiest of the nerds, which means the information/research on these OS's is pristine and untouched by the everyday yahoos who can barely find their Start menu in Windows. That being said, you really need to research and know a thing or two before attempting to install Linux.... and not have a fear of researching for a couple of hours.

Info on Ubuntu:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu