Final steps of installation problems occurs

[heismark]

Hi

I got PCLinuxOS installed and found at last that Grub was installed on the external drive, so I have the laptop booting to the external drive. For some reason PCLinuxOS named the external SDA and the internal SDB. Fooled me a bit.

Anyway, now when I boot into PCLInuxOS i get an error about the file system

checking file systems,
fsck.ext3 unable to (resolve?) UUID...66b Failed

Is there anyone here who can work with me for a while now to fix this?

I'm close, but no cigar

Is there maybe something about that this Western Digital external drive only works wth FAT32? It would not work with NTFS it said. I am not even sure I installed to the external drive, but as PCLinuxOS called the external sda and the internal sdb I got confused as I expected the opposite. So maybe Linux is installed on the external drive which wasn't the intention.

[heismark]

Well, I took the 'easy' way and reinstalled. This time focusing on sdb not sda. and it works.

Still baffled that PCLinuxOS chooses the external USB drive as premiere sda and not sdb.

But I am content that PCLOS retrieves the SSID and MAC address from the wireless router, so I only have to enter the router's config password. Better than my Ubuntu where I had to enter it all.

Now to the job of removing the faulty PCLOS and Ubuntu drives on sda, the external drive.

[Jonathan183]

I got into the habit of setting partition labels to something meaningful after an install (ubuntu-root, home etc). That way I can run

ls /dev/disk/by-label -l && ls /dev/disk/by-uuid -l

and check I get the right partitions and if necessary also run

cat /etc/fstab

The label helps me sort things out even if uuid is changed by resizing a partition ...

[sarlacii]

Hey heismark... welcome to the PCLinuxOS club!

I personally enjoy the Administration Centre GUI-frontend... it makes setup so easy, esp. wireless connections.

As for the drive assignment (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, people - drives are not my strength) well this is BIOS-determined, so I'm guessing that you had "Boot from USB" enabled in your system? As such the external drive is enumerated first, and then your internal drives.
This ordering of drives only happens the first time you install your OS. Thereafter the assignments for drives that have already been enumerated internally stay static. So you should have left the external HDD disconnected during the install.

The way that you then get around this issue of the device nodes changing around all the time, depending on what order you connect your USB devices in, is to use volume labels for accessing your data, not the device node (as Jonathan183 points out).
Thus in PCLOS you will see that USB drives are accessed via the /media/ directory, with each device referenced by its volume label... eg. /media/KINGSTON/ for a default Kingston flashdisk. This way it does not matter whether the flashdisk gets sdc today and sde tomorrow... your links all work based on the constant /media/KINGSTON reference.

Anyway, have fun, and may the Force be with you.

[heismark]

Well, I made a quick reinstall and removed the USB drive beforehand, so I got sda on the laptop.

I renamed the entry in Konqueror file manager; don't know if I want to fool around more than that. I smahed a harddrive once fooling too much around between Windows and Linux and I have a dual boot with Vista. btw it's going to be replaced by Windows 7 next week. Is W7 and Linux all right in a dual boot?

Except for a few leftover partitions on the usb drive I am all right.

I used Linux some years back, but don't see the hoped progress in user friendliness for the newbies. You still need to know way too much about systems and hardware issues,

For instance, a popup could warn you of attached usb drives and the consequences for the installation and suggest decoupling.

Ubuntu hid the driver for my wireless and some expert sudo vodoo was necessary to activate it. On top of that, you had to manualle enter ssid and mac address besides the router password. PCLinuxOS caught the ssid and mac automatically and Ubuntu ought to have too besides making the driver available in the driver display and software search. You had to know it was their somewhere.

Also, after installation the system should automatically propose download of updates.

I feel development of this type of help is way too slow.

Now I am going to nag Canon about a driver for the Pixma M620!

Also going to test my webcam and if a number of web video formats and sound works in Firefox.

[yancek]

Is W7 and Linux all right in a dual boot?

Yes. Other people have done it successfully. Win 7 will overwrite whatever you have in the master boot record during install. You won't be asked if you want this. You won't be informed that it's happening.

[heismark]

Yes. Other people have done it successfully. Win 7 will overwrite whatever you have in the master boot record during install. You won't be asked if you want this. You won't be informed that it's happening.

So - is that good?

Do I need to rebuild Grub or does Windows 7 build a booty with Linux on it?

[yancek]

So - is that good?

It's good if all you want is win7. You won't be able to boot PCLinux. Win 7 won't do anything about booting Linux. I'm not sure what modifications you would have to make. You can easily re-install Grub after installing win 7 and would probably be the easiest thing to do. If you want to boot from win 7, the EasyBCD program can configure vista/win 7 to boot Linux.

Download EasyBCD 1.7.2 - NeoSmart Technologies

I think re-installing Grub would be better. If you do go for EasyBCD, be sure to read instructions before proceeding.

[heismark]

It became both actually for some reason.

First Grub boots with the PCLInuxOS background and if I select Win 7, then Neosmart emerges and I can select Win 7.

Guess I don't know where the MBR is located actually.

Linux is on a USB disk and Win 7 on the internal hard drive.

[yancek]

Do you keep the external drive with PCLinux plugged in all the time?
What is your boot priority in the BIOS?