Partitioner question for dual boot

[Odyssey]

I am trying to install Ubuntu 8.04 alongside an XP install. All of the directions say that whether you choose Install at the intitial menu, "Install" from the desktop, or use System/Partition Editor, that you will get a choice to either use the entire disk, or to resize the existing partition.

When I use gParted, it comes up in familiar form but shows the 80GB hdd as dev/sda 76.33 GB and as

unallocated Partition
unallocated Filesystem

By way of background, this hdd at one time had either a version 6 or maybe even a version 5 Ubuntu installed on it. So when I installed XP, I chose to use 40GB for Windows and planned on using the remaining for Ubuntu. To further complicate matters, I didn't have a working XP install CD and so borrowed one from a friend, but all he had was a very old Compaq install disk. The install seemed to go fine and I was able to validate successfully.

Back to Ubuntu. If I now choose "New" partition, it flashes a box entitled "set disklabel on /dev/sda with a warning that "Creating a new disklabel will erase all data on dev/sda.

Questions:
Why is it showing only one partition of 76GB?
What happened to my 40GB XP partition?
Why is it not showing something as NTFS since that is the format that I used for the XP install?
Why am I not getting a chance to create a new partition without the necessity of setting a disklabel with the the result of erasing everything?

[devils casper]

Boot up from Ubuntu CD, open Terminal and execute this

sudo fdisk -l

Post output here.

[Odyssey]

Hi Devil's Caspar. Thanks for yours.

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l
omitting empty partition (5)

Disk /dev/sda: 81.9 GB, 81964302336 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9964 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xa7e4e9e9

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 8 1027 8193150 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda2 1028 3067 16386300 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda3 2048 3067 8193118+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda4 3068 9963 55392120 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda5 1028 2047 8193087 83 Linux
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

[devils casper]

Select Manual Partitioning in Partition Section during installation. It will list all partition. /dev/sda2 is an Extended Partition and /dev/sda5 is Logical Partition inside Extended Partition. Assign / mount point to /dev/sda5 and install Linux in it. How much RAM do you have? If you have less 512MB RAM then you should create 512MB SWAP partition too. Otherwise there is no need to create SWAP Partition.

[Odyssey]

DC, I have selected manual partitioning when using the 8.04 CD to install (as opposed to creating the desktop Ubunut) and it gave me exactly the same result as when running System/Partition Editor (guess it is gparted whichever way one gets there).

Interesting that fdisk shows drives c, f, and b as FAT32. I'm thinking I know why. When I went to install XP, the only CD that I had was for XP Pro which I went ahead and installed thinking that my serial number was for Pro. Turned out it wasn't, necessitating the borrowing of a Home CD. When I then installed Home, apparently it left Pro installed and now when I boot the Windows partition, I get a choice of Home or Pro. Maybe the partition/s that Pro is installed into are C: (and D: ?) and when I installed Home, I mistook them for the old Ubuntu partitions.

Unsure how to get rid of Pro at this stage and maybe the best thing is just to go through a reformat of the hdd and start over with Home, then 8.04? Waddyatink?

Edit: Sorry I forgot to reply about RAM, which I think is 1 GB. Where in Ubuntu can you interrogate the hardware for the amount of RAM? Thanks.

[devils casper]

Unsure how to get rid of Pro at this stage and maybe the best thing is just to go through a reformat of the hdd and start over with Home, then 8.04? Waddyatink?

Yes. Thats the best way because its a bit tricky to free OSes from Windows/Windows dual boot setup.

Edit: Sorry I forgot to reply about RAM, which I think is 1 GB. Where in Ubuntu can you interrogate the hardware for the amount of RAM? Thanks.

Execute free command. It will display total, used and free RAM and SWAP space.
There no need to create SWAP partition at all. You can create 512MB SWAP partition to be on safer side.

[Odyssey]

FWIW, here is memory output:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 515608 497520 18088 0 26584 203776
-/+ buffers/cache: 267160 248448
Swap: 0 0 0

Will proceed to reinstall one more time. Thanks.