Installing Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) From Hard Disk

This is a way to install Ubuntu without burning a installation CD. Download the alternative desktop CD you need(x86 or amd64) from the ubuntu website. Prepare a swap partition(if you haven't had one), a/some partition(s) for the new installation. A good tool to do this is GParted. Next thing to do is to download two special files for ubuntu hard disk installation: initrd.gz and vmlinuz. From x86: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/hardy/main/installer-i386/current/images/hd-media/ amd64: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/hardy/main/installer-amd64/current/images/hd-media/ Make sure the file names are initrd.gz and vmlinuz. Firefox added a .htm extension automatically on vmlinuz when I downloaded it. Place the two files as well as the iso file in a partition which is different from the one you intend to install the new system. Attention: this is very import, or the installation will fail because it tries to remove the needed files during the process. For example, you want to install ubuntu on sda8, and you store the files mentioned above in sda7, under /path/ . If you are not familiar with the partition naming convention for linux, you may want to read this first. Make sure you have a working GRUB. It could be the one you are using to boot existing operating systems, or one on a live CD. For windows users, get a grub4dos Reboot the box, when GRUB shows up to let you choose which system to boot, press c. You will find yourself in command line with a leading

grub>

For those who don't know, grub counts hard disks and partitions from 0, so the third partition on the second hard disk is (hd1,2). Type in the command as follows (under the previous path assumption):

root (hd0,6) kernel (hd0,6)/path/vmlinuz initrd (hd0,6)/path/initrd.gz boot

Then you will forward into the normal installation process. And that is the end of this story. Enjoy your Hardy Heron!

Mandriva added to my hard drive.

With the chainloading system set up, adding Mandriva became a easy & happy job. I installed it on hda6.So,to chainlaod it ,I chose to boot on hda6 when asked by installation progress. Reboot.The the new system won't appear on the boot menu.Boot the previous system.Edit the menu.list of the master GRUB,which is independent from any OS.Add

title Mandriva Linux root (hd0,5) chainloader +1

Reboot again,Mandriva Linux appears on boot menu.Installation finished.

Creating An Independent Grub Without Losing Original Linux

Inspired by this essay,I decided to rearrange the partition on my laptop so that I would be able to install new OSs and chainload them easily.But the MBR is already occupied by Ubuntu,which means that there's not a boot loader in its own partition's boot sector. It is not chainloadable! With help from justlinux.com I finally figured out the way to make the partition chainloadable and chainloaded it by a independent GRUB newly installed on its own partition. My whole Ubuntu is installed on sda3, and I assigned 300MB as sda1 for the independent GRUB.Here comes what I did: On Ubuntu 7.10:

$ sudo mount -t ext3 /dev/sda1 /media/sda1 $ sudo mkdir /media/sda1/boot $ sudo mkdir /media/sda1/boot/sda1 $ cp /boot/grub/* /media/sda1/boot/grub

make /media/boot/grub/menu.lst like this:

defaulte 0 title Ubuntu Linux root (hd0,2) chainloader +1

Reboot the system,press "c" when GRUB appears.

Grub> root (hd0,0) Grub> setup (hd0) Grub> reboot

Again,You will find that the menu becomes the new one when GRUB appears,press "c"

Grub> root (hd0,2) Grub> setup(hd0) Grub> chanloader +1 Grub> boot

This time the GRUB menu on sda3 will appear.Which means that Ubuntu is chainloaded by the independent GRUB on sda1.And we needn't do any thing next time. Next time A new Linux being installed,just make sure it won't take over MBR, and add this to menu.lst on sda1:

title Name of new OS root (hdi,j) chainloader +1

(hdi,j) stands for the partition of the new system.