Reinstalling a previous version of Ubuntu fam (or just a very different ver) Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Can't see text in cell

Hi :)


Ok, sorry for the looong post!  Really it's just the last paragraph that is important.  The rest 
assumes you don't know how to get there.  


First, find out which partitions do what.  Hopefully you already know
this or can guess from looking at GPartEd on a LiveCd/Usb (or whatever) of Ubuntu 10.04.  From the 
top taskbar that is 

System - Administration - Gparted

{ Incidentally it might be just me but i find that when i boot up a Cd/Usb of 10.04 or 10.10 and 
try the "Try it" option to get to the LiveCd session it just hangs.  While hung i can access the 
release notes and that opens a web-browser so i can do most sundry office things right there, ie 
before getting into the OS.  To get a proper LiveCd/Usb session i have to choose the "Install now" 
and then use the back button until i get to the "Try it" screen again.  Then the "Try it" option 
works just fine with no problems.  With 8.10, 9.04 and 9.10 they all seemed to work right first 
time.  }

Anyhow, start a normal install but when you get to the "Partitioning" or "Allocate Drive Space" 
section (it's about  choose the bottom option.  It's something like "Advanced" or "Manual" or 
"Something else".  The top options are something like "Wipe whole drive" and "Install alongside 
existing OSes".  I think the default is to install alongside.  

The "Advanced" or "Manual" option rescans the hard-drive so there is a scary pause and scarier 
activity from the drive.  Then there is a fairly primitive gui partition editor that should show 
the same info as Gparted.  "Edit" or "Change" the appropriate partitions to do the same thing they 
were doing in the 11.04 and keep the same format. 

If there are 4 partitions and you keep the Windows that was on the machine then it's probably 
something like 
sda1 = ntfs for Windows
sda2 = ext3 for /
sda3 = ext3 for /home
sda4 = linux-swap for swap

Note that an "Extended partition" is basically a bucket that allows the drive to have more than 4 
partitions.  hard-drives formatted to the Ms-dos spec can only have 4 "Primary partitions" but 1 of 
those can be an "Extended Partition" that can then contain a LOT of "Logical Partitions" which are 
typically numbered from sda5 even if that skips a few numbers.  So you would get something like
sda1 = ntfs for Windows, about half the drive

sda2 = Extended
sda4 = ext3 for /  perhaps around 4-8Gb. i tend to give 8Gb jic

sda5 = ext3 for /home

sda6 = linux-swap for swap, maybe about 4Gb?  Should be =Ram or = 2xRam.  Just over Ram is about 
ideal size.  

Obviously if swap is getting used a lot (ie in low ram machines or very busy ones) it would be more 
sensible to place it first (or 2nd) but by default it's often last.  On an Ide/Sata drive the 
read/write speed is faster near the beginning of the drive but on SSDs it doesn't make any 
difference.  

If there is no separate /home don't worry.  The /home folder will just be inside the / partition 
and in that case the / partition is likely to be very large.  The linux-swap partition is still 
likely to be last.

The CRUCIAL bit is to make sure that in the column "Format?" that all partitions are UNticked as 
you don't want any of them to get formatted (well, the swap will be automatically but that is ok).  
It's the formatting that wipes out data&settings.  

Regards from
Tom :)

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