Linux Lite Forums
Software - Support => Installing Linux Lite => Topic started by: Radhika on May 19, 2017, 03:29:51 AM
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Hello! I am a newbie and new to the forum. I am also illiterate as far as coding is concerned, having been a Windows user. I installed Linux lite a couple of days ago, and while mounting partitions, ran into a problem. Although I followed the instructions in the manual, an error message popped up about the disk, and then I couldn't get past the initial screen on boot up - the one with the feather. After that I got a black screen saying
'welcome to emergency mode!' and a bunch of options including entering a root password (which didn't work) and pressing 'control -D'. On doing the last action, I got an error about some 'ext4 not found'.
The forums were full of help that involved a lot of code which I didn't understand. (I'll learn code by and by, but right now I need help!)
So I tried re-installing. Now the opening screen has 2 versions of linux. How do I remove the earlier one?
I would really appreciate help on this! Thank you in advance!
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It would help if you gave some more information on how you installed (whole disk and wiped windows or dual booting with windows). If your using the whole disk and have wiped windows from the hard drive, the easiest would be to reinstall and on the part on where it asks how you want to install select the top to use the whole disk. The other way with dual booting is a little bit more complicated and if you can get into the install you can easily modify the grub menu and update grub afterwards to fix what is being shown. Please give some more information so we can give appropriate solutions.
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Answer supergamer's question on whether or not you are trying to setup a dual-boot with Windows, or just have Linux Lite on the computer. If you only want LL, then you can do as s/he said and just re-install one more time and choose the install option that says to use the whole disk. That will erase everything on it and you'll end up with just one LL system installed.
If you do have Windows on computer and are setting up a dual-boot, don't do another install. Instead, boot into you're working LL (by letting computer automatically boot into the first highlighted grub boot menu listing). Once booted up, open a terminal window by either clicking the black icon that looks like a TV screen with ">_" in it, or by going to Menu -> Accessories -> Terminal. Going to have you enter a couple of commands that will show us information on how your system is set-up on the hard drive currently. We need to know that to give advice on how to proceed if you're using more than one operating system on computer.
Type the following command into the terminal and hit <Enter>:
lsblk -af
Then type this command and hit <Enter>. You'll need to enter your user password when prompted. Nothing will show on the screen as you enter your password -- that is normal. Just type in password and hit <Enter>; then command will execute.
sudo parted --list
When you post your reply to questions back here, follow directions on this post (https://www.linuxliteos.com/forums/tutorials/forum-interface-how-to-post-pics-links-code/) for how to copy the output in your terminal and post it in your forum reply for us to see.
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Thank you so much for your help. I installed the new Linuxlite alongside the Windows 7 and the earlier (same version) linuxlite 3.4.
This is the result of the code I typed in:
radel-jpn@radeljpn-HP-Pavilion-dm4-Notebook-PC:~$ lsblk af
lsblk: af: not a block device
radel-jpn@radeljpn-HP-Pavilion-dm4-Notebook-PC:~$ sudo parted --list
[sudo] password for radel-jpn:
Model: ATA ST9640423AS (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 640GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags:
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 1049kB 106MB 105MB primary ntfs boot
2 106MB 210GB 210GB primary ntfs
3 210GB 316GB 106GB primary ntfs
4 316GB 640GB 324GB extended lba
8 316GB 425GB 109GB logical ext4
5 425GB 537GB 112GB logical ntfs
6 537GB 634GB 96.5GB logical ext4
7 634GB 640GB 6386MB logical linux-swap(v1)
radel-jpn@radeljpn-HP-Pavilion-dm4-Notebook-PC:~$ ^C
radel-jpn@radeljpn-HP-Pavilion-dm4-Notebook-PC:~$
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By the way, the 210GB disk has got all my data and documents while I was working on Windows 7.
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The easiest way to get rid of the extra install is to type:
sudo gparted
That should open up to the partition your using, then go and find the other install and format or delete the partition. Number 6 and 8 has the ext4 file system on it so one of those partitions will need to be formatted or deleted. As for fixing the gub2 menu it would probably be safer to wait until this issue is fixed first before starting on that.
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Hello,
This is the screenshot of the result of the command sudo gpart:
(http://imgur.com/AtMWbYLl.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/AtMWbYL.png)
Thank you again for your time and help.
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Further if I try to delete partition /dev/sda6, the error is
'unable to delete /dev/sda6! Please unmount any logical partition with a number higher than 6'.
So when I tried to unmount /dev/sda8, the error message is:
# umount -v "/"
umount: /: target is busy
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Try using the install disk of LinuxLite. Run it in live mode and use gparted from it.
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GParted screenshot showed that the LL you were booted into was on /dev/sda8, so that is the one whose grub boot loader is controlling boot of computer now. Therefore deleting the LL on sda6 is the correct move.
Both LL's, an NTFS partition and the Swap partition are all contained within the same "extended" partition -- /dev/sda4. As you found out, you can't manipulate one partition within it unless all are unmounted. You can't unmount a partition that is in use, so system won't allow you to unmount your root partition from the running system (/dev/sda8).
Instead, do as supergamer said and boot from your live LL install USB/DVD and run GParted from that. The Swap partition will get automatically mounted when you boot your live LL USB and that will need to be unmounted before you can delete the sda6 partition. In GParted, right-click the Swap partition and choose "swapoff" first; then you'll be able to delete sda6.
When you're done, reboot computer into the remaining LL install. (You'll still see a menu entry for the other LL, but it won't boot anything anymore.) Once booted, open a terminal and enter this command to update grub:
sudo update-grub
Next time you boot up the menu entry for second LL will be gone.
P.s. Doesn't matter anymore because GParted screenshot showed what I was looking for, but just for your information the first command above that I had you enter did not return proper info because you forgot to include the "-" in it. You typed lsblk af when it should have been lsblk -af.
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Ah man, I was wanting to go down the road of fdisk and maybe even mkfs.ext4 ;D. We have all messed up installs from time to time. The easiest way, if a new install and nothing saved on it, is to just boot live then delete the linux partitions and swap partition and just redo the install. That is probably the easiest solution for a newcomer to linux, but learning the command line way teaches you something so you do not need a GUI to do things as that can and will fail eventually if doing enough testing.
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@supergamer,
Didn't realize you were headed toward instructing to delete everything and redo install. That can be done too, but I'm wondering what that NTFS partition between the two EXT4 partitions is? If it's brand new with nothing on it, then it should be deleted too because it's breaking up the contiguous space on the extended partition to make a larger EXT4 partition for LL install. If it's already in use by Windows then just keeping /dev/sda8 install of LL as-is and deleting the extra install on sda6 should be fine. /dev/sda8 is over 100GB in size, which is plenty of space to start with on LL. I just thought keeping one working LL and deleting the other would be more simple than deleting everything and re-installing because that might involve copying off data from the NTFS partition, re-creating that too (in a different location) and copying data back on afterwards.
@Radhika,
If the /dev/sda5 NTFS partition is something you recently made and does not contain any data files, then you might want to consider doing as supergamer is suggesting. Delete all partitions in that extended partition, remake the NTFS partition first, then install LL to the remaining space after it.
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I agree gold_finger, that sda5 partition should probably be deleted if nothing is on it as it only shows approximately 90mb used. It looks like there is more to the story on how things are setup on the computer with partitions being everywhere. It does look like it needs to be cleaned up somewhat with the naming to keep everything understandable.
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Thank you, Gold_finger and supergamer! I will try booting from the USB and hope it works. Except for the Windows drive/disk/partition/whatever, I don't really have any data on the Linux OS. I've just installed it,I am on the learning curve and have been trying out my Excel files on it (they are there on the Windows disk too) so I guess it's OK even if these get erased.
Thank you for pointing out the mistake in the code that I entered, too!
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Hi! When I booted through the USB and entered the command sudo gparted I got an error message 'invalid partition Recursive partition in dev/sdb'
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Pretty sure that error is referring to the live USB stick you're booting from and can be ignored. You can also start GParted through main menu (instead of terminal command) by going to Menu -> System -> Partition Drives (or GParted).
Sounds like you're planning to delete all of the partitions within the extended partition /dev/sda4 and start over. If so, please NOTE from your original pic that the NTFS partition /dev/sda5 shows it's got over 6GB of data on it. If any that is important, make sure you copy the data somewhere else before you delete that partition. In Windows, I'm guessing that /dev/sda2 is your "C drive", /dev/sda3 is your "D drive" and /dev/sda5 is either "E drive" or some other letter designation after "D". So you've got your normal "C drive" and what looks to be two other partitions for data or other things in Windows. If that's what you want again, make the new NTFS partition first in the extended partition, then leave rest of space unpartitioned/unforumatted. When you choose the install "Alongside Windows" option, the installer will then use the empty space and make the root and swap partitions for you.
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Hello gold_finger, I checked all the Windows drives. As you said, the dev/sda2 has all the Windows data, dev/sda3 has the Windows drivers and dev/sda5 has a Norton backup which I don't need at all. I have backed up my data on a portable drive.
Now would it be safe to boot from USB and delete the entire dev/sda4? Would it have the new linux installation on it too and delete that? Or is the new Linux installation on dev/sda1 which is showing as system reserved?
I am really sorry to ask what may seem to you as silly questions, but I feel quite lost and intimidated at the moment by the new system!
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System Reserved partition (/dev/sda1) is a Windows partition -- don't delete that or the other two Windows partitions (/dev/sda2 and sda3).
/dev/sda4 is an "extended" partition containing several "logical" partitions within it -- your two LL installations, an NTFS partition that you said had/has a Norton backup on it, and a Swap partition. It is not necessary to delete the extended partition itself. Just delete the logical partitions sda5, 6, 7 and 8. Currently your latest LL install appears to be on sda8 and the first install on sda6. The Norton backup partition is in between the two Linux partitions, so if you wanted one large partition for LL you can't combine the two right now because that NTFS partition is in the middle of them. That's why we're recommending you just delete all 4 of those partitions and start over.
Boot with LL USB and open GParted (Menu -> System -> Partition Drives).
Right-click on the Swap partition and choose "Swapoff".
Right-click on /dev/sda5 and choose "Delete"
Do same for /dev/sda6, 7 and 8.
Click the "Apply" button along top of GParted window to carry out the deletions.
Now you'll have empty space again in the extended /dev/sda4 partition.
If you want to have an NTFS partition for Norton backups again, click the "New" button to make a new partition, choose to format it as NTFS and make it whatever size you want. Then hit the "Apply" button again to carry out the operation.
At this point you'll have free, unpartitioned space after the NTFS partition (if you re-created that) within the extended partition and the LL installer will automatically use that when you tell it to install "Alongside Windows". So you can stop with GParted at this point and start the installer. Both prior installs of LL will be gone and you'll have one fresh new one when done.
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Hello! Just to let you know I reinstalled Linuxlite afresh alongside Windows successfully after deleting all those partitions. Thank you ever so much, gold_finger and supergamer!