[ SOLVED ] Uninstall duplicate version of linux lite 3.4

[Radhika]

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!

[gold_finger]

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.

[Radhika]

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!

[gold_finger]

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.

[Radhika]

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'

[Radhika]

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!

[supergamer]

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.

[gold_finger]

@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.

[supergamer]

Ah man, I was wanting to go down the road of fdisk and maybe even mkfs.ext4  . 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.

[gold_finger]

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:

Code: [Select]

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.

[supergamer]

Try using the install disk of LinuxLite. Run it in live mode and use gparted from it.

[Radhika]

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
       

[Radhika]

Hello,
This is the screenshot of the result of the command sudo gpart:

 



Thank you again for your time and help.

[supergamer]

The easiest way to get rid of the extra install is to type:

Code: [Select]

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.

[Radhika]

By the way, the 210GB disk has got all my data and documents while I was working on Windows 7.