Initial setup
In this post, I describe how I did the set up of my second PC with Windows 7, Ubuntu 20.04 and the bootable "TEST" partition for my experiments. I used a procedure for the setup that was almost the copy of the one described in the post "Set up the test rig". I wondered for a while whether or not to write a dedicated post for the setup of the HP Elitebook or just refer to the old post "Set up the test rig". There were some few details in the procedure with Windows 7 and Ubuntu 20.04 that had to be slightly different, and for this reason, I decided to write this post.
- Windows 7 installation and setup
- Ubuntu 20.04 installation and setup
- Setup of GRUB2 to make the PC boot from the "TEST" partition
Windows 7 installation and setup
I started with an installation from scratch of Windows 7 32-Bit. I have both CDs for 32- and 64-bit version of Windows 7, but I preferred to instal the 32-Bit version because I still wanted to be able to use DEBUG.EXE1. I had an Italian version of Windows 7 but I hope that you can follow the installation steps despites the Italian language in the screenshots.
|
| Fig. A - Unpartitioned Disk |
I started the PC from the installation CD of Windows 7 and I followed the steps for a completely fresh installation. When the "Advanced installation" option came, I selected it and I deleted every partition on the disk until I had the start condition as in Fig. A. From this point, I started to define the partition that I wanted individually.
|
| Fig. B - Partitioning of the Disk |
In Fig. B, you see how I prepared my disk. As first step, I selected the "Not allocated space on disk" ("Spazio non allocato" in Italian, Fig. A ) and I set a partition of 135 GBytes. The installation program created two partitions at the same time: the partition 1 of about 100 MBytes which was reserved for the system, and the partition 2 with 135.1 GBytes. In the second step, I selected the remaining non allocated space to create a 100 MBytes partition which I wanted to use as my "TEST" partition later on. Finally, I selected all the remaining not allocated space and I create the last partition which I wanted to use for the installation of Ubuntu 20.04. Finally, I selected the partition 2 ("Disco 0 Partizione 2" in Fig. B) and I installed Windows 7 there.
IMPORTANT!!!
When I took the picture as in
Fig. B, the last partition was selected, but I didn't install Windows 7 there. I
took the picture as soon as I finished with the partitioning, so it just
happened that the last partition was highlighted. Soon after the picture, I
selected the partition 2 and then I clicked on the "Continue" button in the
bottom right corner.
Ubuntu 20.04 installation and setup
After the installation of Windows 7 and all the drivers, I moved on with the installation of Ubuntu 20.04. I downloaded the image file from the Ubuntu official web site, and I wrote the image file on my USB-Stick using RUFUS2. In this way, I created a bootable USB-Stick from which I installed Ubuntu 20.04
|
| Fig. C - Where to find the partitioning options at Ubuntu install |
In Fig. C, I show you where to find the additional options required to manage the partitioning and installation in the way I needed. When the "Installation type" option came, I selected "Something else" and click on the "Continue" button in the bottom left corner.
|
| Fig. D - Initial partitioning scheme |
In Fig. D, I saw the four partition as created with Windows 7. I selected the fourth and latest one and I deleted it with a click on the "-" symbol.
|
| Fig. E - New free space made available on disk |
In Fig. E, I was ready to create two extra partitions for the installation of Ubuntu 20.04. I selected the "free space" and I created a new partition with a click on the "+" symbol.
|
| Fig. F - Definition of the swap partition |
I created a swap partition using the setting as in Fig. F.
|
| Fig. G - Remaining free space for the last partition |
The installation program went back to the previous screen (Fig. G) where I saw my setting about the swap partition. I selected all the remaining space for the final partition.
|
| Fig. H - Definition of the ROOT partition |
I created a ROOT partition using the setting as in Fig. H.
|
| Fig. I - Definition of partition completed |
In Fig. I, I selected the ROOT partition and I went on clicking on the "Install Now" button in the bottom left corner.
Setup of GRUB2 to make the PC boot from the "TEST" partition
I did changes in the configuration files for GRUB2 that were almost identical to the one done in the post "Set up the test rig" (except for one small detail that I am going to describe later in this post). Here follow the modification I did in the grub configuration files.
This part of the modification did work without a problem, but the modification at the file "/etc/grub.d/40_custom" didn't.
|
| Fig. J - modification of "/etc/grub.d/40_custom" |
In the beginning, I just copied and used exactly the same definition as for the IBM T41 with Ubuntu 10 and I modified it based on the real partitioning scheme of the HP Elitebook (see Fig. J). After that, I used the command update-grub in order to create a new "grub.cfg" file with the modification imported from the files "/etc/default/grub" and "etc/grub.d/40_custom"3.
|
| Fig. K - Error message |
In Fig. K, you see what happened when I tried to boot my "TEST" partition. The error message was a good help to understand that the file "fat16.mod" was missing. I navigated to that folder and I saw a file named "fat.mod" so I tried to change the definition insmod fat16 (marked with a green arrow in Fig. J) in just insmod fat and it worked.
|
| Fig. L - Boot from "TEST" partition |
In Fig. L you see the Italian sentence equivalent to "No system disk. Press any key to reboot" (remember that I installed an Italian version of Windows 7 and this "TEST" partition was created and formatted with it). This confirmed to me that the complete setup was done.
Comments
Post a Comment