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My new laptop's OS was trashed by a failed global software update. The HDD is partitioned thus (ignore sdb1, the live-USB and sdc1, another USB stick):

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ lsblk -f 
NAME   FSTYPE LABEL MOUNTPOINT 
sda                  
├─sda1               
├─sda2               
├─sda3               
└─sda4              [SWAP] 
sdb                  
└─sdb1              /cdrom 
sdc                  
└─sdc1              /media/ubuntu/TRANSFER 
loop0               /rofs

or, maybe more usefully:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ lsblk 
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM    SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT 
sda      8:0    0  465.8G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0    500M  0 part 
├─sda2   8:2    0      3G  0 part 
├─sda3   8:3    0  454.5G  0 part 
└─sda4   8:4    0    7.8G  0 part [SWAP] 
sdb      8:16   1    3.8G  0 disk 
└─sdb1   8:17   1    3.8G  0 part /cdrom 
sdc      8:32   1    1.9G  0 disk 
└─sdc1   8:33   1    1.9G  0 part /media/ubuntu/TRANSFER 
loop0    7:0    0 1007.1M  1 loop /rofs

Having read Mike McGrath's Linux in Easy Steps (5th edition) sda2 must be the OS (/), sda3 must be where all the user-created files are (/home) and sda4 is the Swap (the book says this should be roughly double the Ram size - the laptop has 4GB Ram).

Q1: What's that 500MB partition?

Q2: The book says to specify 7-10GB partition for the OS - why is Dell's only 3GB?

d a i s y
  • 5,511
  • Can you run lsblk -f in a terminal and then [edit] your question to add that output, please? – Byte Commander Jan 12 '17 at 23:12
  • @ByteCommander - Will do, after I've figured out how to grab this from Terminal on the new laptop and get it onto the Windows one I'm using at the moment. (It's probably dead easy.) –  Jan 12 '17 at 23:23
  • Select as usual then right-click > copy or CTRL+SHIFT+C. –  Jan 12 '17 at 23:33
  • Old instructions. Much better to have / (root) at 20 to 25GB if separate /home. And swap only needs to be 2GB or size of RAM in GiB if hibernating. And hibernating not normally required nor recommended. If UEFI first partition could be the ESP - efi system partition. http://askubuntu.com/questions/743095/how-to-prepare-a-disk-on-an-efi-based-pc-for-ubuntu – oldfred Jan 13 '17 at 00:56
  • @ByteCommander - Did you mean lsblk (without the -f)? This seems more useful. I copied/pasted to a .odt saved on a USB stick and used Windows Notepad to read. (Don't know why the second paste into the edit of the question appears differently, and less helpfully, formatted.) –  Jan 13 '17 at 06:01
  • Can you mount your old Ubuntu root partition (probably sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt) and then post the contents of the /etc/fstab of your disk installation (so /mnt/etc/fstab) please? – Byte Commander Jan 13 '17 at 06:54
  • After a sudo mkdir /media/mount I did a sudo mount /dev/sda2 /media/mount but then doing a cd /media/mount and then an ls, there is no /etc directory - boot, casper, dists, factory etc and three files, but no /etc. (I'm also getting confused as some of the comments I leave on questions are being removed - probably for a good reason.) –  Jan 13 '17 at 10:17

0 Answers0