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eRacks Sony Laptop – Part 2 – Shrinking partitions & Installing Linux
eRacks Sony Laptop – Part 2 – Shrinking partitions & Installing Linux
Step 1 – back up Vista partitions
[joe@sony ~]$ sudo su
Password:
[root@sony joe]# fdisk /dev/sda
The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 14593.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)
Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x200c5cbf
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 889 7138304 27 Unknown
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 * 889 4076 25600000 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 4077 4101 200812+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 4102 14593 84276990 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 4102 14593 84276958+ 8e Linux LVM
Command (m for help): q
[root@sony joe]# dd if=/dev/sda2 | gzip -9 – >vista.img
51200000+0 records in
51200000+0 records out
26214400000 bytes (26 GB) copied, 2384.53 s, 11.0 MB/s
[root@sony joe]# ls -l
total 6168412
drwxr-xr-x 2 joe joe 4096 2009-02-20 03:05 Desktop
drwxr-xr-x 2 joe joe 4096 2009-02-20 03:05 Documents
drwxr-xr-x 2 joe joe 4096 2009-02-20 03:05 Download
drwxr-xr-x 2 joe joe 4096 2009-02-20 03:05 Music
drwxr-xr-x 2 joe joe 4096 2009-02-20 03:05 Pictures
drwxr-xr-x 2 joe joe 4096 2009-02-20 03:05 Public
drwxr-xr-x 2 joe joe 4096 2009-02-20 03:05 Templates
drwxr-xr-x 2 joe joe 4096 2009-02-20 03:05 Videos
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 6310241019 2009-02-20 21:58 vista.img
[root@sony joe]# dd if=/dev/sda1 | gzip -9 – >recovery.img
14276608+0 records in
14276608+0 records out
7309623296 bytes (7.3 GB) copied, 739.479 s, 9.9 MB/s
[root@sony joe]# ls -l
total 12022456
drwxr-xr-x 2 joe joe 4096 2009-02-20 03:05 Desktop
drwxr-xr-x 2 joe joe 4096 2009-02-20 03:05 Documents
drwxr-xr-x 2 joe joe 4096 2009-02-20 03:05 Download
drwxr-xr-x 2 joe joe 4096 2009-02-20 03:05 Music
drwxr-xr-x 2 joe joe 4096 2009-02-20 03:05 Pictures
drwxr-xr-x 2 joe joe 4096 2009-02-20 03:05 Public
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 5988678705 2009-02-20 22:15 recovery.img
drwxr-xr-x 2 joe joe 4096 2009-02-20 03:05 Templates
drwxr-xr-x 2 joe joe 4096 2009-02-20 03:05 Videos
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 6310241019 2009-02-20 21:58 vista.img
[root@sony joe]# mv vista.img vista.img.gz
[root@sony joe]# mv recovery.img recovery.img.gz
[root@sony joe]# ls -l
total 12022456
drwxr-xr-x 2 joe joe 4096 2009-02-20 03:05 Desktop
drwxr-xr-x 2 joe joe 4096 2009-02-20 03:05 Documents
drwxr-xr-x 2 joe joe 4096 2009-02-20 03:05 Download
drwxr-xr-x 2 joe joe 4096 2009-02-20 03:05 Music
drwxr-xr-x 2 joe joe 4096 2009-02-20 03:05 Pictures
drwxr-xr-x 2 joe joe 4096 2009-02-20 03:05 Public
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 5988678705 2009-02-20 22:15 recovery.img.gz
drwxr-xr-x 2 joe joe 4096 2009-02-20 03:05 Templates
drwxr-xr-x 2 joe joe 4096 2009-02-20 03:05 Videos
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 6310241019 2009-02-20 21:58 vista.img.gz
[root@sony joe]#
Step 2: Boot from the Ubuntu CD and install Linux!
Previous: Part 1 – the OOB Experience
eRacks Sony Laptop – Part 3 – Virtual Windoze
joe June 9th, 2009
Posted In: Laptop cookbooks, Open Source, Products, Technology
Tags: laptop, linux, Notebook, Open Source, Sony, Technology, ubuntu, Windows Tax
eRacks Sony Laptop – Part 1 – the OOB Experience
Preamble
It’s been our goal for some time to bring compelling value to Linux Laptops, in a way that truly surpasses whats available from a Windows or Mac laptop, beyond just “Almost as good but cheaper with free software”, which seems to be one of the prevailing current perceptions we need to overcome.
The lovely style and features of Sony laptops and notebooks, have always generated inquiries from our customers about our plans to carry them. (Also others, like Lenovo, which we already carry).
This series of posts is about our ambitious plans to add value, and truly make your Linux Sony Laptop experience from us far superior to what it would be from a run-of-the-mill vendor.
Read on.
The OOB (Out of Box) Experience
Windows Tax, File Format leverage, and FUD
For years, we’ve sold laptops with Linux only, and with no “Windows Tax”.
Although this has been good, and has been well-received by the market and the Open Source community, Microsoft and other proprietary software vendors, notably Intuit, have been tenacious about leveraging control of their file formats, limiting control over your own data, and using the usual other vendor lock-in techniques to ensure you can’t move away from their products without severe switching costs, “Compatibility issues”, and other FUD (fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) and FUDlike behavior.
“I’m your new bookkeeper. I assume you have QuickBooks?”
“Hi, joe, this is Fred, your CPA – do you have those latest QuickBooks files of the company’s books, so we can get your taxes done on time?”
And so forth.
True Value
With this in mind, we are introducing some solutions, courtesy of Virtualization (specifically, KVM, the excellent and well-received hypervisor built into the Linux kernel – not the proprietary VMWare, although that could be used, too), which will allow the best of all possible worlds –
- Native Linux compatibility and raw speed
- Complete windows compatibility and instance, with full control or greater
- Isolation from viruses and other malware
- Ease of backups, system administration, and forth
- Freedom from restrictions controlled by proprietary vendors (Sony, Microsoft).
Coming Up
In this series of posts, we will be going over many things – the installation process, moving partitions around for both OSes, running windows “In Place” with the original licenses, etc, reviewing various linuxes (Linuces?) for their hardware compatibility, Dual Boot vs Virtualized Windows-in-a-window, “Tech Tips” and what we did to get things working, how it works and what it does, in the end – and so forth.
This concludes “Part 1 – the OOB Experience” — Stay tuned, as it were…
j
joe May 27th, 2009
Posted In: Uncategorized