Installing LM on a SSD

PcBuilderEd

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Hey everyone 0/. For those unaware I attempted a dual boot on an HDD but after some potential issues, but a ton of help from members, I decided to go with an SSD and bought one solely for Linux.

I checked a few tutorials and one said it was as simple as plugging in the new SSD, Live booting from a USB with Mint 18.2 installed, and then installing using the install tool. Will this create the necessary partitions on the SSD including swap space? Initially I will use Linux Mint solo but eventually I would like to have space for 4 or so distros. Thanks everyone!
 


Hi Mate

...and one said it was as simple as plugging in the new SSD, Live booting from a USB with Mint 18.2 installed, and then installing using the install tool. Will this create the necessary partitions on the SSD including swap space?

It likely will.

First up, and if you are not in a super-duper hurry (slow & steady wins the race)
  • Did we establish that you are using the Cinnamon or MATE DE, or other? The original downloaded .iso will reveal, in its name, or there are other ways of telling.
Another factor to be considered is formatting the new drive to GPT, I am betting it is set up as MSDOS/MBR.

Given you say

Initially I will use Linux Mint solo but eventually I would like to have space for 4 or so distros

... then formatting as GPT right at the beginning will make redundant the problems we were looking at on the other drive, of the "4 partition limit".

I have to get a couple of things done before sundown, but I'll be back shortly.

Wizard
BTW for the benefit of new viewers, the OP's previous Topic was https://www.linux.org/threads/messed-up.12936/
 
07 Wizard:cool:, and thanks for linking the thread. I'm installing Linux Mint 18.2 Cinnamon. Formatting in GPT sounds like a smart move to me.

For those unfamiliar with the earlier thread I have a 500GB SSD I'm installing on an HP Pavilion DV6 laptop. Its 6 years old and has a 750gb HDD currently (which I will replace in favor of the 500GB SSD), 8GB of RAM, and 2gb gpu. So I got an SSD to keep my current HD with windows safe and secure (I also have 2 recovery USB sticks made in windows 10), and to make this a bit faster and with any luck a bit cooler as well.
 
I am out of town, but I'm following along too. I think it will all go fine for you. Good luck!
 
So I'm gathering the first step is to format the SSD in GPT. Is it possible to do this in the "live" environment on the Linux Mint USB I made earlier? Do you fellas have a partitioning utility you like?

I'm also looking at the HDD I'm replacing. Ive looked at getting an enclosure for it and an Sata to USB cable. This would be nice, and I would have done it already but at best buy anyway its $50. That seems a bit steep. If I'm going to do that I might as well just spend $85 and get another 250gb SSD and do an install of Windows on it... hmm.
 
Just back from a road trip, else would have been here sooner. No more trips in the near future.

Cinnamon, eh? Lovely spice to flavour food and cooking, so let's cook up a storm. Cinnamon and MATE are likely my two favourite DEs (although I am open to new ideas, and try to mix and match, distro-dependent).

WIZARD'S RECOMMENDED READING:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tebibyte

Google search under "linux mint 18.2 system requirements" (may differ, your country)

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=...nts&gws_rd=cr&dcr=0&ei=HCalWZOgKYf28gW7_pT4Cw

and

http://gparted.org/

WIZARD'S GLOSSARY:


TiB, GiB - see Recommended Reading link above (Tebibyte).

Ubiquity - is the name of the installer designed by Ubuntu, and used by Ubuntu and Ubuntu-derivatives, which includes Linux Mint.

Mark (& his people), Clem (& his people) - Mark Shuttleworth, owner of Canonical which owns Ubuntu; Clement Lefebvre, Project Leader and creator of Linux Mint.

GPT - is an acronym on top of an acronym. It means the GUID Partition Table, where GUID means Globally Unique IDentifiers. GPT supports Partitions larger than 2 Tebibytes in size, and also supports files larger than 4 GB in size. In GPT every Partition is treated as a Primary Partition (no need for extended or logical partitions) and thus escapes the 4 Partition Rule of MBR-MSDOS. GPT allows up to 128 Partitions under Windows, and even more under Linux (subject to hardware support).

Your 500GB SSD will likely be about 465.66 GiB give or take a few megs/mebs (as per the reading material above). You could convert what will likely be an MBR-MSDOS drive to GPT, divide that space into partitions, using either CLI (Terminal) commands or a GUI-based solution, or else rely on the Partition Editor component of Ubiquity to do it during the install. I favour the former, and GNOME's Partition Editor, GParted, ships with your Live install on your stick.

I have to go again for 12 hours (food and sleep after the drive), but GParted is my fave partition editor, and if it is not on a Linux I use, I install it.

Cheers

Wizard
 
Excellent! So my initial strategy seems to be:

-Unplug old HDD, plug in new SSD
-Boot into Linux Mint 18.2 USB
-Partition the SSD with GParted (ill download if I don't have it on there)
-Partition the SSD
-I can only guess here but perhaps 4 partitions?
Do I need to format the SSD?
-Install Linux
When installing LM 18.2 with the automatic install just pick a partition?

Hows my strategy looking?
 
You still have choices. Wiz may agree or modify these recommendations, but I think this is how I would do it:

1. Replace HDD with SSD and boot on USB.

2. Run the "Install Mint" icon on deskop and use the installer for partitioning. Partitioning is similar to GParted. I would NOT create a SWAP partition (the installer will complain, but you can proceed). I would only create one partition (/) as EXT4, but you must decide how large. Leave the rest as unallocated space for future installs, or to safely enlarge your / partition if you need more space. Don't forget to put the bootloader on /dev/sda -- but that is probably the only option with this scenario.

3. I would not use LVM. I would not encrypt the drive. I would not encrypt the home folder. (Reason: simplicity)

4. Complete the install tasks.... your name, computer name, time zone, password (don't forget it!).

This is a super basic installation. If you don't like what you've done afterwards, do it again. You'll probably be done in under 30 minutes.

Cheers
 
Regrets on the delay - I jinxed myself when I thought I was in the clear vis-a-vis road trips, and ended up with a 12 hour outage yesterday on my internet connection. Now I am playing catch up.

As on many occasions, it seems, I am right behind friend atanere's advice. And just as he said
...or modify these recommendations

... he is right on the money there too, and it is with his point 1.
...and use the installer for partitioning

It has been a while since I took an MSDOS-MBR drive and converted it to GPT, but I am not certain that Ubiquity features that option to alter the Partition Table format. If that is so, then it is better to use GParted first to convert to GPT, and then by all means go through the installer routine.

What I am going to do, for my own edification if for nothing else, is to take a 64GB USB stick on which I store data (I have prepped this by copying the data on it to my HDD), and install a full working version of Sonya (LM 18.2) Cinnamon on it, bootable, and formatting it to GPT in the process. This will most closely reflect your circumstances. It is currently on FAT32, so that will equate to MSDOS-MBR.

I'll be back when I have completed that.

Cheers

Wizard
 
Now, that was as exciting as watching paint dry. It took the best part of an hour and a half to set up the USB stick … but yours won’t take nearly as long, my situation is complicated.

At the end of that time, I had a perfectly good, bootable install of Sonya Cinnamon on a stick. (writing this from there).

But as this output shows:

chris@SonyaCinnUSB ~ $ sudo parted -l
[sudo] password for chris:
Model: ATA TOSHIBA MQ01ABD1 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 1000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:

Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1049kB 21.5GB 21.5GB ext4
4 21.5GB 43.0GB 21.5GB ext4
5 43.0GB 64.4GB 21.5GB ext4
6 64.4GB 85.9GB 21.5GB ext4
7 85.9GB 107GB 21.5GB ext4
8 107GB 129GB 21.5GB ext4
9 129GB 150GB 21.5GB ext4 Debian9dot1Cinnamon
10 150GB 172GB 21.5GB ext4
11 172GB 193GB 21.5GB ext4
12 193GB 215GB 21.5GB ext4
13 215GB 236GB 21.5GB ext4 Arch-based
14 236GB 258GB 21.5GB ext4
15 258GB 268GB 10.7GB ext4
16 268GB 290GB 21.5GB ext4
17 290GB 311GB 21.5GB ext4
18 311GB 333GB 21.5GB ext4 expendable
19 333GB 354GB 21.5GB ext4 expendable
20 354GB 376GB 21.5GB ext4
21 376GB 397GB 21.5GB ext4
22 397GB 419GB 21.5GB ext4
23 419GB 440GB 21.5GB ext4
24 440GB 494GB 53.7GB ext4 Kali
25 494GB 515GB 21.5GB ext4
26 537GB 580GB 42.9GB ext4 experiment-DEs
3 996GB 1000GB 4096MB linux-swap(v1)
2 1000GB 1000GB 323MB fat32 EFI System Partition boot, esp

Model: SanDisk Cruzer Glide (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 64.0GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags:

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 1049kB 64.0GB 64.0GB primary ext4


chris@SonyaCinnUSB ~ $

… The bottom part (highlighted) shows it as MSDOS over GPT, because I was not offered the opportunity to chose GPT. This then limits me, on the stick, to the 4 Partition Rule.

GParted shows the environment as follows:

M0pgSpC.png


Just the one partition, no swap, no small boot/efi VFAT partition.

Quite neat if I want just the one Distro on it, but I may want 6, so GPT is the go.

A file you will become familiar with, known as /etc/fstab or just plan “fstab”, reveals the story:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# / was on /dev/sdc1 during installation
UUID=8a14a07a-7149-4e8e-aac6-4bea99c0148d / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /boot/efi was on /dev/sda2 during installation
UUID=8D1E-3512 /boot/efi vfat umask=0077 0 1
# swap was on /dev/sda3 during installation
UUID=36d5f5f8-2bcf-4b1f-9291-fe06dab7867a none swap sw 0 0

You can see from this that my root partition was filled on /dev/sdc1 (the USB stick). This is currently /dev/sdb1, because for the install, I had my bootable USB stick containing the Live Linux regarded as sdb1, and my target USB stick was regarded as sdc1 … confusing, I know.

The new install is riding off the back of my Toshiba’s HDD in terms of /boot/efi (where the bootloader is) and my (unused, but present) swap partition on sda3.

I am off to repeat the process, but this time I will use GParted from the Live medium to format the stick to GPT first.

And yes, Ed, you will find GParted on the Live medium, just go to Menu – Administration and you will find GParted or else just Menu, and start typing “gparted”.

Cheers

Wizard
 

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I am quite interested in Wizard's experiment here too. I am still on my own road trip and don't have all the tools or time to explore the difference between MBR and GPT more thoroughly.

But this is my GUESS: Since Mint is UEFI-friendly, and if the UEFI Setup is set to UEFI mode (not Legacy mode)... then I suspect that the installer will create the proper /efi boot partition if told to install the bootloader to the "MBR" of the SSD. I say this because I do not think that the bootloader selection process gives an EFI choice, but I know that it does use UEFI properly. BTW, remember that Secure Boot and Fast Boot should be OFF when checking UEFI Setup.

Warning for the future: You should not later install Ubuntu without some extended reading. Ubuntu and Mint, as far as I know, still create and use the same /efi boot partition. Therefore, if you later install Ubuntu, you will very likely kill your Mint install. But you will probably be okay installing other Linux flavors. As always, if you are messing with operating systems and boot changes... you should back up important stuff because disaster can follow.

Final thought: I forgot to mention that you may also consider creating a separate /home partition (ext4) during the install (or during your GParted session, whichever way you go). If you choose this, the /home should be sufficiently large... it will hold all your user files for Mint and also all of your future installations. Sharing /home between multiple distributions can be convenient.

Again, if you don't like the install you make this time... do it again! :D:D This is the perfect learning opportunity.
 
Well, I am back to set a cat amongst the pigeons with what it seems will be a lengthy post.

Since my last Post, I have repeated the exercise with the 64GB stick, but this time, I have used GParted first to create a new Partition Table on the stick.

If the OP has his new SSD connected, he can go to Gparted, and first take a look. On the right-hand side should be an icon for an HDD (don’t know if that differs with SSD) saying /dev/sda (466.66 GiB) or similar, beside it. Given he has his Live USB stick or Live medium inserted, there will also be a dropdown arrowhead, which reveals it as likely /dev/sdb. Doesn’t matter if the naming is reversed, it will sort itself out in the wash.

On the pane that shows the SSD (likely either as unallocated space, sometimes as unknown file system), click the entry to highlight it, then go to the Menu bar at the top and choose Device – Create Partition Table…

When you choose Create, a small box will appear with choices of msdos and gpt. Choose gpt and OK everything. You will then have a partition showing as /dev/sda1 filling the entire drive. If you want, you can right-click the entry for information. You could also choose Partition from the Menu and choose to Format to ext4, or it is just as easy to let the Ubiquity Installer do that when installing Linux Mint. Exit GParted for now.

My 64GB stick is now a little changed, and I’ll detail those changes a little for better understanding.

We’ll look at just the bottom part, this time (so I will dispense with the Spoiler), of

Code:
sudo parted -l

and it is as follows

Model: SanDisk Cruzer Glide (scsi)

Disk /dev/sdb: 64.0GB

Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B

Partition Table: gpt

Disk Flags:

Number Start End Size File system Name Flags

2 1049kB 63.9GB 63.9GB ext4

1 63.9GB 64.0GB 99.6MB fat32 boot, esp

chris@SonyaCinnUSB ~ $


… so we can see the stick is now using gpt.

We can see, further, that the stick now has two (2) partitions:


  • a partititon for the Linux OS, in this case LM Cinnamon, and taking up effectively the whole drive, and also

  • a very small partition, formatted to fat32, for the bootloader
How does this look in GParted?

Figure 1

HA8oSK6.png


Note the flags at the end of /dev/sdb1 – boot, and esp.

ESP is once again an acronym on top of an acronym. It stands for EFI System Partition (and that is what you choose in GParted when establishing it), where EFI is for Extensible Firmware Interface. This last is the same EFI as in U(Unified) EFI, the protocol which is superceding BIOS.

Note, further, where I was talking earlier about Tebibytes vs Terabytes, Gibibytes vs Gigabytes &c … Linux is just as guilty, and inconsistent, as any other OS about mixing these terms.

When setting up the partitions in GParted, I chose what looked like 100 MiB for the bootloader partition, and in fact it was 100 MB, or 95 MiB.

I chose to put it as /dev/sda1, and at the end of the drive, and then allocated the rest of the drive for the Linux install. Hence, /dev/sdb1 for the ESP, and /dev/sdb2 for Linux Mint.

If I had wanted Linux Mint to be on /dev/sdb1, I would have had to assign it a space of (64GB less bootloader space), and then allocated the “small change” to the bootloader for /dev/sdb2.

Confused? Don’t blame you.

Likewise, if you are going to use Swap, you need to make that allowance for the 2GB, 4GB, 8GB, whatever, you wish to allocate for it.

The pundits, the overused “they” will tell you to create an esp of 300MB. By all means, you can, and if you need to scrabble back 200MB then you are really starved for space and I commiserate. I chose 100MB for the stick because it will not be shared, for the moment, also I have not ever seen more than 76MB consumed by an ESP. But that’s me.

To illustrate, Figure 2 shows the bottom few lines of my setup in the Garage on the Acer AIO. Thirty-seven (37) Linux live happily (for the most part) side-by-side, sharing the same ESP on /dev/sdb3, and consuming only 31.29 MiB between them.

Figure 2

0h3OfDl.png



How does our /etc/fstab look now? If you are lucky, you may not ever need to monkey with fstab. If you have a startup, or a shutdown, that is stalling or hanging, or taking an inordinately long time, then there is likely a startup job, or a shutdown job, of perhaps 1 minute 30 seconds, running, which can usually be remedied by checking fstab for what is missing or incorrect.

fstab tells Linux where to find the ESP, your Swap if you have it, your “root” (/) for your Linux partition, and certain other devices and options. My fstab now looks like this, for the stick:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# / was on /dev/sdb2 during installation
UUID=c4bd4a62-6032-42e3-a61e-40b6c3041aeb / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /boot/efi was on /dev/sda2 during installation
UUID=8D1E-3512 /boot/efi vfat umask=0077 0 1


… and everything is confined to /dev/sda2, now, which was my design.

I could have set up the ESP to be on /dev/sda, which is the Toshiba Satellite I am writing from. But then I would be confined to using the stick on the Toshiba only. Note those UUIDs above – Universally Unique IDentifiers.

On the subject of a home folder or partition:

atanere has mentioned some options in #11 “Final thoughts...”, let’s take a look at those.

Figure 3

f5tfjq1.png


You can see in Figure 3 how my pristine Home folder looks on the stick, and a resemblance to My Documents (or whatever it is called now) from Windows.

This folder actually lives at /home/yourusername, as you can see if at terminal, you type in and enter

Code:
pwd

… present working directory.

Figure 4.

RTiwuWB.png


Although the File Manager (Nemo, in Cinnamon) calls it Home on the left, I’ll give it a lowercase h and call it “home”. It’s a folder (directory) established by default as part of your install.

In Nemo, if you choose View – Show hidden files, or simply shortcut Ctrl-h, you get something like Figure 5.

Figure 5.

R6ohKnq.png



Bit of a difference?

My cursor is placed near the folder .mozilla (the . Makes it hidden).

In there are the subfolders and files for Firefox. That includes your default Profile. Although both Firefox and the email client Thunderbird are Mozilla products, FF gets .mozilla, and if I had T-bird installed, it would get its own .thunderbird folder.

So the argument (& I say nothing for or against … the jury is out, with me) for having a capital H Home Partition is basically for “Have Home will travel” - you can backup your Home partition, and reinstall a Linux, and lose none of your settings. Likewise if you install another Linux alongside the first, you can have it “feed” off the same Home.

I myself use just the standard /home/chris (in my case) installed by default, because I use the following protocols:

  1. Aptik (see recommended reading below) for saving settings

  2. Sync, under Firefox, means even on the Acer with 37 Distros, I can have every single one of 37 Firefoxes looking the same, with access to Favourites/Bookmarks, even down to Tabs recently Opened, &c

  3. External storage for my personal data
Works for me, but the choices are yours. Thunderbird also has a Sync facility I have not used yet, simply involves changing your Server format from pop3 to IMAP, I believe.

That is likely more than enough to digest for the moment. I will make a discrete Post coming up of something else friend atanere said.

Cheers

Wizard

WIZARD'S RECOMMENDED READING

(If you wish to try out Aptik)

https://www.linux.org/threads/aptik-have-settings-will-travel.4529/

AND

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFI_system_partition
 
Hey guys. I went through the process twice. The first time I used parted and made a partition. Then I tried using the installer. The problem is I wasn't able to input a root point. The option wasn't there and it wouldn't let me move forward. It said to do this using the partitioning tool. I didn't know where to go from there. My second attempt was through the installer with the initial option to overwrite the whole disk. I went through this and the installation went well. However when I restarted to establish the Ganges it wouldn't reboot. It gives text and then an error "unable to root Vfs" ... something like this. I've gotten this before using the USB live boot. It boots twice or so then does this same error. I've reformatted and made a new boot USbs when this happens.
 
Ed, is there, in the Installer, an option at the bottom called "something else". If so, try it with that

Wiz

Edited - sorry, was distracted, what is "establish the Ganges"?

Was the error something like

"Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)"?
 
Last edited:
You’ve gotta love a guy who has Homer Simpson doing an MIB (the movies of which I also love, lol) as his avatar, I adore it.

But my experience is otherwise, to what atanere has said here

Warning for the future: You should not later install Ubuntu without some extended reading. Ubuntu and Mint, as far as I know, still create and use the same /efi boot partition. Therefore, if you later install Ubuntu, you will very likely kill your Mint install. But you will probably be okay installing other Linux flavors. As always, if you are messing with operating systems and boot changes... you should back up important stuff because disaster can follow.

I have to disagree. See Figure 1. below.

Figure 1.

7uMWpWE.png


The screenshot above is a little small for my liking, in order to fit all on one window to be captured, I had to reduce the standard font.

A tip if you find that so, is, in Firefox or Chromium and maybe other browsers:

Press and hold Ctrl while pressing the plus/add + button, perhaps a number of times on the +.

Once you are finished viewing, press and hold Ctrl and 0 (zero) and you are back where you were.

A good friend of mine from elsewhere, now a Member here, paul88ks, calls this “the Control Plus Combo”. If you have a wheel on your mouse it may also work.

Fom the above shot, we have (from my Toshiba Satellite in the Study):

sda1 – Xenial MATE – that is Ubuntu 16.04 MATE DE

sda4 – Serena MATE – that is Linux Mint 18.1 MATE DE

sda12 – Xenial Unity – Ubuntu 16.04 with the Unity DE

… and on & on, with Linux Mints and Ubuntus all living happily side-by-side and working off the same EFI System Partition, which is on /dev/sda2.

On the Acer AIO in the Garage, likewise, 37 Distros featuring LMs and Ubuntus, working off the same ESP which I think is /dev/sda3 there.

But if atanere has an example, and/or a link to somewhere where this is mentioned, we could set up a new thread … I would be interested to discover what is involved. I may have a remedy. Or not, lol.

What I have said above has applied since the 14.04 series (Trusty Tahr) with Ubuntu, and the 17 series (started with 17.0 Qiana, then 17.1 Rebecca, 17.2 Rafael, and 17.3 Rosa, of Linux Mint). I cannot say for before that time.

It also applies with Ubuntu derivatives such as Peach OSI, Maui, Vinux (for the visually challenged) and on and on, all of which I run. No dramas.

In fact, the only one I have encountered that has a problem with sharing (out of 90 to 100 I have installed) is one of my Faves, and that is Manjaro, which is Arch-based. But that (& its workaround) is a story for elsewhere.

Cheers

Wizard
 
Excellent assistance, Wizard! I will be on the road all day for each of the next two days, but I'll return when I can to share the source of my EFI confusion with the Ubuntu family.

In the meantime, good luck @PcBuilderEd! I'm sure you will sort through these issues soon and get a working Linux Mint on that SSD.

Cheers
 
Safe travels and I look forward to it (your Ubuntu experiences), I AM intrigued.

Cheers

Wizard
 
Hey guys sorry for being a little mia lately. I completed a monster hike yesterday so I'm a bit out of it physically and mentally however ill try to update.

That is precisely the correct error messsage wiz with the kernel panic. I get that after a use two using the live USB, and also now on the ssd. I did go through the "something else" option on the installer in the first attempt. After creating partitions using parted. However unlike when using it on the hdd it didn't have an option to mount point (i think I was going with /). The installer gave an error message, something like "root point not set, select a point using the partitioning tool". I tried to go into gparted for this but didn't see where to go, and the installer wouldn't let me progress after this.
 
Ed, is there, in the Installer, an option at the bottom called "something else". If so, try it with that

Wiz

Edited - sorry, was distracted, what is "establish the Ganges"?

Was the error something like

"Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)"?

Changes, maybe.... Lol. definitely the right error message though.
 
Hi mate

That error, I have seen following an install being completed (on reboot, intended to start the new installed Linux Distro) but not on a USB stick before.

You said above

I've reformatted and made a new boot USbs when this happens.

Did you use LiLi (Linux Live) again in those circumstances?

Do you still have the downloaded LM iso? It should read like this

linuxmint- 18.2-cinnamon-64bit.iso

and have a SHA256sum of

d50e69a3e6d6b9d4b9cbe56cd3736cef665b708a4a2e5d9024f8eef439a91bba

Do you have the ability to check the hash algorithm above? I can give you Windows references if needed.

Cheers

Wiz
 

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