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The intention of the page is to gather well-written answers to frequent questions (in the Absolute Beginners Forum) in an orderly fashion.

Suggestions are welcomed at Feature Requests

How to Install Ubuntu

Installing an Operating System (OS) is a sophisticated and unfamiliar task for most computer users. Before you start you should back up your data at a minimum. As you embark you will be confronted with partitioning your hard drive (to make room for a new OS) and installing a boot loader (to boot your various OS).

Fortunately, installing Ubuntu is relatively easy. You will burn a CD, then start up your computer from that CD, which will allow you to preview the Ubuntu operating system. From the CD, you can also install Ubuntu onto your computer through a simple graphical interface. See GraphicalInstall for help on installing Ubuntu using the graphical installer.

Occasionally the Desktop, or Live CD, will fail. It can then be helpful to consider the Alternate CD. The Alternate CD uses a command-line installer and is designed for more advanced users. If you are not comfortable using the Alternate CD, seek help from a more experienced Ubuntu user and they will help guide you through the process. The IRC channel #ubuntu on irc.freenode.net is a great place to get help.

Overview (for further information): Installing from the Alternate CD

Graphical guide: Windows (NTFS) + Ubuntu

Additional information

Where to download Ubuntu: GettingUbuntu

How to burn the CD image (ISO) to CD: BurningIsoHowto

Booting from the CD: UbuntuHelp:BootFromCD

Partitioning basics: Basic Partitioning

GRUB: GrubHowto

Hermanzone: How to Grub

Desktop customization

Accessibility options

Once Ubuntu is installed, select System -> Preferences -> Accessibility from the main menu (at the upper left-hand corner of the screen by default) of an Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) system, the latest version. Select Keyboard accessibility and enable sticky keys and other accessibility features,

On older system it is under System -> Preferences -> Keyboard.

See the UbuntuHelp:Accessibility documentation for more information.

General customization

Desktop Customization

Installing software

Repositories

In general it is best (and easiest) to install from the Ubuntu repositories. Ubuntu is a Debian-based distribution and as such uses Synaptic, apt-get, and aptitude (as well as dpkg). dpkg, apt-get, and aptitude are all command line tools. Synaptic is a GUI front end for apt-get. Applications (programs) are packaged into .deb files :

note: you will need to enable all repositories by removing "#" from the front of any line that looks like a web address, save the file and reload sources

Ubuntu or Gnome

gksudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Kubuntu or KDE

kdesu kate /etc/apt/sources.list

Xubuntu or Xfce

gksudo mousepad /etc/apt/sources.list

Server users

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Example foo-xvz.deb

• foo = application (program) name
• -xyz = version

dpkg will install a .deb file you may have downloaded, dpkg will install the .deb, but not handle dependencies.

apt-get, aptitude, and synaptic will download and install your application and dependencies.

For further information : InstallingSoftware

Installing from source code

You can install programs by compiling their source code. Source code is what a programmer writes in order to create a program. Compiling is the process of converting this code into a form that the computer can understand, so that the program can be run. All of the programs available in Ubuntu software repositories are in a ready-to-run (compiled) state. In general you will only ever need to compile an application if it is not available from the repositories.

The compilation of source code can be a tricky process, as there are many things that could go wrong during the process. Compilation is recommended for advanced users only.

To compile a program from source code, first install the build-essential and checkinstall packages. build-essential installs all of the basic tools required to compile source code. checkinstall will convert your newly compiled application into an Ubuntu/Debian package (.deb) and then install it. The advantage of this is that you may now use apt-get or aptitude to install and uninstall the program.

For further information on checkinstall, see CheckInstall.

The general steps are:

• Download the source code.
• Extract the source code. Source code is generally distributed in a .tar or archive format similar to a .zip file.

Note: Not all .tar files contain source code. Some may be install scripts and others may be pre-compiled binaries.

• 1. 3 Read the README file for further information and instructions.
• Open a Terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal)
• Type ./configure --help in the Terminal to list all of the options.
• Type ./configure to prepare the source code for compilation.
• Type make to compile the source code.
• Type sudo checkinstall to create an Ubuntu/Debian package.

For further information : http://cutlersoftware.com/ubuntuinstall/

Hardware

Many people experience problems with some item of hardware. This section covers ways to tackle some common problems.

Identifying your hardware

The model name on your hardware may be meaningless in Linux - what is important is the chipset. Also be aware that the same branded model may either have chipset revision or even different chipset.

PCI devices

• To identify a PCI device, we can query the hardware by typing lspci into a Terminal.
• To identify a graphics card, we can narrow the query by searching for the term 'VGA' in the output of the lspci command:

lspci | grep VGA

Example output: 0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV17 [GeForce4 MX 440 ] (rev a3)

USB devices

• To identify a USB device, we can query USB devices by typing lsusb into the Terminal

Example output: Bus 004 Device 002: ID 152e:2507 LG (HLDS)

• Above, we see the output Bus 004 Device 002. This is handy if we need to point a program/driver to the "location" of the hardware.
• The ID allows us to search for the make and model of the device. From 152e:2507, we can find out that the manufacturer is LG (basic USB information)
• For more detailed information on USB devices and their capabilities, run lsusb -v in a Terminal.
• To see recent events involving USB devices which the kernel has recognized (for example, plugging and unplugging), type dmesg | tail in a Terminal
• To monitor other events involving USB devices, type sudo udevmonitor into a Terminal

For more information on troubleshooting certain types of USB device, see Debugging USB Storage Devices and USB Flash Drives

Hard drive info

Hard drive and partition information

sudo fdisk -l

You can also use gparted which can be installed by installing the gparted package. Installing Software

Mount removable devices as normal user

pmount is a wrapper around the standard mount program which permits normal users to mount removable devices without a matching /etc/fstab entry. This provides a robust basis for automounting frameworks like GNOME's Utopia project and confines the amount of code that runs as root to a minimum.

This package also contains a wrapper "pmount-hal" which reads some information like device labels and mount options from hal and passes them to pmount. Install the package "hal" if you want to use this feature.

If a LUKS capable cryptsetup package is installed, pmount is able to transparently mount encrypted volumes.

example

pmount /dev/sda

For USB storage that do not get recognized you could try:

 sudo modprobe usb-storage

sudo locate usb_storage

followed by pmount command

Query Motherboard bios

for board type /bios version etc

sudo lshw | less

sudo dmidecode

Other possible diagnostics

lsmod — program to show the status of modules in the Linux Kernel so if we wanted to just list USB modules and ignore case

sudo lsmod | grep -i usb

or all devices general info

lsmod

To display the SCSI devices currently attached (and recognized) by the SCSI subsystem use

cat /proc/scsi/scsi.

The output looks like this:

Attached devices: Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 02 Lun: 00 Vendor: PIONEER Model: DVD-ROM DVD-303 Rev: 1.10 Type: CD-ROM ANSI SCSI revision: 02 Host: scsi1 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00 Vendor: IBM Model: DNES-309170W Rev: SA30 Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 03

After the "Attached devices:" line there are 3 lines for each recognized device. The first of these lines is SCSI address information discussed in Section 3.1. The following 2 lines of data are obtained from a INQUIRY command that was performed on the device when it was attached. See Section 9.4 for the relationship between the ordering of these devices compared with the sg driver's ordering (which most of the time is the same).

Existing devices can be removed using echo "scsi remove-single-device <h> <t> <l>" > /proc/scsi/scsi where the variables are host, bus (channel), target (scsi id) and lun. The success (or otherwise) of this command can be determined by sending a subsequent cat /proc/scsi/scsi command. The removal will fail if the device is busy (e.g. if a file system on the device is mounted).

New devices can be added using echo "scsi add-single-device <h> <t> <l>" > /proc/scsi/scsi where the variables are host, bus (channel), target (scsi id) and lun. The success (or otherwise) of this command can be determined by sending a subsequent cat /proc/scsi/scsi command. [1]

The SCSI subsystem does not support hot-plugging of SCSI devices (there may also be electrical issues on the associated SCSI parallel bus). It is recommended that those who use add+remove-single-device make sure that other devices on that SCSI bus are inactive if re-plugging is going to take place.

To output a list of internal SCSI command blocks use echo "scsi dump <n>" > /proc/scsi/scsi where the numeric value of <n> doesn't matter. This is probably only of interest to people chasing down bugs within the SCSI subsystem.

To start (or stop) logging information being sent to the console/log use echo "scsi log <token> <n>" > /proc/scsi/scsi where <token> is one of: {all, none, error, timeout, scan, mlqueue, mlcomplete, llqueue, llcomplete, hlqueue, hlcomplete, ioctl} and <n> is a number between 0 and 7. The tokens "all" and "none" don't take an <n> argument. Prefix meanings:

hl upper level drivers [exception: sg uses "timeout"] ml mid level ll lower level drivers [adapter drivers often have there own flags]

The value "0" turns off logging while "7" maximizes the volume of output. Logging information will only be output if CONFIG_SCSI_LOGGING was selected in the kernel build.

Warning: "scsi log all" (and several other variants) can cause a logging infinite loop if the log file (typically /var/log/messages ) lies on a SCSI disk. Either turn off the kernel logging daemon or direct its output to a non SCSI device. Notes [1]

The parsing of "add-single-device" and "remove-single-device" is rather inflexible. Hence it is best to stay close to the demonstrated syntax with no extra spaces (and no tabs).

Something else to check/try: Add irqpoll to grub

gksudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

1. defoptions=quiet splash noapic irqpoll

'sudo update-grub'

WiFi

Although often WiFi will work out of the box, sometimes a particular WiFi card will work in either Ubuntu 6.06 LTS or 6.10 but not both. Therefore if you are having problems with your WiFi you may want to try a different version of Ubuntu.

See WirelessNetworking for instructions on how to configure your wireless connection.

If you are still having problems with your WiFi you can try to manually configure the interface. In some cases there may be more than one method to get your wireless card to work. Make sure to keep track of which set of instructions you have followed in order to avoid unnecessary repetition.

The first step is to identify which wifi card you have so that you can pick the relevant set of instructions, to do this type the following in the terminal:

lspci

The output you are looking for will look similar to this:

00:09.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 03)

Once you have identified your WiFi card you can proceed to the WifiDocs page and pick the relevant instructions (don't let the long list scare you, you only need the relevant entries).

Please note that Ubuntu 6.06 and 6.10 do not natively support WiFi access to WPA encrypted networks. You will be required to install additional packages to access such networks. For further information please read WifiDocs/WPAHowTo

For further information, see the Wireless Troubleshooting Guide.

Winmodem

No information yet.

Printers

No information yet.

Multimedia

People sometimes have problems with certain types of audio and video file, or do not like the default multimedia applications. See below for information on working with multimedia in Ubuntu:

• Restricted Formats - Information on playing multimedia files which use restricted formats
• Multimedia Applications - Listings of multimedia software available with Ubuntu

System Administration

Sometimes you may need to perform administrative tasks on your system. This section provides help with some common administrative tasks.

Mounting Disk Partitions

Sometimes, in order to access a hard drive (or a partition on the hard drive), you must mount the hard drive. Mounting is when Ubuntu connects a disk to itself, thus making it available for access.

Different disks/partitions can have different file system types. A file system is a way of organizing information on a disk, and much initial configuration depends on the tye of file system the disk has.

Windows

To mount a Windows disk for both reading and writing:

• For vfat (FAT32) format disks, use umask=000
• For NTFS format disks, use ntfs-3g and an /etc/fstab entry something like this:

/dev/hda1  /media/windows  ntfs-3g  defaults  0  0

• 1. 3 An alternate is ntfs-config. ntfs-config uses ntfs-3g to mount windows partitions via a GUI.

See Mount Windows (Psychocats) and ntfs-config (GWOS) for more information.

Linux

To set permissions:

• Mount the partition
• Use chmod on the directory which you mounted the disk to by typing something like sudo chmod 755 /mount/point into a Terminal

To mount a partition at boot you will need to edit the /etc/fstab file. For an overview of fstab see Understanding fstab (GWOS).

If you would like to access EXT2 and EXT3 partitions from Windows, take a look at FS-Driver.

See Mount Linux (Psychocats) for more information.

Server Install

Server installs typically have no GUI, and servers may administered remotely via SSH or Webmin. If you are new to server installs you can add a light window manager such as Fluxbox, IceWM, Openbox, or the Ubuntu desktop.

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