Migrating to Linux (Ubuntu?)

[#1]

It's highly unlikely to work - but have you tried the shutdown command?
In theory (and in practice, on my machine)
sudo shutdown -P now
(if entered into a command entry line) causes the PC to shutdown and switch the power off, cleanly.
Try the man shutdown command to read about it.

[#2]

Quote from: axisofevil

It's highly unlikely to work - but have you tried the shutdown command? In theory (and in practice, on my machine) sudo shutdown -P now (if entered into a command entry line) causes the PC to shutdown and switch the power off, cleanly. Try the man shutdown command to read about it.

Hi Jeremy
Tried that but system shuts down to "system halted" as usual, but thanks.
Taking a very close look at boot-up error message (a quick flash!) I see that it reveals that my BIOS is too old (1996) and acpi=force is required, which explains a lot why I cannot cure the problem so far. The BIOS is a SystemSoft MobilePRO Version 1.01. This is clearly in CMOS in the hardware. If they are still in business how do I set about getting an update into the hardware?
Colintivy 😕

[#3]

For startup details etc enter
dmesg | less
press space for the next page and q to exit from the display
(Incidentally these are the same "commands" to use for the man command).
Alternatively use dmesg > somefilename to give a file that you can look at with a text editor
to see the results of your most recent startup.

[#4]

This shutdown problem sounds like acpi related - caused by a buggy BIOS.  Unless you update your BIOS with the latest OEM firmware and that happens to fix your problem, I would suggest that you disable acpi.
HTH.
PS.  There's possible workarounds in tweaking your BIOS by creating a new image using an Intel compiler - but that's somewhat advanced stuff and the results could be elusive.

[#5]

Hi Mick and Jeremy,
Shutdown Problem.
I think that the problem is solved without fiddling with BIOS. "prshah" in Ubuntu Absolute Beginner's forum provided a simple temporary change which seems to have done the job. I have thanked him and await the permanent version. SystemSoft do still exist but do not seem to be interested in BIOS's these days. Other BIOS updates now available are all for Windows OS's.
I also await the delivery of "Linux in a nutshell"as recommended earlier. I hope to be troubling you all a lot less now! Thanks to you as well.
Colintivy

[#6]

I have been very pleased with Ubuntu, everything worked fine straightaway (didn't try printers though).
I installed as dual boot with XP and have learned to manage and reinstall the grubloader a few times. Thanks for the help.
So having played around for a while and armed with a little knowledge I decided to also load up PCLinuxos and try to triple boot.
I got it loaded and played around with the grub trying to get all three OS to boot. I found I could get grub to offer XP and Ubuntu or XP and PCLinuxOS but not all three.
So I continued to test my new linux abilities to the full and .....err I broke it!
Having formatted the hard drive I am now re-installing, which is not a big deal as it is only a spare lappy.
I also found the various Linux forums very useful.

[#7]

good for you!  there has been a couple of sagas going on at pclinuxos and they've both turned out well, the users learning a great deal from the effort.
you learn much more from making mistakes and rectifying them than from using a perfectly running system.
the most important thing is to have fun, lots and lots of fun!

[#8]

Thanks for the encouragement, it was very welcome as I am currently re-installing. 
However this time I am going to set out the partitions better this time. On the first install I didn't make them big enough. Yes, you know what I did....played around resizing partitions. Now, I know that is not a good idea particularly for noobs  but that was my big mistake and it went downhill from there.
But you are right, learning from your mistakes is a good way to learn. Now I know my "find /boot/grub/stage1" from "gksu gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst"
I am re-instating my dual boot XP ubuntu on my old lappy but will be trying PCLinuxoS on my new (ish) XP lappy

[#9]

i think it took me about a year and hundreds of reinstalls to land on a partitioning scheme that really suited the way i like to work.  (this is an intermittently, not all of a piece year).  much of the holdup i experienced was pure ignorance of linux and how it works.  my windows 'mindset' also got in the way for quite a while.
now i tend to not dual- triple-boot and try new distros in virtual box.  i'm going to learn vmware as it is said to be more powerful and flexible.
i keep a spare box for experimenting and never 'play about' in my main install, which i keep fully updated.
what i like best, i think, about linux is the many and varied ways of doing one thing.  if you want to rip some tracks from cd, there is about ten different ways of doing it, one of which will suit you perfectly.
i love the plethora of choices.

[#10]

You can also try VirtualBox.
With regards to Santiago's borked system - next time shout if you need help.  99 out of a hundred Linux can be fixed without reinstalling - especially borked grub or LiLo configurations.
There are ways to ugrade your BIOS even if the image offered by the OEM is a MSWindows executable - you can use Barts LiveCD and run it from your hard drive - or you can use FreeDOS if it can be run from DOS.  There's also some ways to install it natively from Linux - with a bit of searching I could dig these out for you if you need to.

[#11]

@articifer, I'll report back in year then
My wife has also been looking at the Linux and she quite like the features you mention about lots of choices to do different things. I'll get her to try it out on the old lappy and see if she likes it. Interestingly I was thinking about a virtual solution for her machine,
@ mickKi, Thanks for the offer of help, if I get in pickle I will give you a shout. Is "borked" a linux technical term then?
It was funny yesterday, as it was all going wrong and I was saying "well I will just try this" and then "just try that" it was in my mind that I am going to have to cough up and post to the forum that it went pear shaped. Then I will be reminded that help was available!
However it was a useful learning curve and I do understand a lot more know. You do need some understanding to be able to explain things when you do ask for help!
Now a question, I have a laptop with xp and 2gb memory I want to dual with PCLinuxOS. It has 100 gb partition with XP and 65gb spare, a 40 gb data partition for windows and the Acer 10 gb partition with the preloaded carp.
So from the available 65 gb, what partioning would you suggest for me.
I have read conflicting advice about whether to use three partions, /root /home swap or to use just /root and swap.
I want to get this right as this will be my main linux box. Any suggestions?

[#12]

I have a /boot partition on the first 1GB of a slow SATA disk, with the rest of the system on
a faster SCSI disk. The first 1GB of the SCSI has been created with a file system on it.
Since I'd like to have my OS on one disk what would happen if I naively used the dd command
to copy the boot partion (excluding the MBR)?
Are there lots of places where I'd have to change things?
Ubuntu uses UUID's to refer to partitions - so is there a proper way to do this?

[#13]

let's keep it simple.  you don't have to have a separate /home partition, but if you've done lots of tweaks, you will lose them if you need to reinstall if /home resides with /.  i've recently been given advice to back up /home to a separate partition and house everything in /.
for suspend to ram and hibernation, you need swap to be twice the amount of ram.  otherwise 2gb is plenty for when you remaster.
on my system, as i like plenty of elbow room, i have swap 2gb, / 20gb and /home 20gb.  the rest of the drive is a /data partition to keep those files that don't change, like music and video.  regard 10gb for / as the minimum and take it from there.
the next item you need to consider is where to write the bootloader.  will you be wanting windows to handle this?  if so, linux must be added to boot.ini and i am not competent to do that.  if linux is to be the controller, that's much more straightforward for me as i simply write grub to the mbr of the boot drive (hda, or sda; pata and sata respectively).
do make sure that all your precious data is backed up first, including any windows drivers that you might need.

[#14]

Sorry - I left those details out! I have
Filesystem          1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1            UNUSED
/dev/sda2            SWAP (about 250MB)
/dev/sda3              extended partition
/dev/sda5              4032092    582516  3244752  16% /
/dev/sda6            12088692  5811088  5663524  51% /usr
/dev/sda7              4032092  1171536  2655732  31% /var
/dev/sda8            49888264  26871012  23017252  54% /home
/dev/sdb1              986111    87990    845510  10% /boot
/dev/sdb2            50394996  26244092  21590948  55% /backup      [used for backups!]
/dev/sdb3            191938712  81704732 110233980  43% /filestore  [used for video, pictures,etc]

[#15]

Santiago,
When it comes to partioning I like to keep things real simple and have a swap, / and seperate /home partition (for installation no need to worry about the /home contents reasons)
Swap in a laptop is important as this is used if you hibernate/suspend the machine (same for any machine with this ability) as the 'resume' will be looking for the information in the Swap partition, I use a 4gig partition for this reason (the recommended for -modern- laptop use )
the swap will probably be used at very few times for any other reasion (except when you remaster your install onto a DVD/CD )

For / and /home file system i would recommend EXT3 (reiser3 is unlikely to last long without its developer  XFS and JFS are great for differnt reasons but possibly not for the newer home user)
With you having 65 gigs available I would suggest the following 4gig SWAP, 16gig /, 45gig/home if the windows 'data' partition is in FAT32 than you can mount that as required to share file availability between windows and PCLinuxOS install's.
Its late and I gotta get up soon (lol) will catch up tomorrow (when i will probably be cleaning out (and dual booting) a virus infected acer laptop (sheesh windows users....... )
artificer - good to see you my friend.
Jase