Ubuntu Help

[mad_hatter]

Well I finally got my new coputer up and running. Installed Windows, and Ubuntu. The only problem is that I can't boot Ubuntu. It starts loading and it shows the Ubuntu Logo, but then it opens a CLI and says something like /bin/sh tty: job not found. Im not exaclty sure if thats wat it said. But it's close. I would love to give your more details but right now i have to run. More details later. Thanks in advance for the help, and yes this is the first time I have ever used Linux or even tried to have two operating systems on one computer, so bear with me.

[faulkner132]

Stuff like this can be easily found on the Ubuntu Forums (http://www.ubuntuforums.org). I just did a simple search on "/bin/sh tty" and found a relevant link:

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=86891

[mad_hatter]

Yes that message was the same one I recieved.
ALERT! /dev/hdb1 does not exist. Dropping to a shell!

BusyBox v1.0-pre10 (Debian 20040623-1ubuntu22) Built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

/bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off.

But I still dont know what to do to fix this problem. I have both Ubuntu and Windows on the same HDD, and Windows will boot just fine.

[Computer Hobbyist]

Lets take the message apart. hdb1 refers to a partition on a hard drive designated hdb by Linux. How many hard drives do you have in your computer? If you have one hard drive it will be designated hda. Its partitions will have numbers 1 through as many as you have. The second physical hard drive will be designated hdb. In windows we designate partitions C,D, E etc regardless of the number of different hard drives we have installed. If your system is dual boot with windows, the windows partitions will be hda2 or hda3 or something like that. The dev directory is used to hold files that point to your various system devices.

In this case the system is looking for the first partition on the second physical hard drive. On the ubuntu site the problem was solved by checking the cables to the two drives, and reinstalling ubuntu allowing it to partition. I don't dual boot so I don't know what the reinstall will do to your windows install. You will have to reinstall ubuntu.

How many physical hard drives do you have on your system?

EDIT:On rereading your post you indicate you have only one physical harddrive. In that case your install has gone awry and you will have to install again. If you have two physical harddrives, check your cables and reboot before you reinstall.

[mad_hatter]

I managed to get an answere from the people on the Ubuntu forums, and was able to boot Ubuntu up. But after shutting down and rebooting into Windows, the new XP Scandisk or whatever ran through my drive and now Ubuntu won't work again.

Here is the link to my post on the Ubuntu Forums.

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=87322

[faulkner132]

This is how I did it, starting from a clean 80G IDE drive.

1. Install XP, giving it a 25G partition (NTFS).
2. Boot into XP and spend 17 days (slight exageration) installing updates and rebooting.
3. Boot to Ubuntu install disk.
4. Set up 18G root partition (ext2 FS)
5. Set up 1G swap (placed in the last sectors of the HD)
6. Use the remaining space for the /home partition (ext2 FS)
7. Let the Ubuntu install automatically configure Grub.
8. Reboot.

I now have the option to run either OS (Ubuntu set to default) when my computer boots. Both run fine.

[Computer Hobbyist]

I am not sure you shouldn't use ext3 instead of ext2, but the rest looks like a plan to me.

[faulkner132]

I chose ext2 over ext3 because there are drivers freely available which will allow Windows to view ext2 partitions. I didn't find one for ext3, but then again, I didn't look that hard.

[Computer Hobbyist]

I screw things up a lot. I like the journaling feature of ext3.