[nzlug] PC World Ubuntu

[Simon]

I see the current PC World is amongst the mainstream magazines featuring
Feisty on their cover disk this month.

I was curious to see what they had to say, but they just direct the
reader to the website... good thing I didn't buy the rag!

By comparison, PC User Australia devoted a bit over four pages between
the covers, providing an actually quite competant overview of installing
and running the distro and covering post-install suggestions too.

Perhaps PC World are more in-depth... thus the web-only?

Looking it up, I see a May article by Scott Spanbauer suggesting dual
boot and a short howto.
http://pcworld.co.nz/pcworld/pcw.nsf/ht/DBF32F3165D13745CC2572C900173480
... sadly, despite a strong start, the article is out of date where it
isn't simply wrong in important places.

It is referenced in connection to U7.04 but the author is still using
6.06. He suggests dual-booting on a "try it for yourself" message, which
is fine.

The only "dual boot" instruction is: 

> Creating a dual-boot setup on a Windows machine is as easy as
> selecting that option when you install Ubuntu.

With no hint where or how or when this option occurs. Some Windows users
will have the impression that Ubuntu is installed from windows, maybe
via the InstallShield wizard.

Suggests Partition Magic to resize the windows partition. Yet Dapper
(parted) was capable of this (except for some sata drives I recall) and
feisty is certainly capable.

No mention is made about how to go about this or protect data on the
windows partition. Unless Partition Magic runs defrag (including hidden
files), the approach described will all but guarantee data loss in
windows.

Author claims that ntfs write support is not good enough (dapper used an
ntfs-3g version that was reputed to be unstable but the feisty version?)
and that, anyway, the tools are a pita to install (in ubuntu?!) So he
advises to create a fat32 partition... but no suggestion on how the user
is to acheive this. Presumably with Partition Magic again.

Further... the fat32 partition thus created will be instantly writable
in windows (didn't he need to give it a drive letter first?) but
requires a lengthy process to gain access.

The process turns out to be the most convoluted approach to mounting a
partition I have seen.


> When you boot into Ubuntu Linux (I use Ubuntu 6.06), the partition
> appears in the Computer window (Places•Computer), but any attempts you
> make to open it will fail. That’s because Ubuntu hasn’t yet mounted
> the drive (see Figure 1). To instruct it to do so, click the Show more
> details link in the error message window, and jot down the partition’s
> name – usually it’s ‘/dev/hdxy’, where x is the hard disk (the first
> one installed on your system is ‘a’, the second is ‘b’, and so on) and
> y is the partition number. For example, if your FAT32 partition is the
> second one created on a PC containing a single hard disk, it would be
> ‘/dev/hda2’. SCSI and SATA drives appear in the format ‘/dev/sdxy’. 
> 
> Next, click Applications•Accessories•Terminal to open a command-line
> window, and enter the command to open the file pmount.allow for
> editing. Type the partition name on the last line, click the Save
> icon, and close the editor. Now return to the Computer window,
> right-click the FAT32 partition, and choose Mount Volume. Close all
> open Computer windows, and then reopen one; your partition will now be
> accessible. You can use the same method to mount NTFS partitions, but
> in read-only mode. For more detail on these steps, as well as other
> strategies for reading and writing to Windows partitions in Ubuntu
> Linux, see the Ubuntu community documentation at
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MountingWindowsPartitions.
> 

See what I mean?

Notice the painstaking instructions to open a terminal followed by
"enter the command to open the file pmount.allow for editing" ... What
is the command Scott? Where is "pmount.allow"?
Possibly /etc/pmount.allow (not present in my Feisty install)?
All I need to do is rt-click the device in Places > Computer and select
"mount volume"... could we not do that with dapper? I don't remember.

Rather jarring, the article includes a large, prominent, graphic of
Ubuntu failing to mount a fat32 partition.

The link at the end actually contradicts these instructions, and has
done for some time. 

> last edited 2007-04-23 19:50:47 by TylerKinkade
(i.e. *before* the article was written!)

There is no mention of pmount in there at all, and the expected mention
of /etc/fstab. It also points out that Feisty has a graphical tool to
set up ntfs access which defaults to rw.

I see some scuttlebut about the web that pmount doesn't support ntfs-3g
- if true, this may explain Scot's attitude to it.

Anyway, if the fat32 partition were created before (or during) the
Ubuntu 7.04 install, it would have a mountpoint in /media and an fstab
entry. Thus, rw out of the gate while, in XP, you still have to
configure it. (Someone correct me...)

The article stops there. As it stands, it is so woefully incomplete that
it had me looking round for another page. Anyone finds it, let me know.

Probably there are better articles than this... but I felt this would be
a good example of a bad, if well-meaning, one.