# All my Ubuntu Problems



## Big-K (Nov 22, 2003)

*Question 1*: Why are boot times so slow? Does available HD space have anything to do with it? The reason I ask about HD space is the fact that with Mandrake 10.1 the boot up was alot slower than with XP, but Mandrake was on a 9 gig patition while XP was on a 27 gig one.

Now Mandrake is gone and in it's place, on the same drive, is Ubuntu 5.04. This one is terrible at boot time. IT takes upward 2 or 3 minutes to get past that screen of ever changing data, then it finally gets to the login screen and everything is of amazing speed.

Why is it that it loads so slow?

*Question 2*: How do I mount an NTFS or VFAT partition? I seem to be unable to read OR write any of my three windows partitions. Two are on the same physical drive, the third is on another drive entirely.

I apologize for all my threads. This will be my place for now to post problems with this distro.


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## lynch (Aug 3, 2002)

Big-K said:


> *Question 1*: Why are boot times so slow? Does available HD space have anything to do with it? The reason I ask about HD space is the fact that with Mandrake 10.1 the boot up was alot slower than with XP, but Mandrake was on a 9 gig patition while XP was on a 27 gig one.
> 
> Now Mandrake is gone and in it's place, on the same drive, is Ubuntu 5.04. This one is terrible at boot time. IT takes upward 2 or 3 minutes to get past that screen of ever changing data, then it finally gets to the login screen and everything is of amazing speed.
> 
> Why is it that it loads so slow?


There are probably a bunch of un-needed services starting at boot that you could get rid of. That " screen of ever changing data" is the normal output of the Linux boot process: checking the filesystem, checking hardware and starting services etc. You could run the hdparm command to see how Ubuntu configured your hard drive. As root, type *hdparm /dev/hd?* where ? is the drive. Copy/paste the results here. Though, if it's running fast after boot, as you say, it may be optimized ok already.


> *Question 2*: How do I mount an NTFS or VFAT partition? I seem to be unable to read OR write any of my three windows partitions. Two are on the same physical drive, the third is on another drive entirely.
> 
> I apologize for all my threads. This will be my place for now to post problems with this distro.


Create a directory in /mnt: 
*mkdir /mnt/vfat*
As root, type: *mount -t vfat /dev/hd?# /mnt/vfat* ( the ? is the drive and the # is the partition number. ie., on the 1st slave drive's second partition it would be /dev/hdb2).
If I recall correctly, Ubuntu is based on Fedora, which does'nt read/write( because of perceived legal issues) ntfs by default. It should read vfat ok though.
Dont apologize, just stick with it. You'll be glad.
HTH
lynch


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## Big-K (Nov 22, 2003)

Okay, it turns out that the drives are all mounted.










Now the problem is that I can't access them. All partitions I have are shown, except for hda4(which is the partition this is running off), but I can't access any of them. Going into properties/permissions I found that hdb and hdb1(the only ones I looked in) both are set with read/write ability for the owner and groups, but nothing for 'others'. Is this a setting I have to change from windows?. 
If I try opening any of the drives I get the error message 'Could'nt Display "/dev/****"'.


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## lynch (Aug 3, 2002)

Is that a pic of the /dev directory? Or do you really have 9 partitions on /dev/hda?
Look in /etc/mtab to see what is already mounted.


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## deuce868 (Nov 2, 2000)

Ubuntu is based on debian. Ubuntu uses a standard directory /media for extra mounted media. I use this line in my fstab to mount it properly on boot:
/dev/hda1 /media/windows ntfs umask=0,ro 0 0

This assumes you have created a folder called windows in the /media directory and that your windows partition is on /dev/hda1. One easy way to tell is to install qtparted and let it search for available drives. It will show you where your windows partition it. It will be the ntfs partition. 

As for the slow boot times?
My guess is that it's having trouble connecting to the network or something. You need to watch "that screen of ever changing data" and read it. Where does it get hung up and stop for a few seconds. It should flow through pretty quickly. The size of the paritition will not matter on it.


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## Big-K (Nov 22, 2003)

I'll check for where it hangs next time it boots. 

Yes, I do have 9 partitions. Technically. 1 is the main XP partition, made up of 22 gigs currently. Another is a 1.2 gig NTFS partition. A couple are swap. One is the Ubuntu partition. One or two are accidental ones that don't seem to take up any space(made on accident while using the Mandrake Partitioner).


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## lynch (Aug 3, 2002)

Deuce868: thanks for clearing that up.


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## ShavedApe (Apr 12, 2005)

not to put down linux at all, but it's still technicaly a server platform, and boot times arent of concern. some distros are putting effort into speeding up the boot time, but it will still take longer than windows, as it does everything sequentially. 

you may need to add "users" as an option in the fstab. IIRC, the "/media" system unmounts after a certain idle time, and you need to have permission so it will re-mount when you go back to that directory. 
you can mount the vfat partitions as rw too


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