SATA and CD Rom Boot

[jason_newLinuxMCE]

A very newbie question. This is my first experience with Linux, please be patient.

I have an older PC that I rescued from WinXP for this install. The CD-ROM drive I had was broke, so I replaced with a SATA drive after I had installed LinuxMCE with a "borrowed" IDE CD-ROM drive.

The new SATA CD-ROM and new 1 TB drive meant I needed a SATA PCI Card.

Two questions:
Can I boot from the SATA CD-ROM drive?
How do I get Linux MCE to recognize the new 1TB SATA HDD?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. For a novice user (completely capable of becoming a power user) I am beginning to get very frustrated with LMCE. I hope one of the kind people on this forum can get me moving.

Thanks!

[pw44]

Answer to your questions:
yes, you can boot from the sata cd-rom drive.
just install it. kubuntu 8.10 will allow you to partition the disk. just choose "entire disk".

what is your older pc specs? it may not be enough to become a hybrid neither a core.

[jason_newLinuxMCE]

Thank you for the response.

Again, I'm very much a newbie. So I may ask some very basic questions right now. I apologize ahead of time, but I will be a strong contributor in the future.

Specs: 2.66 GHz P4, 1.5 GB Ram.

On the CD Drive:
When you say, "just install it", the drive is connected and working when logged into Kubuntu, but the system will not boot from the CD-ROM. In the BIOS, I have "CD Drive" set as the first boot device.

On the Hard Drive:
(This one is going to sound VERY newbie) Where do I go in Kubuntu to partition the disk? I can't find any pre-loaded software.

[pw44]

For an initial hybrid, i think that a 2.66 P4 with 1.5GB RAM is enough. Try to get a Nvidia series 8 or 9 graphic card for best result. In a future, you will need to upgrade if, i.e. video streaming gets choppy. Or you can move this older to a MD and build a new hybrid.
There is a LMCE DVD torrent, but i did not try it yet, i did it following the instructions which you can find at http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Installing_0810.
If you already have kubuntu installed (for LMCE you need kubuntu 8.10), you don't need to repartition.... just follow the instructions on the above link.
Linux partition tool is fdisk.

[jason_newLinuxMCE]

I installed and am running 0710, not 0810. I guess I will try the upgrade following the instructions at http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Installing_0810 and see how it goes.

[pw44]

or you can do a release update, but installing 8.10 fresh is better. By installation you will be able to partition the disk.

[jason_newLinuxMCE]

For future use, does anyone have thoughts on how to get my BIOS to boot from an SATA DVD/CD drive?

pw44: Thank you for all the help!

[pw44]

not having your mobo's specs makes it difficult. take a look at you sata pci card, i'm quite sure you can boot your cdrom from it. I guess you will need to disable the bios boot sequence and enable it at your pci card (jumper?).

[jason_newLinuxMCE]

I really appreciate all the help, but the instructions on this page simply don't make sense to me.
http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Installing_0810

As great as this LinuxMCE seems, I'm not sure this is for me. I was hoping that through a bit of reading (and applying what I thought was some pretty good computer skills) that I would be able to learn my way through the setup and installation. I have spent about 6 weeks getting absolutely nowhere. It is a horrible realization to learn that MCE functionality will not be popular and widespread until someone like Microsoft figures out how to get it user-friendly enough for the masses.

Thanks again for the help, but I think this is all over my head.

**** Edited *****
Sorry for the long rant, not being able to understand all this is very frustrating and this is a long learning process. Because I can't let things go, I kept searching for the answer on how to boot from the SATA CD-ROM Drive...

Answer: Set the "First Boot Device" in my BIOS to "SCSI"

I hope this helps others!!! I hope to have the energy to continue this journey.

[pw44]

even with micro$oft products, if you do not read LOTS or get a class, you will be at surface, unable to use it's full potential. i got many times problems with windows where the only solution was reinstalling the entire system. it never happened with linux.
hardware issues have nothing to do with the system, like booting from cdrom, or bios configuration. This will impact the installation of linux, windows, freebsd, etc...
so, if you get how to boot from cdrom, and take the  following steps, you will have lmce installed, and running. for configuration and other, the way will be asking or searching the posts....
1) get linux 8.10 ISO image.
2) burn it to a cd
3) boot from the cd
4) after install, log in and
5) sudo su - #This might ask for the password you specified earlier during the install of kubuntu.
6) apt-get update
7) apt-get -y -f dist-upgrade
wget -c http://deb.linuxmce.org/ubuntu/new-installer-beta2.tar.gz
9) tar xvf new-installer-beta2.tar.gz
10) cd new-installer
11) ./pre-install-from-repo.sh
12) ./mce-install.sh
13) ./post-install.sh
14) reboot
IT WILL work if you hardware meets the minimal specs.....

[jason_newLinuxMCE]

Thanks for the detailed post. After installing from the 0810 DVD, I managed to do the updates and install. The DVD image came with LinuxMCE, but I pretty much followed the directions you have below.

I'm not a developer (far from it), but I hope to be able to contribute in a different way in the future. This forum is great and there are many great answers here, but some are hard to find. I hope I can help more "everyday" users have success installing and using this great product.

Thanks again for the help. With your help, I made a big step today.

[pw44]

You're welcome. I was a developer (old school - cobol, pl/1, C).... not in business anymore.... ;-). I simply don't get OOL.