I have Ubuntu 10.04 and WinXP SP3 multiboot. I have 3 partitions:

1) NTFS, WinXP (defunct)
2) ReiserFS (+ extra swap partition) Ubuntu
3) NTFS, Storage (lots of my windows projects stored there)

Few days ago, my WinXP stopped working, no way to boot it, something went so terribly wrong, and from the previous long year experience with windows I could simply sense when the time for total reinstall has come. Since I have started with Ubuntu 9.04 my GRUB was the legacy mode GRUB, so I prepared an Ubuntu 9.04 live cd to be able to reinstall GRUB after installing WinXP, and naturally: I though I was ready for the operation.

I booted from the Windows XP SP3 installation DVD, selected partition C (NTFS) to be reformatted and chosen as destination. Everything went smooth, C was erased, new Windows appeared on it, I rebooted the computer, and was happy to see that everything is there..

Or at least I thought so.

The system was missing my partition E, or my Storage partition. It was wiped out. Storage manager denoted it as unallocated space. A quick reboot into Ubuntu ended up with same knowledge: Unallocated space.

No space for panic. Google comes, google helps. I found a marvelous little command line tool which was able to revamp my Storage NTFS partition in about 10 seconds. It’s called testdisk.

Open your synaptic, type testdisk, install it.

Open terminal, type
<pre>
$ sudo testdisk
</pre>

1) Now on the first screen select [ Create ] ( Create a new log file ).
2) From listed hard discs select the one that you need to salvage. Then [Proceed].
3) Then [Continue].
4) Then [Intel] – this works in most cases, but if you have some other exotic partition types, you can tell testdisk which one it is on this screen.
5) Then [Analyse].
6) Then [Quick Search] – this will do most of the time. But if corruption was more severe, you might need to select another round of ‘deeper search’.
7) On the next screen select Vista [Y/N] – N, if you used WinXP to create the controversial partition.
8) — disregard the stupid smiley –  Now you will see all partitions that testdisk was able to identify. Press Enter (continue).
9) Ok finally – if you are happy with the results, ie. you see your lost partition in the list, select  [ Write ] and reboot (you will be informed about that on the next screen anyway). But if testdisk wasn’t able to dig out the lost partition, then select [ Deeper Search ].

It saved my night. And a lot of data. I think this tool exists for windows as well. Check it out, remember it. It will come handy sooner or later!

[EDIT]
Yep, TestDisk runs on several platforms – check it out:
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

In order to filter them out I use tail + grep combo:

tail -f yourapache.log | grep -v ('controller\/check')

This will effectively filter out all *controller/check* calls.

Flag -v in grep manual says: Output only lines which do NOT match

Yesterday I finally layed my hands on Aros. It has been talked about quite a lot in AMIGA waters, and me, being an old AMIGA both user and fan, decided to finally install the latest version in Virtual Box and give it a try. Why? Well, I have Ubuntu 9.10, and E-UAE is nowhere near WinUAE, so working in Workbench 3.x in Ubuntu is not a matter of comfort. Alternatives were quite welcome, and AROS popped up dozen of times before and I thought: why not test it. (Sadly, as I write this, my still functional Amiga 1200 is peacefully sitting in a cellar some 1k miles away, waiting for the first friendly person to bring it over to me.)

This article will guide you through a few show stoppers you might encounter while trying to install Aros yourself.

Setting Up AROS in Virtual Box

To set up AROS in a virtual environment, I used the ‘almost’ latest version of VirtualBox 3.1.0, and then jumped to AROS official homepage to grab the latest copy of the OS: http://aros.sourceforge.net/download.php

Naturally at the first glance I opted for  VE edition, which was allegedly created to ease in the set up by offering an already pre-set virtual environment, specially created for VirtualBox. After downloading the file, and starting it off in VBox, I almost immediately encountered some obscure error dialog stating something about missing file system, or partition, or .. sorry I really forgot what it was about. I didn’t lose any time there, I immediately went back to the download page and grabbed the Live edition.

It’s an self extracting .exe file.

No problem, we have Wine. Just double click the .exe file, when prompted for folder to extract the archive to, select something like ~/temp. After it’s done fire off Virtual Box, create a new virtual machine, give it some space to breathe, lets say 2GB and 256 MB RAM, mount the freshly extracted .iso, and boot AROS from the mounted CD.

On the workbench screen , double click AROS live, and then Tools drawer. In tools drawer among tons of interesting things (which you shouldn’t be interested in at the moment) you will find an icon labeled Install AROS. On the first screen leave everything as is, say ok, AROS setup will initialize the dh0 partition as SFS (default file system), and prompt you to reboot. Do it.

Now, again, go to Tools -> Install AROS, and move on, on the second screen don’t check Work parition (dh1) since you don’t have it ready, and it will only confuse you. The rest is pretty straight forward, whatever you choose, you will get AROS installed, one way or another.

After rebooting, you will land in your freshly installed AROS.

Network Setup

First time you start AROS, you will be prompted with configuration screen. Most of the things are self explanatory, but one of them is not – namely the Networking screen. Here is how to set up Network connection in AROS / VirtualBox.

• Change IP Mode to Manual
• Type your Guest OS IP (e.g. if your Host OS is 192.168.1.1, let your Guest OS [AROS] be 192.168.1.200)
• Mask should remain 255.255.255.0
• Gate should be either your Host IP (e.g. 192.168.1.1 – see above) or if you have an ADSL Router which is autonomously connected to the ISP – then it’s IP address
• Primary and Secondary DNS’s are acquired from your ISP automatically. If you don’t know them by heart, run terminal in ubuntu and type less /etc/resolv.conf
• that will most probably give you something like:

nameserver 85.222.160.162
nameserver 213.244.255.2
# Generated by NetworkManager

• So back in the AROS Network Preferences popup type these two nameserver addresses (primary & secondary).
• Autostart should be checked.
• Save.

Click right mouse button -> main menu -> wanderer -> shell.
Try pinging your Host’s ip address. In my case the Ubuntu host was 192.168.1.1 so I typed in shell:
ping 192.168.1.1
Nothing happens. It’s as if there is no network connection between your guest OS and host. That’s true.

To enable the networking you need to go to VirtualBox screen -> Devices -> Networking Adapters
In the popup select Attached to: Bridged Adapter.
Name should remain eth0 or wlan0 if you are using Wireless on your laptop. And in Advanced rollout you should see (although greyed out) Adapter Type: PCnet-FAST III. Cable connected should be checked.
Reboot AROS.
Start shell, and try pinging 192.168.1.1. You should see the ping results now rolling over the screen.

That’s it, your AROS is network enabled.

GRUB and Multiboot Settings

AROS uses GRUB for multiboot selection, which is cool. One thing though – since Aros is not Ubuntu, GRUB settings will not be stored in /etc/…. .
If you want to change GRUB settings, you will have to edit the file called grub.cnf which is in AROS located in boot/grub/grub.cfg .There you can change the default selected item, as well as screen resolution and other values.

Next Steps

I will definitely dive deeper into AROS. So far the system looks really nice and responsive, and so very familiar :) It’s almost like Amiga OS 3.1 with MUI and other boosters installed and configured. At least the way I remember seen it last in my room in 1997.