Inspiron Mini 9 with Ubuntu Linux - 8GB and 16 GB Hard Drives Not Fully Formatted

re: Inspiron Mini 9 with Ubuntu Linux - 8GB and 16 GB Hard Drives Not Fully Formatted

Chris K — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 23:15:50 GMT

I have a Dell Mini 9 with Ubuntu, 1GB RAM and 16 GB SSD. I had the partition error and adjusted it by booting from USB drive and adjusting the partition. Then a couple of days later I realized that I should probly make a few other changes.

1) Wipe the drive format the whole drive as ext2 instead of ext3, to reduce journal writing to the SSD, this may be a wear issue. For the same reason I did not create a swap partition, heck I have 1GB of RAM so swap is not really in big demand.

2) I downloaded and installed Ubuntu distro instead of installing from the Dell disk.

I get over 3 hours of use: video flv files, skpe via wifi, and surfing all great.

Cheers. . .

re: Inspiron Mini 9 with Ubuntu Linux - 8GB and 16 GB Hard Drives Not Fully Formatted

maynardmurlon — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 00:06:34 GMT

The mini-9 is really a good innovation for Dell. Hopefully, they won't limit the HDD (SSD) size to only 16gb as the mini-9 could prove to be useful with enough disk drive space in it, say about 350 Gigs? :)

Anyway, I hope Dell is going to re-release the mini-9 with an optical drive, max mem up to 4gb (that's not bad) and an SSD of around 160gb. :) Way to go Dell, hopefully this gets released during Xmas!

re: Inspiron Mini 9 with Ubuntu Linux - 8GB and 16 GB Hard Drives Not Fully Formatted

Christian — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:32:42 GMT

gparted is able to resize partitions. I have used it to successfully resize a Windows NTFS partition. It was the System partition and has worked without data loss. Afterwards I was able to resize the / ext3 partition to use the freed space.

re: Inspiron Mini 9 with Ubuntu Linux - 8GB and 16 GB Hard Drives Not Fully Formatted

Chris Puttick — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:23:24 GMT

Ok, as promised, a CIO's guide to fixing the partitioning problem on the fly and without a reboot...

You can do all of this through graphical tools if you like, but the command line is easier for much of it so I've mixed and matched...

sudo apt-get install gparted pysdm (or use your preferred package manager)

sudo gparted

In gparted right-click on the free space at the bottom and select new. Choose ext3 as the partition type and leave the rest alone (unless, like me, you want a swap partition for old times sake)

Apply your changes and close gparted.

Now run

mkdir /tmp/home (or use your favourite graphical file management tool to create a new folder)

sudo mount /dev/sda3 /tmp/home (or use pysdm - see later)

sudo chmod 777 /tmp/home

cp -r /home/* /tmp/home/

sudo umount /tmp/home

sudo pysdm

In pysdm select the partition you created in parted (sda3 by default) and accept the enable option, then browse for the mountpoint and select /home. Then click mount. Exit pysdm.

Done... :) No reboot, not even plugged into the power yet.

Probably better in the long term to download the gparted liveCD ISO and use that to resize the main partition. I just like the fact that Linux meant I could fix it on the fly 8)

re: Inspiron Mini 9 with Ubuntu Linux - 8GB and 16 GB Hard Drives Not Fully Formatted

Justin — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 13:39:23 GMT

Dell should come public with why there is such a delay on these. I ordered 9-8 and I have a ship date of November 12.

re: Inspiron Mini 9 with Ubuntu Linux - 8GB and 16 GB Hard Drives Not Fully Formatted

Chris Puttick — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 12:34:32 GMT

Yes, they definitely shipping, I have one sitting on my desk as I speak. Runs rather fast with Ubuntu. I have the half-partitioned disk error - will post shortly my fix in easy steps...

re: Inspiron Mini 9 with Ubuntu Linux - 8GB and 16 GB Hard Drives Not Fully Formatted

rick — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 12:22:59 GMT

Off topic? when will the mini 9 with ubuntu be available in australia?

re: Inspiron Mini 9 with Ubuntu Linux - 8GB and 16 GB Hard Drives Not Fully Formatted

Mike — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 14:53:55 GMT

So the Ubuntu versions of the Mini 9 are shipping?

I have had a order for the Windows version of the Mini 9 since Sept 13th and my current order status shows delivery week of Nov 20-24. I have been working with my salesperson on why the order is taking so long, the first order was canceled over the Adobe Acrobat version. The corrected order now has been bumped again - is there a parts shortage? I have been told there is a shortage of the black case.

I was hoping to try out both Ubuntu and Windows on the Mini 9.

re: Inspiron Mini 9 with Ubuntu Linux - 8GB and 16 GB Hard Drives Not Fully Formatted

Simon — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:30:26 GMT

Take a look at GParted, which uses a combination of libparted and other filesystem specific commands (you probably only care about ext3) to support filesystem resizing in place.