On Monday November 26, 2007 I purchased a used Dell OptiPlex GX280 that is essentially a clone of my desktop PC at work. This blog is for notes about that system. I'll be making these notes with an eye to creating a "Windows Best Practices" guide.
Since I've decided to make my Acer TravelMate my only personal PC, I need to prepare the GX280 for sale.
Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19452 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x8e8a8e8a
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 2989 24009111 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 2990 5543 20515005 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 5544 7535 16000740 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 7536 19452 95723302+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 7536 9527 16000708+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 9528 11616 16777216+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 11616 13704 16774473 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 15029 16037 8104761 83 Linux
/dev/sda9 16038 17022 7911981 83 Linux
/dev/sda10 17023 19452 19518943+ 83 Linux
title Windows NT/2000/XP (loader)
title Gentoo Linux 2.6.31-r10 (sda7)
title Gentoo Linux 2.6.32-r7 (sda7)
title CrunchBang 9.04.01 (sda3)
title CrunchBang, kernel 2.6.28-18-generic (recovery mode)
title CrunchBang, memtest86+
title System Rescue CD 1.5.2 (sda5)
title System Rescue CD 1.5.2 (alternate kernel) (sda5)
title sidux 32-bit Xfce from ISO (sda5)
sda1 WinXP Pro sda2 used by WinXP Pro sda3 CrunchBang 9.04 sda5 misc Live CD systems, was also Xubuntu 8.04, but that broke sda6 /home/pann/workingsda7 Gentoo sda8 was Debian lenny (abandoned) sda9 was Ubuntu Karmic Koala, LXDE? (abandoned) sda10 dvdbackup
The active GRUB is sda3, CrunchBang 9.04. I should probably change that to sda7, Gentoo, my daily driver.
At this very moment I'm downloading CrunchBang Statler 10 Alpha 1 to replace the broken Hardy Heron installation on sda5.
Yesterday I cleaned up the computer desk so this morning I disconnected the USB wireless adapter and connected the wired Ethernet to the secondary wireless router. Lo and behold, DHCP worked. If I recall correctly, that wasn't the case on the initial installation.
At any rate, I decided to forego DHCP and set up a static IP address and tested Gentoo, Crunchbang, WinXP, and the System Rescue CD. All is well and the wireless adapter is in the spares bin.
I need to remove some of the boot options from the GX280. I've already decided Xubuntu 8.04 LTS should go, reserving its partition for 10.04 when it's released.
I can't imagine I'll ever use Damn Small Linux again. It hasn't been maintained for awhile and the System Rescue CD now has sufficient user tools to replace it. Knoppix 6.2 has never worked from the hard drive, and Google suggests it's not worth the candle to make it work. I installed the Linux From Scratch Live CD to solve a specific problem, which it did. I can no longer even remember what the problem was, so there's no reason to keep it around. And I can remove any remaining Ubuntu 9.10 installations since I've decided that Karmic Koala is a non-starter for me.
So I'm down to Gentoo, Crunchbang 9.04, WinXP Pro, and the System Rescue CD.
This morning I spent some time with my Hardy Hedgehog installation, which I've not been able to successfully boot for awhile.
I booted into rescue mode and was able to get everything updated and to get everything working except X. Just like the Debian lenny installation under which I could never resolve my problems with X, X is running but I get no output to my monitor.
I suppose that at some point Ubuntu "upgraded" some package to incorporate whatever in Debian lenny prevents X from displaying on my monitor so that hardy now has the same symptom. Both 9.04 and 9.10 work fine.
I'll probably just yard out 8.04 and reserve the partition for a reference install of 10.04 LTS when it's released.
2.6.31-gentoo-r10
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda7 16G 5.6G 9.4G 38% /
/dev/sda6 16G 6.8G 8.3G 46% /home/pann/working
Filename Type Size Used Priority
/home/pann/working/swapfile file 1048568 0 -1
Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160000000000 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 2989 24009111 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 2990 5543 20515005 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 5544 7535 16000740 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 7536 19452 95723302+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 7536 9527 16000708+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 9528 11616 16777216+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 11616 13704 16774473 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 15029 16037 8104761 83 Linux
/dev/sda9 16038 17022 7911981 83 Linux
/dev/sda10 17023 19452 19518943+ 83 Linuxsda8 is Debian lenny. sda9 is Ubuntu karmic (LXDE?). sda10 is currently unused.
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda9 7.7G 5.2G 2.1G 72% /
/dev/sda7 7.7G 5.7G 1.7G 78% /home/pann/workingOK, looks like I should be thinking about making more room.
/dev/sda6 16G 9.4G 5.0G 66% /mnt/cdromEverything on here could be moved to the external backup drive (if it's not already there) with no loss of function. Actually, we probably want to make room (~3G) for /mnt/sda/sda6/sda6/mnt/gentoo/home/pann/ -- looks like some useful stuff on there.
/dev/sda8 12539 13047 4088511 82 Linux swap / SolarisI should probably remove this swap partition and use a swap file on an enlarged .../working partition. I see I'm using a 1G swap file on the IdeaPad (also with 2G RAM) and that seems just fine. Actually, I doubt there's ever been any swapping. With 2G and the sort of user I am, swap is probably superfluous.
pann@ideapad:~/public_html/blog/gx280$ ls -lh /var/swapfile
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1.0G 2009-08-22 11:10 /var/swapfile
title Ubuntu (Gnome) 9.10 (sda10)
title Debian 5.03 (sda11)
title Ubuntu (LXDE) 9.10 (sda12)These three partitions are roughly 8G each, and only sda12 is of any interest, and that only marginal at this point.
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda9 7.7G 5.2G 2.1G 72% /
/dev/sda7 7.7G 5.7G 1.7G 78% /home/pann/working
/dev/sda1 23G 20G 3.2G 87% /mnt/sda/sda1
/dev/sda2 20G 14G 6.4G 68% /mnt/sda/sda2
/dev/sda3 16G 5.7G 8.7G 40% /mnt/sda/sda3
/dev/sda5 16G 7.7G 6.7G 54% /mnt/sda/sda5
/dev/sda6 16G 9.4G 5.0G 66% /mnt/sda/sda6
/dev/sda10 7.4G 5.4G 1.7G 77% /mnt/sda/sda10
/dev/sda11 7.7G 648M 6.6G 9% /mnt/sda/sda11
/dev/sda12 7.5G 1.9G 5.2G 27% /mnt/sda/sda12So if I make sda6 and sda7 .../working, that's 24G. And if I make sda8, sda9, sda10, and sda11 Gentoo /, that's 28G.
Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19452 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x8e8a8e8a
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 2989 24009111 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 2990 5543 20515005 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 5544 7535 16000740 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda4 7536 14055 52371900 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 7536 9527 16000708+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 9528 11519 16000708+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 11520 12538 8185086 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 12539 13047 4088511 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda9 13048 14055 8096728+ 83 Linuxsda1 and sda2 are current and old Windoze partitions. I'll need to get that cleaned up, copy some stuff off to the external backup drive, and make one NTFS and one FAT32 partition out of those two.
sda3 and sda8 are swap partitions that I don't really need. In my old age I try to have sufficient RAM that swap is never needed, and to make a swap file for a swap device on the off chance that it is.
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda5 16G 7.7G 6.7G 54% (Xubuntu 8.04 /)
/dev/sda6 16G 9.4G 5.0G 66% (mostly from T23 Gentoo installation)
/dev/sda7 7.7G 5.5G 1.9G 75% /home/pann/working
/dev/sda9 7.7G 3.4G 4.3G 45% (CrunchBang 9.04.01 /)So the short term plan will be to turn off the sda3 swap partition and make that partition / for my to-be-installed daily driver CrunchBang system. sda6 can be moved to the backup drive and it can become /home/pann/working at twice its current size. We'll leave sda5 in place for the time being. Both sda8 and sda9 will be expendable once the new CrunchBang system is up and running.
Newegg.com had a memory deal, so I ordered two 1GB RAM chips. They're here. I'll install them this weekend. That will make the 1GB RAM chip currently in there surplus. I'll either sell it or find a home for it.
This morning I squeezed the single NTFS partition spanning the entire 160GB hard drive down to 24GB using ntfsresize (on the System Rescue CD). About 9GB is currently used, some of which is data transferred from the old PC.
My intention is to eventually reserve 40GB for my NTFS partition. An interim step will be to use ntfsclone to copy the 16G partition on the old PC to my external USB hard drive, and then restore that 16GB partition to a second partition on the GX280.
After I've retrieved everything I need from that second partition, I'll delete it and use ntfsresize to expand the NTFS partition to 40GB.
AOL software installed painlessly. A few of the other applications are in place. So far no full virus scan, nor have I re-partitioned the hard drive. As time permits I'll finish the software installation, defragment the hard drive, back up the installation, and re-partition the hard drive to make room for Linux.
I'm going to create a separate blog page to document migrating user data from our old PC to this new one.
Updated the BIOS this morning. No problems.
The first time I powered up the GX280 it told me it couldn't find the hard disk, and that it had a keyboard error. I knew it had a hard disk because I'd opened the case for a cursory inspection. The keyboard error was obvious because I only had an AT keyboard with a PS2 adapter, no USB keyboard.
I had to go to my storage shed anyway and I thought I had a keyboard there that might be either/or PS2/USB. Not there; perhaps it's at Bob's. Anyway, on the way home I passed a Best Buy, so I stopped and bought an adapter to connect a PS2 keyboard and a PS2 mouse to a single USB port. No joy.
The adapter works, by the way, because I took it to work and tried it out on my desktop PC, so I could borrow the USB keyboard and mouse to bring home and test the GX280. It must not work at home because of the dual step from AT to PS2 to USB.
Fired up the GX280 with the USB keyboard and mouse, and the keyboard error went away, but it still couldn't find the hard disk. I went into BIOS Setup and got no clues. I booted the System Rescue CD and got no clues. Then I opened the box and took a careful look, and found the SATA data cable disconnected from the drive. I connected it and powered up the GX280 and all is well!
WinXP Pro is installed and seems fairly up to date. There is the hidden Administrator user and a visible Admin user. Both have administrator privileges and neither has a password. I'll run RockXP and see if the product key matches the COA.
No yellow question marks in Device Manager, so it would seem that all the necessary drivers are properly installed. On first glance it appears that the optical device is a CD-RW with no DVD capability. The 1GB of RAM is provided by a single DIMM with a second DIMM slot available. And if I count correctly, there are a total of eight USB 2.0 ports, two on the front and six on the back.
The GX280 is coming to me with a fresh install of Windows XP Professional. Before I connect the PC to any network I'll install a virus scanner. If possible, I'll download current virus definitions from the Internet using another PC and transfer them to the GX280 using a USB flash drive. Once the virus scanner is installed and as up to date as possible, I'll run a full virus scan on the hard drive.
Run Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs to see it the manufacturer has blessed you with any trial offers or other nonsense. Remove anything that offends you.
Ultimately this will be a multi-boot PC running Linux (probably more than one distribution) in addition to WinXP. This is as good a time as any to shrink the NTFS partition to 40GB to leave plenty of room for Linux.
Boot the System Rescue CD.
...
Reboot WinXP
Once I have a clean scan, I'll use the Device Manager to see if I'm missing the ethernet driver. If I am, I'll download it from the Internet using another PC and install it. Once the ethernet driver is functional I can connect to the Internet.
In my case this will just involve connecting the GX280 ethernet port to an available port on my home router. But it's a very good idea to install and test your ISP software in case your router ever dies. If the router dies and you can't connect to the Internet because you don't have your ISP software installed, and you can't find the CD, you're in a bit of a pickle, because you have no way to download that software (Catch 22, don't ya know?).
The first order of business will be to use Microsoft Update to get Windows up to date. This typically takes a few rounds of downloading updates, restarting the PC, and so on.
Once Windows is up to date, I'll use the Device Manager to determine if any device drivers are missing, and download and install drivers as necessary.
Although IE is not my browser of choice, on a PC running Windows it's important to have IE fully functional.
Since my SO will be the primary user of this PC under Windows, and since she's an AOL user, this is a necessary step.
First install applications that are generally useful to anyone.
Then install applications that are specific to what I do with a PC.
Finally, install applications that are employer-specific.
Now that everything has been installed and configured, we'll defragment the hard drive to optimize performance. This isn't as important with NTFS as it was with earlier FAT filesystems, but it's still good practice, and this is an obvious point at which to do it.
Before we declare WinXP ready to go, we'll once again disconnect the PC from any network and run a full virus scan.
At this point we have a clean and stable Windows system. Let's back up the system in a way that will allow us to start over from this point should disaster strike.
XP always has a built-in Administrator user with full rights and privileges. So far, everything we have done has been done as the Administrator user.
Now it's time to create user accounts for everyone who will use this PC. These all will be restricted accounts, and all will be password protected. There will be only one Administrator account on this PC, and it will be necessary to log into that account to do updates or install or remove software. Any inconvenience is worth the added protection against shooting oneself in the foot.