I followed the ubantu instructions to put it onto the usb stick using the installer from pendrivelinux. I don’t think it’s running within windows. To get to it I have reboot the computer each time and it loads right after the Point where you access the bios screen.
I dont have any disks to hand or seperate usbs over 512mb, surely installing the live Version on the normal file partition of the portable hard drive should act the same?
If there is no other way i’ll go and buy some disks and create a live cd. But was hoping that could be avoided.
Well I can’t say for sure it will work your way … but one thing is for sure, you’d be asking it to overwrite its own bootloader.
Does Windows still boot from your internal drive without the external drive attached ?
when you try the external drive with the internal drive disconnected, are you selecting the external drive as the boot device.
I seem to remember someone trying to create a LiveUSB stick, but also having another partition on the USB stick and it wouldn’t work … I’ll see if I can find that.
This would be so much easier with a blank CD/DVD or a 1gb USB stick.
Having put the internal hard drive back in, it seems that’s its pretty hit and miss with booting linux from the portable drive. Only seems to do it very occasionally and cant work out a consistent sent of criteria for when it does.
Just got hold of a 15gb usb, so gonna give it a go with that.
Ok so it seems to be working. However I think I messed up specifying partitions and just reformatted the whole drive (good thing I did take the hard drive out!)
So can I just resize the linux partition front within windows like I would with any other? Or will that cause problems?
OK, bung your internal drive in … leave the external HDD unattached, boot to Windows … pug in the USB stick, and use the USB creator from pendrivelinux to create a LiveUSB on the USB stick.
Then test you can boot to the LiveUSB without either HDD connected.
If you can, leave the internal HDD unattached, attach the external HDD, boot to the LiveUSB stick, and select “Try Ubuntu” … when at the desktop, click the “Install Ubuntu” icon … then if you left 40GB unpartitioned on the external HDD, tell it to “use the free space”.
You’ve lost me ???
Are you now saying you have Ubuntu installed and working on the LiveUSB stick ?
But forgot to partition the external HDD ?
No sorry, It seems to be happily installing The full version onto the portable hd at the moment, I just couldnt find any use free space option so at the moment its formatted the whole thing.
Can i just fix that in windows by reducing it as i would any other partition?
Not in Windows … Windows hasn’t got a clue what to do with EXT4 partitions … but keep hold of the LiveUSB stick, and you can use that to resize the partitions.
We’ll get to that in a bit.
just let me know when Ubuntu is finished installing, and you’re happy it can run without the LiveUSB stick or the internal drive attached.
Its finished installation onto the hard drive but when I restarted without the liveusb I got operating system not found again.
When you boot, and see the Sony logo screen … is there any messages like
F2 = BIOS
F12 = Boot device selection
or similar ?
Right now have a full keyboard rather than my phone so I can explain a bit better.
I have done the install onto the hard drive and all seemed to go fine other than me overwriting the whole 320GB rather than the planned 40.
However when I restarted without the LiveUSB I seem to be back to square one with an ‘operating system not found’ error. It seems to not be detecting or recognising the hard drive as a boot device. However when I boot up the liveUSB again and look at the contents of the hard drive it seems to have the proper full home folder architecture.
*Just seen your last message, not that I could see but I will restart and try both buttons anyway.
Also try hitting F11 at the Sony logo
I was just reading that most VAIO’s use F11 as the boot device selection key.
What we’re looking for is a list of devices such as USB HDD, CD drive, etc.
At the moment, we DON’T want the one that takes you to the BIOS … we want the boot device selection screen
Ok I will try that, Just before I do I should probably mention than F2 which normally gets you access to the BIOS where I originally changed the boot order doesnt seem to be working either at the moment.
That’s weird ???
Does the F2 key work with the internal drive attached ?
Ok madly pressing F11 like a lunatic didnt bring up any screen, it did however make it work, im now running the main installation with the liveUSB disconnected.
I was also wrong, F2 was working.
Yeh I was just reading this:
http://maian.org/blog/2010/07/select-boot-device-sony-vaio/
where it says on the new VAIO’s F11 cycles through the boot devices … which is stupid, how are you to know which is selected ?
anyway …
In Ubuntu, can you open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run this command:
sudo fdisk -l
For carity, that’s SUDO FSISK -L but it MUST be lower case, Linux commands ARE case sensitive.
Also, you will be propted for your password … enter it, and hit enter … whilst typing your password nothing will be echoed to screen (not even ******), but it is going in)
Can you post back here what the output was.
It may be easier to do this from the VAIO itself … so you can cut/paste … do you want to set up wireless first ?
Last couple of messages have been from the Vaio, uni ethernet in my room makes things pretty easy.
SUDO F[b]S[/b]ISK -L
Im assuming this is still meant to be a D ???
Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00079538
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 608536575 304267264 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 608538622 625141759 8301569 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 608538624 625141759 8301568 82 Linux swap / Solaris
Ahh right ethernet 
… and yes that was a typo 
OK, you’re going to want to boot to the LiveUSB stick again … you’ll know if it’s booted to the LiveUSB if therer is an “Install Ubuntu” icon on the desktop.
Reason … you can’t resize mounted partitions, and you can’t unmount the / (root) partition on a running system.
Easiest way to do this would be to leave the internal HDD disconnected whilst we do this.
Boot to the LiveUSB, then connect the external USB HDD … once booted, send the output from:
sudo fdisk -l
again.
OK will do, This thing with booting and F11, I’ve now tried booting 3 times by pressing it and its worked 2/3 times, is there any way of knowing which boot device im toggled to or is it just pot luck? Also if there is just once device (internal and liveUSB removed) surely it should go straight to the portable hard drive?
Disk /dev/sda: 15.9 GB, 15879634944 bytes
13 heads, 13 sectors/track, 183520 cylinders, total 31014912 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xc3072e18
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 8064 31014911 15503424 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
Disk /dev/sdb: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00079538
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 2048 608536575 304267264 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 608538622 625141759 8301569 5 Extended
/dev/sdb5 608538624 625141759 8301568 82 Linux swap / Solaris
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$