June 5, 2013
I have multiple computers spread throughout the house Arrangement:
- 3rd floor - I day-trade the ES e-mini S&P 500 futures. So I have a lot of redundancy in my office. Currently:
- Laptop running Windows 7
- Laptop running Windows Vista
- Windows Vista desktop
- Ubuntu desktop
- 2nd floor - A living room Ubuntu laptop which shows weather radar from www.weather.gov for our Atlanta GA area. Also has XBMC and a big analog clock which can be viewed from anywhere. Also an Ipad and a Chromebook on this floor. An old laptop on the porch for streaming music, which is running Windows XP.
- 1st floor - A "Media PC" from HP on the first floor. This is also connected to our antenna for local over-the-air tv reception via a USB to Antenna device, and an internet connection for streaming. This drives a large HD tv, which is our primary entertainment system.
I wanted to make some changes to my Ubuntu (16GB memory 1066 Mhz, i5-2500 cpu @3.30GHz x4, Asus P8Z68-Pro):
- Upgrade the Ubuntu OS from 11.10 (which is no longer supported) to 12.04 (which has LTS - long term support).
- Upgrade from a small SSD (120GB)to a large HD (3TB).
- Swap out a network switch.
- Add a VirtualBox, and install Windows 7 on it.
Upgrading OS
- The first thing I wanted to do was to upgrade the Ubuntu OS from 11.10 to 12.04. I downloaded the 64bit versions of Ubuntu 12.04 and 13.04. I created bootable DVDs (AKA LiveCD) for each of these images.
- Powered down the system.
- I disconnected all of my extra hard drives (5), leaving me with just the one OS hard drive connected.
- I connected up the new HD that was empty.
- I booted from the 13.04 LiveCD to use the 'dd' utility. I did this from 13.04 in case there were any improvements made to 'dd'. In case you don't know, 'dd' makes a complete image of a hard drive, which is what I wanted to do.
- Powered down the system.
- I disconnected my old SSD, removed the LiveCD from the CD drawer.
- Powered up to the new HD.
- Logged in, had a look around, took a break. Later returned and looked around a little more, ran some intensive apps (trading app), saw everything was good.
- Powered down
- Reconnected the extra HDs (5), and rebooted, again poked around - everything looked good.
- Inserted the LiveCD for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.
- Booted to LiveCD, found problems with 'channel 1' error. Searching the Internet, saw that I needed to change a boot option at the 'Ubuntu' splash screen, so selected the option for 'nomodeset', rebooted and was good to go.
- Upgraded to 12.04
- Lost all my apps, so had to reinstall them. I already have a system backup on a different HD, and I still have my original SSD, so no concerns about losing anything.
- Next I wanted to make use of the extra disk space, so I installed 'gparted' on to Ubuntu.
- I increased the OS root partition to 1TB.
- Rebooted and checked around - everything functioning correctly.
- I decided I wanted to make a new partition on this hard drive, so I created a new 1TB partition, which would be mounted at /home.
- created a new partition using gparted, making it 1TB.
- created a new mount point at /newPartition
- made an entry in /etc/fstab to mount this new partition
- used 'rsync' to make a copy of /home to /newPartition
- poked around /newPartition, saw that everything was good.
- renamed /home to /oldHome
- renamed /newPartition to /home
- modified the /etc/fstab to change the mount point for /newPartition to /home.
- rebooted, confirmed the new /home partition was functioning correctly.
- Left, for now, the /oldHome in place, but plan on deleting it in the future - it's still mounted and accessible.
- powered down, connected up all the extra HDs (5).
- booted up, verified everything was good!
VirtualBox
- Decided I wanted to add VirtualBox to Ubuntu system, and install Windows 7 onto it, as sometimes I need access to Windows, and would like to be able to get to it on Ubuntu as over the weekend when I'm not trading, I take my other Windows system down and don't want to power it back up. Also, want to be able to try out some new Windows trading software, so installed VirtualBox. Had a few issues with screen size, did some Internet research, found that I needed to install the 'Guest Additions', so did that, and my screen problems went away.
- Surprised and pleased at how well this VirtualBox and Windows 7 installation is running - can't tell any performance hits on the Ubuntu system.
