[TAG] How do I reformat an Ubuntu installation?

[Neil Youngman]

On Thursday 29 November 2007 12:05, Derry wrote:
> I have SUSE 10 on my PC and installed Ubuntu which has partitioned my
> hard drive. I want to reformat the hard drive to allow a clean reinstall
> of Ubuntu 7.10 only from a desktop CD. I've tried using "fdisk" but get
> the error message "Unable to open /dev/hda" which suggests a problem
> somewhere, yet Ubuntu currently runs with out any problems. Do I
> continue with fdisk? If so, how? Or try something else? Once
> reformatting is successful, will the PC boot directly off the CD or do I
> need to make a boot disk of some kind? Many thanks for any tips.

You could try booting the Ubuntu CD and see if the disk partitioning step 
offers an option to take over the whole disk. Most installers will 
repartition and reformat for you, but I'm not familiar with Ubuntu. The 
installation instructions should tell you.

Alternatively, if you have to wipe it beforehand, then when you're in linux 
try 'df -k' or just 'mount'. These will list your mounted filesystems. If the 
partitions start with /dev/sda then your hard disk is /dev/sda and you can 
reformat the disk using 'fdisk /dev/sda'.

Most PCs will boot directly off a CD, but you may need to alter the BIOS 
settings to allow it and/or to make it try the CD before trying to boot from 
the hard disk.

Neil