Fedora Boot Order

After installing the Sugar Learning Platform on my Windows 7 laptop, it now has GRUB bootloader with the following boot entries:

• Fedora 17
• Advanced configuration
• Microsoft Windows 7

And by default it goes to the first entry, which is Fedora.

Now that's a bit inconvenient, as I use Windows most of the time. Here's how to make the default boot switch to Windows 7:

1. As su, grep menuentry /boot/grub2/grub.cfg to show the boot entries
2. vi /etc/default/grub By default, it'll say GRUB_DEFAULT=saved. If you run grub2-editenv list, it'll show you Fedora 17 as the default option.
3. grub2-set-default "Microsoft Windows 7" to change the default.
4. grub2-editenv list to confirm that the configuration change was committed.

Another option is to manually make the change:

1. vi /etc/default/grub
2. GRUB_DEFAULT="Microsoft Windows 7"
3. grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg to save.

Sugar on a Stick on an HDD

Just from the name itself, Sugar on a Stick is supposed to be installed on a USB stick, but you can actually install it permanently on a hard disk.

First, download the Fedora Live USB Creator. Then, download the latest SoaS iso image and install it on the USB drive. Boot up the PC from the USB drive. Go through the initial setup. Once on the Sugar homescreen, open up the Terminal activity. Select the Become Root option. If it's not there, just run su. Type 'liveinst' without the quotes. This brings up anaconda, which will assist you in installing the SoaS onto the hard disk.

In my case, I was using the latest Fedora-Live-SoaS-20 image, and the partition manager keeps dying on me, and sending me back to the prompt. Had to downgrade to Fedora 17 before it worked. Shrank the current Windows partition and used the resulting free space for Sugar.

More complete installation instructions here:
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Tutorials/Installation/Install_with_liveinst

PCA, CDC, OC

Received the PCA, CDC, and OC forms, which I need to sign and email back. Dunno what is the rush about, as the land is not yet registered. And I still need to do the following appointments:

• external finishes
• colours and inclusions selection
• kitchen
• electrical

before the forms can be submitted to council.

Lost Partition on External HDD

Strange case of a known working external hard disk not being accessible anymore. Upon connection to a PC, Windows reports that "You need to format the disk in drive F: before you can use it. Do you want to format it?" chkdsk /f looks promising as it seems to be able to "see" the files, but didn't restore the lost partitions even after a full day and night of fixing errors. Windows 7 Disk Management is reporting the HDD as RAW, healthy. No valid partitions anywhere.

Looks like the partition got corrupted. Thought of booting a Linux live CD and using some parition manager like Parted Magic, but too time-consuming. Apparently, a lot of people have been experiencing this problem.

First software I tried is EaseUS' Partition Recovery. The software didn't work for me. Seems to require a similar-sized "free" partition as the missing partition to work, though it doesn't say so in the instructions. Next one I tried is Partition Find and Mount. It didn't find any deleted or missing partitions after the Smart Scan. Tried the Normal and Thorough Scan, but didn't do anything.

The one which finally did the trick is GetDataBack for NTFS. According to the blurb, "GetDataBack will recover your data if the hard drive's partition table, boot record, FAT/MFT or root directory

are lost or damaged, data was lost due to a virus attack, the drive was formatted, fdisk has been run, a power failure has caused a system crash, files were lost due to a software failure, files were accidentally deleted. GetDataBack can even recover your data when the drive is no longer recognized by Windows. It can likewise be used even if all directory information - not just the root directory- is missing." You tell GetDataBack which drive and partition to work on, and it does the rest. Found all the missing directories and files. It's just a matter of copying them over to another hard disk. Software costs US$79.