Messy installation...

[Dave Dartnall]

Hi 'Ubuntuers'
The following is a post made to the list before I was accepted 
for membership and consequently didn't make the grade.

Canonical have sent me copies of Version 6.06 LTS. I bought a 
copy of Keir Thomas' book
'Beginning Ubuntu Linux' - but I wonder whether I've bought the 
right book!

My system has 3 drives, with XP (2 partitions) on drive a, 
Mandriva 2006 on drive b, and
a bit of a mess on drive c with a 23GB ext3 (hdc1) partition, a 
1.9GB linux swap (hdc3)
partition, a 43GB empty partition and an 80GB XP (hdc5) partition.
The setup on drive c is the result of trying to install Ubuntu at 
the beginning of drive c
which was previously empty, and  having it take control of both 
drives, b and the start of c.

Mandriva 2006 was reinstalled on b using the simple expedient of 
allowing it free access to
the whole drive, one partition mounted as root. This has (I 
assume) left it using the swap
area on c which was there complement of the failed Ubuntu 
installation. There is no swap
partition on b.

Is it possible to install Ubuntu on the ext3 area of c and leave 
the XP and Mandriva areas
intact? And if so, could you give some pointers on how to do it 
please?

regards
Dave Dartnall

And following another attempt at posting after which I received 
some helpful advice from Karl Goetz, Paul Schultz and Peter 
Garrett, I realised that the ext3 partition hdc1 might in fact 
hold the Ubuntu installation.
So I mounted it on a temporary directory (/tmp/ubuntu) and sure 
enough there it was - I assume that The Mandriva installation on 
drive b is using the using the hdc3 swap partition?
My query, therefore has changed in that in my case, lilo.conf 
needs to be modified so that Ubuntu can be added to the boot 
alternatives and  changes will be required to fstab? Help in this 
respect would be appreciated.
The original query still stands tho'. There are a number of my 
friends with older equipment looking for a modern OS, and I'd 
like to be able to help. Hence my venture into Ubuntu and any 
tips on installation would still be appreciated..

with thanks to Karl, Paul and Peter
Dave Dartnall