Repairing Ubuntu without loosing data or breaking Windows

[MR ZenWiz]

[Grr - bloody reply-to-whatever feature....]

On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 1:52 PM, Enrique Becerra <kabeza at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi MrZenWiz.
> I have some doubts
>
We all do the first time around....  :-)

> 1) custom disk setup? you mean to build a custom dvd install disc? how?

No.  When you install Linux, you get to a point where it wants to lay
out your hard drive, usually with a pre-configured LVM setup.  There's
always an option here to roll your own, usually it's called "Custom"
or "Create my own" or something like that.

> 2) I don't have /home on a sep. partition. Can I move/separate with a
> partition tool?

Gparted is good for that, and you can get it in a bootable CD image
format - check Google.

> 3) Any visual stuff available on the installation DVD that allow me to do this?
>
Not sure what "this" is....

> And finally
>
> 4) a friend of mine told me he believes the gdm freezing is being
> caused by grub with ext3 and that I should reinstall everything from
> scratch (backup before) and put everything on ext4
>
No.  I have my systems set up with /boot as ext2 (it doesn't change
often enough to warrant a journal for a 100MB file system), / is ext3
(because ext4 is not always available to other OSs - it's a fallback
paranoia option that's not required, but it works just fine) and the
rest of the Linux-only partitions are all ext4.

Grub doesn't care what file system you use as long as it's recognized,
and that includes other FSs than ext4 - the list of options is in the
installation GUI....

Now if your partition is ext3 and damaged, that might be a problem,
but the ext3 alone is not.