partitioning - Dealing with failing drive in logical volume

About a year and a half ago, I made a HTPC/NAS for my apartment that we hooked to our TV and use to download and watch movies, TV shows, listen to music, etc.

In making it, I used 3 1TB hard drives I had laying around, so they have all seen use in the part. I somehow corralled them into a single 2.7TB volume, taking advantage of Ubuntu's ability to have volumes constituting multiple physical volumes (logical volumes? I forget the technical term).

Bottom line is, all of the media is stored on this drive, and of course one of the hard drives seems to be beginning to fail (the volume will not mount, if it does mount it is unusably slow, or content is "missing). Obviously this is an expected downside of the way I chose to structure the storage.

Does anyone have a good suggestion on a way to restructure the storage so as to avoid one drive failing jeopardizing all the files? Obviously one way would be to have three separate volumes and partition the content across them. Does anyone have any more elegant solutions?

Also, any advice on preserving the individual drives for as long as possible? I know that when the drives are failing on the hardware side, not much can be done on the software side. But are there any utilities built into Ubuntu or that I could download? I personally have had trouble finding any.

Thank you!

You are looking for raid. A raid5 array can suffer the failure of a single drive and keep on chugging. You only get (n-1)/n as much storage though, or 2/3 the space for a 3 disk array.

As for how to recover now, the first thing you want to do is get a fresh drive and clone the contents of the failing drive onto the fresh one using dd or dd_rescue.

On the other hand, raid is no substitute for proper backups, since there are plenty of other things that can eat your data besides a failing drive, so whether you use raid or not, you still need to keep proper backups if you would mind terribly much if you lost the data.

Installation of VCP (VirtualCOM) Driver

I want to install a VCP(VirtuaCOM) Port Driver. I downloaded the driver form http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm and extracted the folder.
In this folder there is a Makefile, a Rules.make, a ftdi_sio.c and a ftdi_sio.h.
I read in some other blogs to execute the
./configure
enter the command
make
sudo make install
but there is no configure file and when I do the make command I get an error.

grub2 - GRUB problem in 13.04

I have installed Ubuntu 12.04 in Lenovo G580 laptop. After installed successfully restarted my laptop. "grub not found" message appeared when ever pressed power button. I reinstalled again and installed "grub" by using ""so I realized something problem than removed F12 function key. Now also same error message appearing whenever I pressed power button. Finally I deleted 12.04 version then installed 13.04. Even now also same error message appearing.

Now I am realizing the grub which I installed is making some problem. How can I remove this grub?

My system windows 7 OS also.
previously both were working good.
help me

jupiter - Ubuntu 12.10 overheats and fan runs high

I have the problem with my fan constantly and hot CPU. I have a Dell Inspirion 15r special edition. I followed the instructions to load Jupiter to solve this but when I enter:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webup8team/jupiter

I get the following error:

Cannot access PPA (https://launchpad.net/API/1.0/~webup8team/+archive/Jupiter) to get PPA information, please check your Internet connection

and Internet is working

My specs are:

Inspiron 15 R Special Edition,BTX,7520
Intel Core 3rd Generation Processor,I7-3612QM,  4Core
32G Solid State Drive,ISRT,A5
PWA,Daughterboard, SATA,7520
HARD DRIVE,1 Terabyte,5.4 krpm
8 GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM
Intel (R) HD Graphics 4000

AMD Radeon HD 7730M
15.6 Full HD  1080 pixel LED Display

Ubuntu 12.10 is loaded as a dual boot alone on the 32 GB Solid State Drive.

xorg - startx doesn't work

Let's see, I cannot log in in Lubuntu 12.04. On the shell I get when typing startx:

  _XSERVTransSocketUNIXCreateListener: ...SocketCreateListener()  failed
  _XSERVTransMakeA11C0TSServerListeners: server already running

  Fatal server error:
  Cannot establich any listening sockets - Make sure an X server isn't already running

 ...
 Please also check the log file at "/var/log/Xorg.0.log" for additional information.  
 ddxSigGiveUp: Closing log

 Server terminated with error (1). CLosing log file

 Invalid MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 keyInvalid MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 keyxinit: giving up
 xinit: unable to connect to X server: Resource temporarily unavailable
 xinit: server error  

Before I had only read-right on the file-system with sudo autoremove I got my write-rights back. I removed the .Xauthority* files in /home/username. Still cannot login back

I found a solution for me: Well, I hope someone can use my answer:

I changed my password, reinstalled xserver-xorg by typing: sudo apt-get install --reinstall xorg

After a reboot it worked for me. Notice: I removed the .XAuthority files in /home/username by: sudo rm /home/username/.XAuthority*

to get a shell try Strg-Alt-F1 when you turn on your computer. I actually got my write-rights back by using clear in recovery mode.

Hopefully, this answer can help others as well.

ppa - Why does Launchpad act differently with 64- and 32-bit packages?

I'm making Ubuntu packages from the source code of a geology program. I can make deb packages on my PC, and also Launchpad is able to make binary packages for 32-bit OS.

I noticed a strange behavior of Launchpad. It makes both development (libfoo-dev) and shared library (libfoo) from the uploaded source code for i386 although it makes only binary package for amd64 from same code. Looking at i386 and amd64 build logs, I found that for amd64 debian/rules binary-arch is called instead of debian/rules binary. This causes my source not to generate a development package for amd64.

How can I solve this issue? Build logs and package sources are available in ppa:soroush-r/geopsy-deb in case you want to take a look.

dual boot - Install Ubuntu 18.04 alongside two Windows 10

My computer setup is:

• 1- SSD 120GB


• 1- HDD 320GB


• 1- HDD 1TB

I have two partitions on SSD of Windows 10 (one for work, another for games/testing/whatever) and I want to install Ubuntu on my 320GB HDD.
However, Ubuntu installer doesn't recognize Windows.

I tried to select "More options" to make the partitions on my own but when installer start said "errno 5 input/output"
I redownloaded ISO, tried other pendrives and every USB connection of my PC but always the same error.

Is there anything I can do?

---

EDIT:

I managed to install Ubuntu on my 320GB hard drive but now GRUB is not detecting Windows10 partitions.

I tried to use Boot-repair but despite "successfully boot repaired", only Ubuntu appears in GRUB.

Here is a pastebin of Boot-repair log: http://paste.ubuntu.com/p/5KbYMRxqg9/

• /sda (windows system partitions)
  
  
  
  • /sda1 Windows 10 Work partition
  
  
  • /sda2 Windows 10 Fun partition
  
  
  • /sda3 Windows Reserved Partition
  
  


• /sdb (Storage)


• /sdc (Ubuntu)
  
  
  
  • /sdc1 Ubuntu 18.04
  
  
  • /sdc2 /Boot (partition recommended by Boot-repair)
  
  

Any ideas?