I haven't posted here forever, but that is a good thing (for me). It's because I have been able to solve most of my Linux (Ubuntu 10.04 now) problems myself, that is until tonight. I did solve these two problems, but not with a lot of searching and reading.
Problem #1; After updating to Ubuntu 10.04 my computer would go to a black screen and lock the computer after 5 minutes. Once you press any key or move the mouse you would have to enter your password to continue. This was a pain is the ass. I wanted this turned off or I wanted more time before it kicked in.
Solution; Goto SYSTEM-->PREFERENCES-->SCREENSAVER. Once there, UNCHECK the "Lock Screen Screen When Screensaver is Active" to turn this "feature" off. If you still want the SCREEN LOCKED but want more time, just set the screensaver to take longer to start by dragging the slider until you get the delay you want.
Problem #2; Adding a 2nd Hard Drive. This was easy but making it MOUNT (show up) on a reboot was a problem. It would show up under the HOME menu and I would have to click on it every time I want to use it. This was bad since I wanted to move the MUSIC, MOVIE, PICTURE directories to it. Ubuntu was basically treating this 2nd internal hard drive like a removable one.
Solution; I installed a 2nd hard drive and made sure it was showing up in BIOS. I then booted into Ubuntu 10.04 and went to SYSTEM-->ADMINISTRATION-->DISK UTILITY. This showed a list of all Hard Drives, Flash Drives, CD and DVD Roms that I have installed in my computer. The new hard drive was listed under PATA HOST ADAPTER. I Clicked on it and it showed me more information than I would ever need to know about my new hard drive. I clicked on the FORMAT DRIVE (Erase or Format the volume) option. This let me pick a partition size and format type. (it defaults to a linux ext3 and selects the whole drive, which is good if your only running Linux, I'm not) The new drive is a 1.5 TB drive and I wanted 300gb unpartitioned and the rest (1.2 TBs) formated in FAT32 so that Microsoft Windows can read it too. So I used the slider to set the size of the partition to 1.2TBs and used the drop down to select FAT or FAT32 as the format type. I also picked MASTER BOOT RECORD as the structure type (MBR is compatible with MS Windows). I then typed in a name for my new hard drive (this is what it will show up as under your PLACES and on your DESKTOP). Once this was done, there was a slight pause and a graphical representation of my partitions (one FAT32, one FREE) showed up. I clicked on the FAT32 picture (well really a grey box) and then clicked on the MOUNT VOLUME option. That was it, I closed DISK UTILITY and my new hard drive was on my desktop. I then rebooted the computer to see if it would stay. It didn't :-(
To make it show up after a reboot or a boot for that matter, you have to add a setting to a startup file called FSTAB (fstab, lower case, is it's real name). To edit FSTAB goto APPLICATIONS-->ACCESSORIES-->TERMINAL. At the prompt TYPE cd .. (press enter) TYPE cd .. (press enter, yes do it twice and it is two dots). TYPE cd etc (press enter) TYPE sudo gedit fstab (press enter). TYPE your password (press enter). This should navigate you from HOME/YOURUSERNAME directory to the SYSTEM/ETC directory, start the program GEDIT in ROOT MODE and open the FSTAB file for editing. Go past the last line in the FSTAB file (you should be on a blank line) and type the following
/dev/sdb1 /media/sdb1 vfat rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal,shortname=mixed,uid=1000,utf8, umask=077,flush 0 0
It will end up on two lines but don't hit the enter key to make it, let it do it on it's own. Those are zeros at the end. There is a space between vfat and rw. Now SAVE FSTAB and your done.
NOTE: My new hard drive got the device name sdb1 yours might be different. You must replace my SDB1 with your device name. DISK Utility will give you this name after you hit the MOUNT VOLUME option. It will read something like "Mounted at /media/sdb1". This is for FAT32 ONLY!! For Linux (ext3) it would read:
/dev/sdb1 /media/sdb1 ext3 default 0 0
Whoever wrote the DISK UTILITY program might want to include an option like a simple check box that says "mount at boot" and do this work for you.
