install gparted on Ubuntu 8.10

[lazer100]

On 17-Sep-12 10:21:18 Doug wrote:
>On 09/16/2012 06:50 PM, lazer100 wrote:
>> On 17-Sep-12 05:12:10 Doug wrote:
>>> On 09/16/2012 03:53 PM, lazer100 wrote:
>>>> On 17-Sep-12 04:41:11 Doug wrote:
>>>>> On 09/16/2012 02:50 PM, lazer100 wrote:
>>>>>> Hello,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I am unable to install gparted on Ubuntu 8.10,
>>>>>>
>>>>> /snip/
>>>>>> how do I install this?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> thanx
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> You'll be better off downloading a live version of GParted or Partition
>>>>> Magic and burning to
>>>>> a CD.  You can't mess with the partitions on a disk on which you are
>>>>> running an OS, so
>>>>> if you burn a CD, you can do partitioning on any hard drive on the
>>>>> system from there.
>>>>> --doug
>>>> I want to dabble with an external USB drive, I want to zero the drive
>using
>>>> dd and /dev/zero,
>>>>
>>>> I need gparted to determine the device name of the drive, I'm in fact
only
>>>> going to use gparted in a read only way,
>>>>
>>>> is there any other way to determine the device name of the drive,
>>>> something like /dev/sdb
>>> If you have Dolphin, or whatever Ubuntu uses as an equivalent, it
>>> may tell you what the partition name is, as you go and click on
>>> each partition.  If not, after you have snapped on each partition,
>>> noting what size it is for comparison with the next step, open
>>> a terminal and type df -h.
>>> You will get an output like this:
>>> [doug at Linux1 ~]$ df -h
>>> Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
>>> /dev/sda9              12G  7.8G  3.7G  69% /
>>> /dev/sda11            208G   14G  195G   7% /home
>>> /dev/sda8              30G   66M   30G   1% /media/sda8
>>> /dev/sda7             122G  2.0G  114G   2% /media/disk
>>> /dev/sdb5              39G  188M   37G   1% /media/disk-1
>>> /dev/sda6              25G  500M   23G   3% /media/disk-2
>>> /dev/sda1              62G   17G   46G  27% /media/Windows
>>> /dev/sdb1              59G   52M   56G   1% /media/disk-3
>>> /dev/sdc1             3.8G  536M  3.3G  14% /media/disk-4
>>> Now you can see what everything is, and what the /dev name is
>> there is no program dolphin or Dolphin,
>>
>> if I try to install this with sudo apt-get it wont install,
>> its as if someone has disconnected the support framework for 8.10,
>>
>> I dont like using later versions of Ubuntu because it is becoming
>> too much like Windows, with too much automatic downloading of stuff
>> etc unasked. Ubuntu 8.10 is the optimal version of Ubuntu IMHO.
>>
>> I dont see why they cannot just leave that stuff online,
>> webspace is cheap, I own some URLs myself and have at least
>> 250G of server space for a few dollars a month,
>>
>> its like there is an agenda to shepherd everyone towards
>> things they dont want.
>>
>>
>> when I try
>>
>> df -h
>>
>> I get:
>>
>>
>> Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
>> /dev/sda3             9.7G  2.5G  6.8G  27% /
>> tmpfs                 2.0G     0  2.0G   0% /lib/init/rw
>> varrun                2.0G   84K  2.0G   1% /var/run
>> varlock               2.0G     0  2.0G   0% /var/lock
>> udev                  2.0G  2.9M  2.0G   1% /dev
>> tmpfs                 2.0G  104K  2.0G   1% /dev/shm
>> lrm                   2.0G  2.4M  2.0G   1%
>> /lib/modules/2.6.27-7-generic/volatile
>> /dev/sdb1             7.5G  5.8G  1.8G  78% /media/QUICK
>> /dev/sda1              49G   43G  6.8G  87% /media/disk
>>
>> but its not showing the system drive which is about 500G, that must be
>> /dev/sda
>> and it doesnt show the 1 terabyte drive I want to zero, which is
unformatted
>> currently:
>I don't know what GUI program Ubuntu uses to show all the partitions, 
>drives,
>directories, partitions, and so on, like Dolphin does in many distros.  What
>Dolphin does, when you snap on the partitions it finds, is it mounts them.
>If they are unmounted, df can't see them.  You need an Ubuntu expert--I'm
>not one.  I tried. Sorry.

your suggestion is a useful new trick, and has acted as a catalyst 
to refine the question, Nils Kassube's 2 emails have now answered 
the ensuing questions