Update to Lucid Lynx Alpha2

Well I know that it’s a little early to be doing this (if I’m to be concerned about maintaining a stable system!) However I have decided to update my Desktop and two servers to Lucid. both the servers have updated painlessly without any hiccups! however my desktop has been a different story…

Due to having only 2x 160Gb IDE drives, I’ve choesen to set these up in software RAID0 so I get the advantage of quicker read/write to the drives and also to span the two drive as one. I’m aware of the dangers should one drive fail I’m left with a broken system! but that’s a risk I’m prepared to take.

I’m attempting to install Lucid from the Alternative Install ISO, but twice it has given me an error when it comes to installing GRUB2. From what I can tell the issue seems to be that the installer is either attempting to install GRUB2 on the RAID array as the separate partition I have setup for /boot (using Ext2) was ignored thus no “/boot” partition to install to!

So I’m now attempting (for the 3rd time!) things just a little differently, and I’m still awaiting the result…  Arghh… this has FAILED too… Ok time to look into this a little more deeper and try to ascertain what isn’t working and why!

Hmm… Sidux is starting to look like a nice alternate at this stage!  😐

By Scott Evans

Linux enthusiast, GEEK and Amateur Radio operator ... NISM ? Cancer survivor of 15 years and counting!

3 comments

  1. It appears that the ubuntu installer still suffers from the issue that plagued 9.10… installing onto a RAID array is just plain broken 🙁

  2. Hmm… further to my earlier even an install onto a single drive failed! SoI’m now convinced that the alpha2 media has got a nasty bug that fails to install GRUB2 into a separate /boot partition. So for me it appears that the only solution is to reinstall Karmic for the time being as Sidux does not support software RAID during the install process therefore I can’t setup my drives the way I need to… 🙁

    1. It is now clear that I “should” have read the known issues prior to my attempt to go down this path! …

      Known issues
      As is to be expected at this stage of the release process, there are several known bugs that users are likely to run into with Lucid Alpha 2. We have documented them here for your convenience along with any known workarounds, so that you don’t need to spend time reporting these bugs again:
      The wacom-tools driver cannot be used with Lucid Alpha 2. It is no longer supported for xserver 1.7, and also requires HAL for configuration which is no longer available. A new driver xf86-input-wacom is under development upstream but was not yet available in time for this milestone release. This is expected to be resolved for the final release of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.
      The Kubuntu alpha 2 desktop ISOs are too large to fit on a CD. They can be burned to a DVD or USB stick, or you can install using the alternate ISOs.
      The notify-osd notification system has “debug mode” turned on to help people find erroneously urgent notifications. The bubbles appear like so. This is the expected behavior at this point in the development cycle.
      Ubuntu Netbook Edition and other derivatives using gdm don’t handle the default session gracefully (Bug#507121). After the first reboot on installation you can either:
      log out from your session, choose “Ubuntu Netbook Edition” (or other) on gdm and then log in again, or
      run sudo /usr/lib/gdm/gdm-set-default-session –keep-old une (substituting xubuntu or mythbuntu for une as appropriate)
      On video hardware that supports KMS, the live CD sometimes does not reboot successfully, instead displaying the boot logo indefinitely. To work around this, you will need to power down the system manually. Investigation of this issue is ongoing. As a workaround, users can boot from a USB stick instead of from a CD. (506418)
      On video hardware that does not support KMS, using the “full disk with encryption” installation option will result in a boot failure because the prompt for the passphrase needed for decrypting the disk will not be shown. As a workaround for this issue, users should boot without the splash option. (506717)
      When running on Ubuntu Server, the plymouth boot splash screen does not exit after the system is booted. To get to a console login after boot, you must press Ctrl-Alt-F1 to switch to VT1. Work on correcting this for the 10.04 release is ongoing. (506297)
      Manual partitioning fails in the graphical installer due to a bug in ubiquity: you can select existing partitions to use as targets for installation, but you can neither create new partitions nor delete existing partitions. As a workaround, users can install using the alternate CDs. This issue will be resolved for Alpha 3. (506585, 507012)
      Jockey (Ubuntu’s restricted driver manager) doesn’t yet support the new alternatives system used by the nvidia driver packages, so in order to install nvidia drivers you will have to install them from the command line:
      sudo apt-get install nvidia-current (or nvidia-173 or nvidia-96)
      select the alternative that matches the driver that you have installed
      (e.g. /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf for nvidia-current):
      sudo update-alternatives –config gl_conf
      update the ld cache:
      sudo ldconfig
      then configure your xorg.conf with:
      sudo nvidia-xconfig
      And restart your computer.
      Because of the new alternatives system, the nvidia installer from NVIDIA’s website currently doesn’t work.
      The fglrx binary driver for ATI video chipsets does not yet support the X server in Lucid. As a workaround, users should use the open source -ati driver instead. (506656)
      Attempting to run 32bit applications which make use of 3D acceleration in a 64bit system will result in a failure. See (506435) and (506437). This is expected to be resolved for Alpha 3.
      Alpha 2 does not include Wubi, the Ubuntu installer for Windows. It will be included going forward from Alpha 3. (498453)
      LTSP can’t be installed from Edubuntu’s the text installer. If you want a LTSP setup, please use Ubuntu Alternate and then add the required Edubuntu packages using the Ubuntu Software Center. This is caused by the ongoing effort to drop the text installer off the Edubuntu DVD and move LTSP in the live environment. (507663)

      And that would have saved me an afternoon of swearing at my PC !!! 😐

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