Install Release?

[smcrossman]

A couple of days ago I did what in Windows would be called a "repair" install...or so I thought. My monster machine had inconsistent issues that were preogressively increasing and spreading. I fiugred from previous experience with this machine and with the fact that I've been doing a lot of tweaking of the programming that I might just as well do a fresh install of Natty, keeping my dual boot and see if that resolved some of the issues.

Well first install failed because the installer crashed. Second try went fine and I've been slowly getting the appearance & environment where I think I want it as well as installing the packages that I had tried out in the past month and want to keep using. I've also been working out the issues with my wireless networking (with a lot of help from these forums).

Now I've found an icon on my Unity launcher that is labeld Install Release. If I click on it it takes me to a window to install Ubuntu. I'm really confused. I am not running a LIve CD or Boot stick. My hard drive is split up all over the place in partitions, but so far I've only found the 2 reserve areas and the large Windows partition and the Ubuntu partition that have things in them. I've found and moved my previous home folder into my current home directory and it looks like everything is there (amazingly lucky!)

So what is the install release and what is it going to do to my computer and my set-up?

[cariboo]

It looks like your install didn't go correctly, I'd just remove the icon and forget about it.

[smcrossman]

Under other circumstances I might be willing to do that. But I really need to be sure my foundation here is solid. This particular pc will be hosting my Samba network for a good wihile, and also be the location of virtual machines. Actually I'm hoping to remove windows from it completely if I can master the VM set up and usage and get the network functioning up to where I want it to be.

I think maybe I should look at backing up what I have now and doing a completely fresh install...? I know right now my Linux portion of the HD is in 5 partitions which seems really unnecessary....one for the file system one for extended logical partitions and 2 for SWAP. Maybe I really am making more work for myself, but I spent the first 18 months with this particular pc having to reformat and reinstall back to factory specs every 10-21 days. It was awful, but I couldn't do anything else with the issues that kept re-occurring. Upgrading to Win7 solved most of those, and then switching to 64bit solved even more. I'm hoping (and really expecting) that if I get it stable with Ubuntu and remove Windows it will actually live up to some of its original potential.

So I guess my question right now is do I backup on external and totally reformat/partition/install the Ubuntu section or do I somehow use this Install Release? What is it for? How does it work? What does it do?

[smcrossman]

Okay, this is really nagging at me. I'm trying to figure out if I'm totally reformatiing the current linux partitions and reinstalling or if I can just clean things up somehow and keep moving forward in this transition process. I've searced the forums, I've searched documentation I can't find anything about install RELEASE. It is an app (listed in my installed applications).

I've taken some screenshots. First the properties information received by right clicking on the icon in usr/share/applications. Then the first 3 screens that come up if you launch it. I'm really confused by the terminology....permanent? is my current Ubuntu install set to self destruct? Do I really have 2 installs of the same OS playing in the same partition? I haven't seen any sign of that but then again how would I know?

Please, has anyone actually seen this or even heard of this before?

[el_koraco]

It's a weird one. I'm guessing that it's a bizzarro scenario in which the install process just didn't remove the installer after finishing with the install.

[VanR]

May not be so uncommon as my Zorin OS 5 install has "Install Zorin OS" in the System> Administration menu. Guess what happens if you click on it? It tries to reinstall. I have just ignored it for now. Don't have a clue as to how to get rid of it.

[el_koraco]

I'd say sudo apt-get remove ubiquity?

[Paddy Landau]

If your PC will be around for a while, and you want a rock-solid foundation, then (a) you want a Long Term Support (LTS) version, and (b) you want to get everything right.

(a) The current LTS is 10.04, supported until 13.04 (April 2013). 11.04 is supported only until 12.10 (October 2012).

(b) Make a full backup; consolidate your partitions (one for swap, one for Ubuntu, one for /home, and the remainder for Windows); install from scratch; restore if necessary.

[JohnBonne]

Okay, this is really nagging at me. I'm trying to figure out if I'm totally reformatiing the current linux partitions and reinstalling or if I can just clean things up somehow and keep moving forward in this transition process. I've searced the forums, I've searched documentation I can't find anything about install RELEASE. It is an app (listed in my installed applications).

I've taken some screenshots. First the properties information received by right clicking on the icon in usr/share/applications. Then the first 3 screens that come up if you launch it. I'm really confused by the terminology....permanent? is my current Ubuntu install set to self destruct? Do I really have 2 installs of the same OS playing in the same partition? I haven't seen any sign of that but then again how would I know?

Please, has anyone actually seen this or even heard of this before?

yes a milestone in Linux. Installs have to be recognised throughout so one drive wont recognise the others. And tis include Windows/Linux installs. I can't help but this is very interesting. Seems things are coming to a head as this is the third subscription of this type this last hour.

I can produce the others if you want.

[smcrossman]

Okay, I am feeling a bit better. It isn't just my monster coming back out to torture me. I did 2 installs Saturday...the first the installer crashed, I tried to report the but but it locked up on me and I couldn't get the information to send. So then I rolled the dice again and did another install again replacing linux 11.04 with 11.04. That one finished fine but I didn't have time to work through all the packages with synaptic so I quit and came back later to find I had a lot of things to reinstall. So somewhere in there the installer got a bit confused about things.

I'm guessing that since I'm not sure what all is on there that I need to at least redo my Linux portion of the drive. The windows is huge, and I haven't even started thinking about transferring documents and things over yet. Unfortunately my PC will NOT back up windows in any way shape or form, and if you do partial backups it will not be able to read them to restore. The OS isn't such an issue since I purchased it online so I can go back and redownload it to reinstall, but I just don't want to it's an ugly dirty process and why waste the time if I am going to wipe it away in the next 3 months or so?

I guess I could (if I can get this monster in windows to comply) use networking and move the files to my netbook and just wipe windows off this now. But I have about 3 seriously needed programs that I just can't do in linux, and they tend to bog down on the netbook.

I'm exploring VM to see if I can make that work for those few programs, and have yet to look at Wine. Any suggestions out there? I do appreciate the feedback about LTS vs. Natty. And if I actually can get VM working (user issues no experience) then LTS would be safer and I could a VM to explore the new things and such. But at the same time, the more I learn and find out I'm enjoying learning and working out MY issues with tweaking things so frequent upgrades might be something to keep me on my toes long term.

Anyway...any thoughts suggestions from newbies or experienced a like welcome. I won't mark this as solved since we still don't know what the deal is, but I'm guessing its just one of those things that you need to keep an eye out for (like when one of the idiot lights on the car stays on a little too long and pops on sporadically but never stays lit) not a fire in the kitchen but something to watch.