Share with the community your gutsy install/upgrade experience

[Dan Lyke]

Just in case anyone's still reading after 70+ pages of messages...

HP dv6000 (dv6452se, Intel Core Duo, Intel 3945ABG wireless, 945GM graphics).

Upgraded from Feisty to Gutsy, suspend didn't work, there were a bunch of other weirdnesses, I figured that some of them might be because I had some older kernel modules that were keeping my kernel back, so I decided to backup my user directory and try a fresh install.

I'm on my third raw install (first two were Xubuntu, last one is Ubuntu). Suspend appears to only work about one in six attempts, when I run it /etc/acpi/sleep.sh from the command line. When it does work, wireless doesn't come back. I'm in the midst of a restore on my home directory which has screwed up my X authorization keys temporarily, but I'm not sure that OpenGL is accelerated now.

In the "good news" department I don't have to install the 915resolution module to get my graphics set up correctly. Haven't delved into audio too heavily, don't yet know if I'll be doing the ALSA shuffle, but at least sound plays.

If I could drop back to Feisty easily, I would, but if all I have to do is to manually shut down and boot rather than having suspend work I think I can live with it for a while. My other machines are going to stay at Feisty for a while.

[Cato2]

I installed Xubuntu Feisty from scratch on a Toshiba Portege 7200CT, then upgraded to Gutsy (last RC before release).

Here were the issues I had with Feisty install using Alternate CD:

- screen defaulted to 640 x 480, and desktop CD isn't usable in this mode (buttons aren't on screen or even scrollable) - commented on Launchpad bug about this as newbies to Linux would have given up here (I've been using Linux for over 10 years)

- WiFi didn't work on most WiFi cards - had to install WICD, which is good but not in repository - eventually used zd1211 driver with a 3Com Officeconnect WiFi USB stick.

Repartitioning went smoothly with NTFS.

On the Feisty to Gutsy upgrade, update-manager didn't work at all, giving an error that I later found out was due to apt-cacher (which I use to cache APT package accesses on a local server) - not an obvious error message at all, have commented on relevant launchpad bug. The aptitude based dist-upgrade went fairly smoothly though there are a few conflicts with WICD.

I also did a new Kubuntu Feisty install on a Dell GX110 PC and had significant problems getting it installed - X11 was wrongly configured (I have a motherboard video card and the card I use), GRUB was not installed at all, etc - this was using the Alternate CD since I needed to use LVM.

Overall, not a very pleasant installation or upgrade experience, and not something I'd like to inflict on new users. However, once installed everything has gone quite smoothly and both Feisty and Gutsy are much nicer to use than their predecessors.

UPDATED: I tried flashing the latest BIOS, 2.10, on the Toshiba 7200 (which can be done from Linux as long as you make a separate DOS boot floppy onto which you copy the files) in order to get ACPI working. However, ACPI does NOT work well - it seems to dramatically slow down the system. The default (without acpi=force in grub boot line for kernel) is to use APM, which works well enough but is not as functional.

Also, the zd1211 USB WiFi stick that I used (3Com) works fine plugged into the laptop, but does NOT work plugged into the dock (base unit). And I am still struggling to get the WiFi working elsewhere in house where signal is weak - error messages from wicd (which is generally good) are quite poor.

[alex-v]

I have upgraded 2 machines from feisty: IBM Thinkpad T41 and HP workstation xw6200. Neither went smoothly. Here is what happened:
T41
Upgrade manager crashed after it downloaded all the packages. I later read that it could have run out of memory trying to deal with 1500+ packages to upgrade on the relatively old hardware. The usual solution was to use trusty apt-get to finish the upgrade. After reboot I had a problem with udev flooding both console and syslog with devmapper errors. It turned out to be widely described problem with many laptops. The solution turned out to be uninstalling evms. Why would it want to install volume management system on single-drive laptop is beyond me. NetworkManager refused to recognize atheros-based wifi pcmcia card and I continued using my script-based configuration for ifup.
HP xw6200
Upgrade manager still doesn't work in corporate networks and doesn't even try to ask for proxy server, just hangs indefinitely. This was discussed ad nauseum with both edgy and feisty with zero result. In order to persuade it to use proxy I did the following: added proxy to apt configuration in /etc/apt/apt.conf.d; added proxy in internet settings in kcontrol running it as root via kdesu; set environment variables http_proxy and ftp_proxy and then launched adept from command line via kdesu. It wasn't enough for it to show the upgrade button so I had to use appropriate command line option. After that I had gutsy in about 2 hours. The restricted device manager found the nvidia card but again was unable to download/install due to proxy blindness. Had to be run from command line using kdesu trick again. After the installation display configuration screens in both kcontrol system settings are unresponsive to any attempts to configure X. I just copied xorg.conf from similar feisty box and was in business.

All in all I find that for a new user the experience was completely unacceptable. For me all the abovementioned problems were minor and cost me 15-20 minutes but somebody less experienced would just give up and (rightfully) start screaming all over the forums that ubuntu is broken beyond repair. Sadly I find again and again (edgy, feisty, gutsy) that the developers would rather spend their time on the latest bells and whistles (compiz) that hardly anybody (who uses their computers for real work) cares about than on testing and fixing years old problems like making update manager proxy-aware (making sure it doesn't blow up because of out of memory exception is so basic that there's no point in discussing it) and/or resolving hardware problems that dozens of user have reported.

[jobrodesign]

My install has not gone well so far. This is specifically because I am unable to resize the time zone selection window to click on the "next" or whatever button will advance the install. My monitor is a 20" dell widescreen and the Gutsy Gibbon Live CD will only allow screen resolutions of 800x600. or 640x480... as such a significant portion of the install windows are below the desktop. Hardware solutions are nonexistent.

[zetjee]

I tried upgrading it and it went terribly wrong.. (ill maybe start a topic about it)

Everything went perfect I thoughed, cause the shut down all applications that were 3rd party and some other stuff.

Went to the television and when I went back it had rebooted (heard the sound) And thought it worked...

I dont know what went wrong, but any 3rd party program doesn't work and above that even the filemanager doesn't work!! :S

Solutions?

[pilgrim22]

Wow, 74 pages. Proof of the popularity of Ubuntu...?

Anyway, my upgrade experience from Kubuntu Feisty to Gutsy was a painful experience. My hardware is a self-built AMD Athlon XP 1900 machine, 1GB RAM, GeForce 7600 graphics, and 2 80GB hard drives, of which about 16G was used for Linux.

Tried to upgrade online (have a 15Mb internet connection), but it hung up after errors. Machine still usable, somewhat, at this point, although the apt database was left in a locked state.

Downloaded the Kubuntu alternate install CD and burned it, verified the burn OK. Tried some options booting from that, trying to recover my system, but to no avail. Also tried running the 'cdromupgrade' script from the CD, but complained about missing 'pygtk' module.

Backed up some stuff from existing install (I could still log in on a console). Then blew away the Feisty install and tried installing Gutsy from the alternate install CD. Install failed some way through. Turns out my DVD ROM drive was mis-reading the CD, whereas the separate DVD burner reads the disc fine. So booted with the CD in the burner, and re-did the partitioning, and finally got the basic system reinstalled. Have also reinstalled all my extra stuff (LAMP stack, Samba, OpenSSH, MP3 support, DVD and Divx playback, Firefox and plugins, etc), so I pretty much have Humpty back together again, after a long Sunday afternoon.

But still no fancy 3D effects....??? Do I have to install compiz, or where do I enable it? Remember this is Kubuntu. I'll look around elsewhere on these forums.

This is the second failed upgrade I've done of Ubuntu systems, last one was Dapper->Feisty, which is admittedly a jump of 2 releases. But it failed in much the same manner.

Don't get me wrong, I really like (K)Ubuntu, and its update process is normally quite smooth. But the full version upgrade process seems horribly broken, and next time, I'll probably just DL the full install CD and re-do the install.

Cheers,
p22

[logos34]

My install has not gone well so far. This is specifically because I am unable to resize the time zone selection window to click on the "next" or whatever button will advance the install. My monitor is a 20" dell widescreen and the Gutsy Gibbon Live CD will only allow screen resolutions of 800x600. or 640x480... as such a significant portion of the install windows are below the desktop. Hardware solutions are nonexistent.

There are two workarounds:

1. Choose 'safe mode' at menu and then adjust in System>prefs>screen resolution

2. Open a terminal and run sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg, then select another graphics driver (i.e. vesa)

Or you can realign the top panel to the left and bottom to the right so you can see the buttons at the bottom of the screen

[crocd]

Did it work flawlessly ?

Nope, Have some issues with keyboard spacebar feed for no reason. Eterm config files dont work consistently. Flash movies, sound doesnt work, tried various fixexs including the beta version from Adobe. Upon reboor my graphics driver stops working x bulletproof takes over and my screen resolution goes to pot requiring Nvidia driver reinstall.

I have not been able to fix the problems and I am not sure how to resolve the issues.

[abickerton]

The upgrade worked mostly. The main issues revolved around the Ati 9600 radeon with dual monitors.

As I suspected this would fail. I was able to recover Gnome after some fiddling... (removed compiz completely ans set the window manager to metacity)

Although these new settings didn't immediately take, eventually they did. I then installed the new 8.42.3 ati driver by following the instruction in the bug reports. With one REALLY annoying thing. That being the need to select resticted drivers to use them even when not using synaptic to do the install.

Bottom line:
If I disable one monitor I can run compiz fusion with AIGLX using the ati card... I never thought I'd be able to say that.

Dual monitor goodness overrides the need for eye candy though.

Other bits'n pieces
PenguinTV ... I'm not entirely convinced this should be in the repositories
Evolution and gpilot

[rendered_one]

To start, I love Ubuntu, it rocks. But I should have known better than to attempt an upgrade... :S

I'm on an AMD64 machine running Feisty, been working well for me. So I decided to go ahead and give Gutsy a try.

That was my first mistake.

Second mistake, downloading the Desktop CD to upgrade, I have a slow connection so I went to download the Desktop CD from another computer only to find that I needed the Alt CD to do a networkless install... o_O

Now I have my alt CD in, all looks like it's happy but no! It has to download 500+ Megs of software still.. What is this??

fine.

I say what-the-heck, leave it running all night to download the updates.. we're good then. Morning comes and it's just finished downloading.. woohoo for lite-speed... Begin install process, hop off to work.

Back home from work... install halted probably 5 mins after I left, asking to replace a system file.. Ok, go.

A half hour later, my third error message concerning the inability to install the nvidia-glx package comes up... this time it's fatal.

wonderful.

Reboot. I manage to work a way around the fact that my gnome-panel and desktop are now gone. I have nothing but a friendly desktop wallpaper that I made a while back after log in. Good for me that I have wireless, oh wait nevermind, no network-manager app to connect me. What's this? No window manager running either? Alt-F2? In my dreams. I manage to create a folder on my desktop and open it up in Nautilus (no way! it works! :O) browse to /usr/bin/ and open up an xterm. Ingenious. Metacity. Works.. alright. here we go. gnome-panel? No dice..

peachy.

Lets try runnning synaptic. My system is apparently up-to-date. Wanna bet? Ok, nevermind there are a total of nine (count 'em.. 9) updates. Guess what they are for? CUPS. No, I don't want cups now, I want my machine to work. But thanks anyways. Hmm let's try running this brilliant upgrade app on the CD again hmm? Nope, I apparently have one up-to-date system... only one problem, it's not functioning.

splendid.

the moral of the story? screw upgrading. Sorry Ubuntu, like I said love the system, but upgrading is a process that is not likely to work for everyone anytime soon. I would not encourage ANYONE to upgrade if they have at all used their computer since last installing... fresh install, or reap the repercussions! Oh they are varied and twisted they are! The end is near! The end is near!

I'm now off to do a fresh install (yes that means all my codecs have to be re-downloaded, along with all of my extra apps I had installed, etc... and I'll likely lose a bunch of settings in the process.. oh joy!) On a connection that gets max 16 kbs, I'm lucky if I'll be done next week. See you all in approx. 168 hours...

Well, I fresh installed. Looks like an impressive release, though I would not recommend upgrading but rather fresh installing (provided you're smart and separate your home dir from the root fs).

Very pleased with how simple it was to get firefox working with flash and java under 64bit Ubuntu, also beginning to use the add/remove to find some interesting new programs for use. Additional codecs and such were a breeze to install, and for the first time since switching to Ubuntu, I have been able to use my favorite messenger (Mercury messenger) without dismal tweaking.

All in all, aside from the upgrade woes, a very nice release. Looking forward to Gutsy +1!