10.10 upgrade = slow, new install: computer hang up

[UranUtan]

Hi,

EDIT: Workaround found, need two computers. See post #8

My Meerkat 10.10 adventure is quite a disaster. Can you please see if there is any potential issue in my proceeding?

- Desktop Q9550, 8 GB, 2 x SATA 500 GB (no RAID, independent drives). Built-in video nVidia (chipset GeForce 9300 / nForce 7300). Ubuntu 10.04 was working OK.

STEP 1: I used 10.10 Alternate CD and ran the upgrade which was successful. However, there was some sign of instabilities. The most visible one was applications are slow to startup and operations like disk access became exceedingly slow. Something normally would take 5 seconds now took 30 minutes (ex: updating tags of 500 mp3 files using mp3tag)

STEP 2: no big deal, I decided to do a fresh install. Overwriting the existing /boot (ext2) and root (ext4). Booting from an USB key, I suspected that something will go wrong because the installation seems to last very long time (may be 2 hours?, don't know b/c I left it run overnight).

Now this morning, all I can do is to boot to the boot screen where there is Ububtu logo and 5 orange dots. Then the computer is stuck there. I saw in another post suggesting to add ,barrier=0 in the /etc/fstab. I did that by booting the USB Key in LiveCD. But when I boot the computer again, nothing change.

Anyone has some issues and is there any solution? With so many positive reviews on 10.10, I can't believe I got stuck with such a stupid problem.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[zuerston]

Hi,

My Meerkat 10.10 adventure is quite a disaster. Can you please see if there is any potential issue in my proceeding?

- Desktop Q9995, 8 GB, 2 x SATA 500 GB (no RAID, independent drives). Built-in video nVidia GeForce 9300. Ubuntu 10.04 was working OK.

STEP 1: I used 10.10 Alternate CD and ran the upgrade which was successful. However, there was some sign of instabilities. The most visible one was applications are slow to startup and operations like disk access became exceedingly slow. Something normally would take 5 seconds now took 30 minutes (ex: updating tags of 500 mp3 files using mp3tag)

STEP 2: no big deal, I decided to do a fresh install. Overwriting the existing /boot (ext2) and root (ext4). Booting from an USB key, I suspected that something will go wrong because the installation seems to last very long time (may be 2 hours?, don't know b/c I left it run overnight).

Now this morning, all I can do is to boot to the boot screen where there is Ububtu logo and 5 orange dots. Then the computer is stuck there. I saw in another post suggesting to add ,barrier=0 in the /etc/fstab. I did that by booting the USB Key in LiveCD. But when I boot the computer again, nothing change.

Anyone has some issues and is there any solution? With so many positive reviews on 10.10, I can't believe I got stuck with such a stupid problem.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Where have you seen the positive reviews? I would like to read them too.
I have some issues with 10.10 too and I would like to balance the good against the bad.
Maybe go back a couple versions for a while till the bugs get ironed out.
I have had a couple total freezes and the video is not right,maybe Compiz problem too.
I don't know what to say in conclusion to the matter.
I need to see the good stuff!

PS: Yes my install (Fresh) took about 2 hours and at times I almost gave up,but I could see the HD light flicker so I just let it run,it finally installed.
watch the led's

[UranUtan]

Where have you seen the positive reviews? I would like to read them too.

I monitored the 10.10 reviews, all of them show screenshots, new features, etc. But NONE gave any warning about computer will hang up right at boot screen or install would take forever. I did see some people replying to blog post having issue to boot, but they are laptop. I also reviewed the known issues published by Canonical, my computer is not affected. So I just went ahead.

I hope that you and I are rather the unfortunate exception. b/c I can't really imagine that such a big issue could not be caught during the testing.

[Wafaa]

I had the exact same problem and the boot would get stuck at the ubuntu logo. Although it didn't at first when I did a clean install, only after I installed the updates. I did a boot in recovery mode and let it fix itself. I can now at least get into my desktop, but booting takes forever (like 10 minutes), and ubuntu is extremely slow. There's also a variety of little bugs and things that don't work very well.
I only reason I haven't reverted to 10.04 or earlier is because I don't want to go through the hassle of customizing my desktop again!

[UranUtan]

Attempt #2: still failed !

I redo another fresh install. This time I burn the 10.10 x64 ISO on a DVD as I had to fix syslinux.cfg on the USB key to make it boot. May be something will be better if booting from the DVD.

This time, I reformat the root partition using BTRFS instead of ext4. The installation went normally, the screen "Copying file ..." took 3 hours (repeat: 3 HOURS).

Now it reach the next step saying "Configuring apt ..." the progression bar is stuck at roughly 5%. And it looks like the computer is hung up.

I made many installations since the last two years on various hardware. This is the first time I got stuck on such a basic installation step. And this happens on my best computer.

This 10.10 release is really a catastrophe!

[mörgæs]

10.10 is not a revolution compared to 10.04. If 04 works best on your machine, there is no point in upgrading.

As 04 is finally getting stable, now is the time for switching to this one, not away from it.

[UranUtan]

10.10 is not a revolution compared to 10.04. If 04 works best on your machine, there is no point in upgrading.

Agreed, that was mainly my fault to gamble with the new version. But LiveCD works OK, reviews since RC didn't raise any warning. I am willing to admit that there could be some instabilities. However it is reasonable to expect that a release version must at least pass the installation phase. And it seems like I am not the only one who has this problem.

I wonder why this flaw could get past QA and also why I didn't see review warning about this issue.

[UranUtan]

Attempt #4 (failed): Reinstall version 10.04.1. Also failed for the exact same reason. This looks really scary, 10.04 was working OK on this computer. May be There is a hardware defect which decide to occur at the time I installed 10.10 ?

Attempt #5 (success, EDIT: but computer slow as snail): Installed 10.04.1 on an 5 years old computer. Successful. Installed 10.10 on that same old computer, also successful. Took the SATA drive of the trouble computer, hook it to the old computer, installed 10.10. Also successful. Then assemble the drive back to the "normal" computer. 10.10 boots and works OK.

Looks like the boot CD of v10.10 has a problem with the nVidia chipset (nForce 7300) ?


EDIT: The computer is totally unusable. I don't know how it was working OK yesterday when I assembled the drive back in the computer (Attempt #5). Today I power on again, the boot was quite long (may be 5 minutes for login screen to come up) then after log in any operation took forever to complete. Since 15 minutes, 3 simples AWN applets have not yet finished loading. Clicking on terminal, must wait 10 minutes before the screen come up. Moving a Windows on the Gnome desktop, nothing happened, and may be 5 minutes later the window is suddenly moved to the new place. Overall the speed is extremely slow. This 10.10 release is a total disaster.