Upgrading to Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope (on the Desktop)

27 Apr, 2009

After my laptop, is time to upgrade my main machine whith Ubuntu 9.04, codename Jaunty Jackalope.

I will be the using the 32 bit alternate cd to upgrade. This means that the upgrade will have a cd image as his source, and not the Internet. This way it’s much faster, I think.

I shouldn’t do this during the week, but… oh well…

Before you start

Check for updates using Update Manager (be sure to have all the available upgrades done)
Backup your data
Check the Release Notes
Download Ubuntu (I used the Text based “alternate installer” installation disk link to get the alternate image)
Check the file hash (example: md5sum ubuntu-9.04-alternate-i386.iso) and compare it to UbuntuHashes
Be sure to upgrade from Ubuntu 8.10.
Have a burned Live CD laying around, just in case.
Use Gmount-iso to mount the iso file. This way cd could be mounted without having to burn a cd.

Install

In the Terminal, go to the cd mount point (example: /media/cdrom) and type:

1cd /media/cdrom
2gksu "sh /cdrom/cdromupgrade"

And now we wait…

When is asked if I want to include the latest updates during the upgrade I always say no. At this times the servers are very slow - everyone want their Ubuntu :-)

During the upgrade there may be some questions about replacing some configuration files. I replaced them all with the new versions.

After restarting there may be more updates to do.

Issues / Post-Install

Issue 1: Upgrade failed after many errors. When I rebooted it wouldn’t boot into the desktop :(

The upgrade failed so… No big surprise there. Oh well, I had a Live CD burned, so I booted using that cd. I only needed to configure my network, Firefox to get to this post and a Terminal.

The resolution was low and the screen wasn’t centered, but that’s ok for what I need.

1sudo mount /dev/sda6
2cd /media/disk/
3sudo cp {/,}etc/resolv.conf
4sudo mount --bind {/,}proc
5sudo mount --bind {/,}sys
6sudo mount --bind {/,}dev
7sudo chroot /media/disk/
8apt-get update
9apt-get -f dist-upgrade --fix-missing

That was basically it. The upgrade ended and after the restart everything was (almost) ok.

Issue 2: My NVIDIA card wasn’t working that well. The resolution was low and the screen wasn’t centered.

It was easy though:

Alt + F2
/usr/bin/jockey-gtk
Selected the recommend proprietary driver for my NVIDIA card
Rebooted and that was that

Issue 3: The Tomboy applet is aborting at restart (to solve…)
Issue 4: Updated Software Sources

1deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
2deb http://packages.medibuntu.org/ jaunty free non-free
3deb http://linux.getdropbox.com/ubuntu jaunty main
4deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ubuntu/ jaunty main
5deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian jaunty non-free

Issue 5: Missing software… recovered
gVIM
VLC Player
GNOME Do (sudo apt-get install gnome-do)
Issue 6: Virtualbox isn’t working. Easy as this:

1sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

Issue 7: Partial Upgrade. When checking for new updates the Update Manager tries (and fails) to do a Partial Upgrade. I don’t know why, but I just went to Synaptic Package Manager, marked the packages showed in Update Manager to Update and Apply. Easy!
Post-install 1: I always run System > Administration > System Testing. This will help me and Ubuntu to test my system.
Post-install 2: I also run System > Administration > Computer Janitor. It’s a great idea to clean your system after an upgrade. In case of doubt let it be.
Post-install 3: Some additional cleanup here (a “Computer Janitor” in the Terminal) and here.

#Linux #Ubuntu #Ubuntu 9.04 #Jaunty Jackalope