Sunday, September 17, 2006

Ubuntu Edgy dist-upgrade

I got bored with Ubuntu Dapper and decided to give Edgy, the latest beta version under development, a whirl. New gnome 2.16, OpenOffice up to current 2.0.3 version, Firefox 2.0 beta, Flash sound works now, updated Network Manager, updated pam libraries. All very nice.

Suspecting that apt-get dist-upgrade would trash my Dapper installation, I backed up and burned the Edgy Knot 3 install CD, just in case I needed it. Various reports from last month had people ending up with working X or kernel. Sounds like a challenge!

CAUTION: This procedure may melt your computer! Always Be Backing Up. Have a boot CD ready first.

  1. Get thee to a console window:
    Ctl-Alt-1
  2. Point your apt sources to Edgy:
    sudo perl -pi.orig -e 's/dapper/edgy/' /etc/apt/sources.list
  3. Update your package lists:
    sudo apt-get update
  4. Upgrade:
    sudo apt-get -f dist-upgrade
    "1055 upgraded, 125 newly installed, 31 to remove, 26 not upgraded" :)
  5. Upgrade once more if it bombs out during the first dist-upgrade:
    sudo apt-get -f dist-upgrade
  6. Kernel 2.6.17-7 was installed but the default in grub wasn't updated:
    vi /boot/grub/menu.lst
    change the default line to (as appropriate):
    "default 0"
  7. X didn't work, as it tries to use the missing ati driver instead of the installed fglrx driver:
    vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf
    Change this line in Section "Device":
    Driver "ati"
    to:
    Driver "fglrx"
    I did a modprobe fglrx for good measure, then startx to test. Houston, we have X!
  8. Some remaining packages complaining:
    sudo apt-get install hpijs python-adns python-clientcookie python-gadfly python-htmlgen python-htmltmpl python-imaging python-imaging-sane python-jabber python-kjbuckets python-ldap python-mysqldb python-osd python-pam python-pexpect python-pgsql python-pylibacl python-pyopenssl python-pyxattr python-reportlab python-simpletal python-soappy python-sqlite python-syck python-xmpp
  9. /sbin/reboot
All was well, and Gnome was even mostly functional during and after the upgrade (before reboot), although I stuck to the console for commands. The upgrade took about 2 hours using a 2Mb/s DSL line. I got ~200Kb/s to the local archive, ~750MB to download. Not all the upgrade time was downloading of course.

The success of the dist-upgrade may be pretty dependent on both hardware (Thinkpad T41p in this case) and what packages you have installed above and beyond Dapper default install (a few but clearly nothing bad!).

There is a slightly annoying graphics artifact sometimes, a horizontal line ~50 pixels beneath the cursor in Gnome. The multiple login prompt for Network Manager appears gone (NM 0.6.3 changelog claims it fixed it), although I had to re-enter my WPA password once after the upgrade. Flash sound works now with the packaging of the hack /etc/init.d/flashplugin-nonfree in flashplugin-nonfree 7.0.68. I cleaned out .gnome, .gconf etc. to get a fresh set of Gnome settings.

Now to try out Network Manager PPTP and pam-keyring since all the dependent libraries are now modern enough!

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4 Comments:

At 2 October 2006 11:14, Anonymous Anonymous said...

So, now that about a week has gone by, any issues with the upgrade? Think it's recomendable to just wait until it becomes "official"? there are a couple things in edgy that I would love to have, but I am afraid of upgrading, as this machine is the only computer I have to my name. I am currently running Dapper on a POS generic-brand laptop.

 
At 2 October 2006 23:36, Blogger Darren Wheatley said...

Hi,

Did you find a way to get rid of the horizontal line under the cursor?

Cheers

D.

 
At 3 October 2006 09:45, Blogger Des said...

Whilst Edgy is not released yet (beta is now out), it's been rock solid for me for the last couple of weeks of use. Three issues I can think of:

- the horizontal cursor is still there, but I haven't investigated much :(
- pptp-linux is sucky now, worked fine under dapper. Now it stalls half way through connecting and needs routes manually added
- external VGA presentation mode on a Thinkpad is a bit haphazard, but that might just be me

If this is your only laptop, you might feel better waiting a few weeks until the final version is out.

 
At 30 January 2007 18:55, Blogger Kevin said...

I installed the fglrx drivers to get my Thinkpad T60 to run in full 1400x1050 resolution, instead of the 1024x768 that it was in immediately after the install. It was not until after this that I noticed this artifact below the cursor. Any further information on this glitch?

 

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