More Ubuntu.
Aug. 9th, 2010 11:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snugglekittyCut for those who don't care.
Well, after much trial and tribulation (tried to update to 10.04, had more bugs than you can hit with a flyswatter) I reinstalled and got WUBI working for 8.04. I decided this was secretly brilliant because I found a website explaining that you could use LVPM to bootstrap a WUBI installation into a full installation, but only using version 8.04 or earlier. I back it up - this time from the Windows side so that if I get unrecoverables on the Unix side, I can just restore it with DriveXML.
This is okay, I think. I try to use GPARTED to move on from there toward my dream of having a current version of Unix dualbooted with Windows. It doesn't work because you can't alter the partitions on a running hard drive, but it takes me a long time to figure this out despite a friendly message in bold at the top of the GPARTED documentation page because I basically know nothing about partitions or altering them. I am not using a LiveCD because (as we know) the CD drive is not working.
Today I think, well, I've got something pretty close to what I want. Maybe I'll just let it rest. Then I notice a little icon on the left side of the screen that says Audio CD. Yes! My CD/DVD drive has come back for one last fling! I can't find the Ubuntu CD I burned just a few days ago so I make a new one.
It sounds so hopeful, doesn't it? Well. I got unrecoverable errors during install three times, even after I had done the fix of turning off the floppy drive boot option in BIOS that I found on the support forum. Each time, I then tried to install it from within the desktop. The first two times it bogged down when I tried to repartition, but I didn't give up. (First it gave me a partition writing error, then it only offered to erase the whole disk rather than changing the size of the Windows partition.) The third time I just took the suggested partition and went with it. If I can get it on the disk at all then I can fiddle with the sizes later, by hook or by crook.
Now it is into the actual install. The actual install! 58%! I am very hopeful.
If this doesn't work, I'm no worse off than I was before. (I hope.) I have Windows installed with WUBI 8.04, I have a complete hot image backup that should work assuming I can get the computer to start at all.
If this does works, first I will back it up so I don't have to go through this again very soon. But I find that regardless I am still not unhappy about the time I spent on all my various installs and upgrades. It was actually a great refresher in Unix and a great introduction to how Ubuntu works. Plus it was sort of fun.
ETA: YESSSSSSS, it worked!
Well, after much trial and tribulation (tried to update to 10.04, had more bugs than you can hit with a flyswatter) I reinstalled and got WUBI working for 8.04. I decided this was secretly brilliant because I found a website explaining that you could use LVPM to bootstrap a WUBI installation into a full installation, but only using version 8.04 or earlier. I back it up - this time from the Windows side so that if I get unrecoverables on the Unix side, I can just restore it with DriveXML.
This is okay, I think. I try to use GPARTED to move on from there toward my dream of having a current version of Unix dualbooted with Windows. It doesn't work because you can't alter the partitions on a running hard drive, but it takes me a long time to figure this out despite a friendly message in bold at the top of the GPARTED documentation page because I basically know nothing about partitions or altering them. I am not using a LiveCD because (as we know) the CD drive is not working.
Today I think, well, I've got something pretty close to what I want. Maybe I'll just let it rest. Then I notice a little icon on the left side of the screen that says Audio CD. Yes! My CD/DVD drive has come back for one last fling! I can't find the Ubuntu CD I burned just a few days ago so I make a new one.
It sounds so hopeful, doesn't it? Well. I got unrecoverable errors during install three times, even after I had done the fix of turning off the floppy drive boot option in BIOS that I found on the support forum. Each time, I then tried to install it from within the desktop. The first two times it bogged down when I tried to repartition, but I didn't give up. (First it gave me a partition writing error, then it only offered to erase the whole disk rather than changing the size of the Windows partition.) The third time I just took the suggested partition and went with it. If I can get it on the disk at all then I can fiddle with the sizes later, by hook or by crook.
Now it is into the actual install. The actual install! 58%! I am very hopeful.
If this doesn't work, I'm no worse off than I was before. (I hope.) I have Windows installed with WUBI 8.04, I have a complete hot image backup that should work assuming I can get the computer to start at all.
If this does works, first I will back it up so I don't have to go through this again very soon. But I find that regardless I am still not unhappy about the time I spent on all my various installs and upgrades. It was actually a great refresher in Unix and a great introduction to how Ubuntu works. Plus it was sort of fun.
ETA: YESSSSSSS, it worked!
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no subject
Date: 2010-08-10 08:13 pm (UTC)It really shouldn't be that painful.
Did you come across the flash upgrade bug going from 8.04 to 10.04? That was a pain.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-11 04:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-11 05:23 pm (UTC)There was an obscure configuration value I needed to specify the amount of ram my video card had.
Connecting to the internet, and getting sound working were always a major chore.
Nothing even made any attempt at auto-detecting your hardware (video card, audio, network card, etc.) until Knoppix came out. I guess that might have been 10 years ago. You had to figure out what your hardware was, find the right config file, and configure your computer to use that hardware. Before you got anywhere near even being able to use a mouse.
I'm still amazed how much stuff just works these days. Booting directly into X (the GUI) without any user intervention is nuts.