1   2006-10-29 update Dapper to Edgy

Cause

I interrupted dselect forcefully while it's configuring packages(done with unpacking).

Result

Ubuntu can't boot at all. The kernel stopped with some minimal outputting(kernel flag "quiet" is turned on).

Not due to the breakage of grub, i tried to setup boot-loader by live CD and typing grub.

I tried "linux root=/dev/hda3" by using the kernel from the install CD. still didn't work. (later i knew it's probably due to the incompatibility/lack of the corresponding initrd image).

After i removed the "quiet" flag (by the grub console), i saw the error "Waiting to moun the root file system ...". So it seemed it couldn't recognize the root file system though it's there.

Solution

Pick the oldest kernel to boot and it worked. The reason is that newer kernels' initrd image were not setup yet. I saw they were generated in the process of dpkg setup. And all there kernels require initrd image to work.

GRUB

If you are trying to install boot-loader for another system by mounting its file system, chroot is not needed. root (hd0,2) is gonna recognize the correct drive and the relative path. Following is a brief outline of procedures.:

root (hd0,2)
find /boot/grub/stage1
setup (hd0)

Another usage of grub is getting into the grub console(type 'c') given the GRUB menu(right after the bootup of the computer). Commands to type in grub console:

root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-27-386 root=/dev/hda3 ro
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-27-386
boot

2   2007-11-26 7.04(feisty) to 7.10 (gutsy)

Desktop

ldap-auth-conf replaces libnss-ldap. the sudo user was mapped to diradmin from papaya. probably the same uid caused this. for a brief period after i commented out roodbinddn, the sudo user stopped being mapping to diradmin. but after reboot, it went back. (open /etc/ldap.conf, /etc/pam_ldap.conf, su into the sudo user..., the mapping would be stopped, don't know why???)

messed up /etc/network/interfaces. eth0's dhcp line was commented out. has to use the ubuntu cd to manually modify that file.

F1-F12 of microsoft natural ergonomic 4000 v1.0 stopped working. F1's help function is there. and 'keyboard shortcuts' shows these keys are mapped to something else. the mac keyboard works. for a small period, the mouse and keyboard became sporadic. ms and mac keyboards clashed with each other.

gdm still uses xorg. but after login, xgl is used. however, the new window manager, compiz has to be enabled by clicking System-> Preferences -> GL Desktop. install "compizconfig-settings-manager" to control all sorts of effects

2008-02-07 Laptop

language messed up. Open /etc/environment and /etc/default/locale. Delete the line with "LANGUAGE="en_US:en" and only retain the line "LANG="en_US:UTF-8". Also generate a locale for en_US:UTF-8 by localedef -f UTF-8 -i en_US en_US.UTF-8. this locale mess might cause the multi-tab gnome-terminal to fail to receive keyboard input (can't rule out the possibility of window manager mess/see below).

transit to xubuntu. Select the 'xubuntu-desktop' meta package. You can delete it after all other dependent packages are selected.

Problem with UID-xxx for hard disks. Only / was mounted successfully. Errors like device-mapper: dm-linear: Device lookup failed and device-mapper: error adding target to table showed up. Turns out that package 'evms' is responsible for this. According to http://evms.sourceforge.net/faq.html, probably need the evms kernel patch. Anyway, a piece of advice from web, removing it solves the problem.

Window manager. The default is changed to compiz. But i don't wanna use that. /usr/bin/gnome-wm reads the default window manager from gconf and starts. So open gconf-editor, go to /desktop/gnome/applications/window_manager/default and change it to /usr/bin/metacity.

3   2008-07-09 7.10(gutsy) to 8.10 (hardy)

• unstall xserver-xgl, stops all whacky things, ('xrdb' once stuck only for the most common user). one of them is that screen mostly stops at the initial 'X', (the cross representing mouse).
• replace 'nvidia-glx' with 'nvidia-glx-new'.
  • this restores the border of each window
  • stops the blanking of 'gnome-terminal' (which causes the whole gnome-terminal become blank while you can still blind-type commands).
  • stops the error message, "/usr/bin/compiz.real (core) - Warn: No GLXFBConfig for depth 32" in ~/.xsessioin-errors.
• plone 2.5 is dead (instance old/purged). the zeo server is unaffected. configuring dl324b-1 to get the plone data from it.
• 2008-07-16 plone 2.5 /zope2.9 is alive again. check /log/plone-old/plone-logs#banyan-gutsy-upgraded-to-hardy-8-04.