Upgrading Ubuntu 9.10 to Ubuntu 10.04 in a virtual machine

As you will know the next major long term release of Ubuntu is about to ship in 3 days time so I thought I would do a test upgrade to make sure all was working well and there were no real show stoppers. This is a controlled environment, so won't be exactly the same as a machine that has been in use for a while, but is none the less a good initial test. If it doesn't work here, then it is definitely not going to work on a machine that has been in use for a while.

So, I installed a 9.10 i386 desktop virtual machine , using Virtualbox 3.1.6 on an Ubuntu 9.10 host. See the pictures below. This has had the Virtualbox tools installed.



I then ran a complete update on the virtual machine to make sure the machine had the latest packages before starting the upgrade.

I then ran

update-manager -d

to start the upgrade process.





Once the process had completed, which took just over an hour with a very fast internet connection, I was able to selct to remove the now obsolete packages and complete the install.





I then re-installed the Virtualbox tools, as we now have a new kernel and the system was up and running without any issues and the Virtualbox tools were working as expected, see below.



So this does leave a really good feeling for all of my machine upgrades that will be taking place after the release of the final version on Thursday.

If you are new to operating system upgrades, then I can't recommend this process enough for making sure you are confident before doing it on your work machine.

Ubuntu 10.04 Release candidate is available

Well the long awaited next release of Ubuntu Linux has now reached release candidate stage, which means baring any major issues found in the code now, this is what the final released version will be.

You can get it HERE

You can have a look at the release notes HERE

There are many new features, many of which are in the "Enterprise Cloud" area for building your own internal clouds , and enhanced virtualization support.

The desktop has seen many improvements, and is a definite step forward for desktop Linux, these include the first ever built in Music Store and cloud storage.

It is definitely worth a look.

Some issues while Checking Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 Alpha 3 in Virtualbox

I have been keeping up with the latest development builds of what will become Ubuntu 10.04 and all has been going reasonably well until the latest kernel install today. It appears that some of the code has been pack-ported from the latest upstream kernel - 2.6.33 - to the latest kernel in lucid - 2.6.32-16 - and it is causing an issue with Virtualbox.

After checking the forums, there is a kernel patch to fix this - see here

Basically, you need to edit this file -

/usr/src/vboxvideo-3.1.4/vboxvideo_drm.c

This code is installed with the Virtualbox tools that you must install before this file will be appear on the hard disk.

See the picture below:



Once you have edited this file and saved it , run the following command

sudo /etc/init.d/vboxadd setup

This will stop the problems with kernel crashes and the graphics not working correctly.

If you are also having problems with the mouse disappearing, then you need to turn off the visual affects in

Menu -> System -> Preferences -> Appearance

Set it to none, and the mouse will come back to life.

This is shaping up to be a great release, and once a few rough edges have been removed it will be an extremely useful addition to the ubuntu family.

Ubuntu 10.04 alpha 2 installs more quickly into virtualbox VM

After installing the alpha 1 version of the next release of Ubuntu, which did take a long time, the latest release , alpha 2 is as smooth as silk, and considerably quicker. The actual installation process is much the same as 9.10, and in fact most of the screens still show 9.10 as the version ;-)

After an initial quick look around the only major difference I can find is the introduction of the new video editing software - Pitivi - by default, but gimp is still present even though it has been rumoured that is was to replace it.

See below:




One nice feature, is that with this version the Virtualbox tools are auto-detected when you click to install them, and Ubuntu auto-installs them once you have given the correct password. This is a very neat touch and brings Ubuntu fully in-line with the sort of auto-magical installs that happens with Mac OSX and Windows.

The other noticeable new feature is speed, this virtual machine boots to the login prompt incredibly quickly, and as the development cycle continues I can only see this getting faster, it will be a feature. The standard use of Ext4 and the reduction in daemons started at initial boot is bound to impact this.