Updating Ubuntu

Earlier in the week I got around to updating the desktop to the new release of (K)Ubuntu 14.04 - I run the version using the KDE desktop - though I have lots of the ordinary Ubuntu packages installed too. Around 50 mins from the projected end of update the machine locked up - I was doing various other things at the time on it which may have contributed to this. No response to anything from mouse/keyboard - the sysrq magic keys had no effect either, but I was running an ssh server on the dekstop so I logged in remotely and rebooted.
When it came up again the boot screen appeared to think it was running 14.04 (rather than the previous 13.10) however at the login screen neither keyboard nor mouse got any reaction (and the ssh server wasn't running the machine hadn't registered with the router). I tried re-booting a couple of times with no effect.
I then broke into GRUB (at boot - press down the shift key) and booted the minimal 13.10 install (still there!) and ran the dkpg fix option (I previously tried minimal with 14.04 which again failed) which ran to completion. A reboot then gave me a working system!
Looking at the upgrade log file the last lines of /var/log/dist-upgrade/term.log read as follows:

Setting up openssh-server (1:6.6p1-2ubuntu2) ...
Installing new version of config file /etc/init/ssh.conf ...
Installing new version of config file /etc/pam.d/sshd ...
ssh stop/waiting
ssh start/running, proce

Yes it stops there! I had it down as a problem with the NVIDIA graphics driver, this might suggest something else - I wasn't connected via ssh when I was running the upgrade so it wasn't a a case of the connection dying. Still puzzled but putting this here in case it helps anyone else.
The other problem I found (so far!) is that Ctrl-Space doesn't appear to do anything - I use this key combo a lot - in Emacs. So it was a bit painful, a websearch reveled that ibus was the problem so I ran ibus-setup and stopped that grabbing Ctrl-Space for 'next input method' and assigned it to a different key.
So far everything else appears to work...

The Oneiric Ocelot upgrade

The latest version of ubuntu was released last week and over the weekend I decided to try upgrading - this desktop was running the ealier version which had already been installed a few weeks, so I thought it would be pretty smooth as I hadn't had too much excuse for tweaking this machine! I think things are now running ok so let me highlight the issues I had:

• The upgrade of samba crashed - it gave a few error messages but didn't stop the overall upgrade - and I've reported bug 875172
• On completion of the upgrade I rebooted all went smoothly but I found that there was no sound - I deleted my .pulse directory adn logged in again and sound was now fixed.
• I use vm from within emacs for my email but occasionally use kmail in the case of graphic/link heavy emails - on Sunday I read a review of email clients in Linux Format magazine which gave kmail a resounding last place so I was thinking about migrating..but to that point I hadn't yet run kmail in the upgraded ubuntu. I tried running kmail and was confronted with a migration dialog - the new kmail uses a different email backend for storing data. Alas the migration failed... so I then started web searching! The problem was that akonadi was failing to start so I couldn't even view kmail with no unmigrated emails! To start akonadi I tried a manual

  akonadictl start

  but that still failed, I did a lot of searching, thought about moving to thunderbird - but there's no easy migration of data there.. and eventually I spotted this bug report which gave this recipe:

  sudo aa-complain mysqld
  sudo aa-complain mysqld-akonadi
  sudo /etc/init.d/apparmor reload
  akonadictl start

  I've not messed around with apparmor before so I wasn't clear as to what it did but I went on trust and the last command started akonadi ok. I started kmail and it ran! but with no data, I shut it down and tried the advertised command

  kmail-migrator --interactive

  But that complains the migration has already been done! You need to read the instructions here:

  If you have already attempted to run the migrator and it failed, you can re-run it manually by first deleting your
  ~/.kde/share/config/kmail-migratorrc file and your
  ~/.kde/share/config/kmail2rc file.
  Then you will need to run the migrator manually by hitting Alt-F2, and entering the following:
  kmail-migrator --interactive
  The program will run, and all your accounts and mails will be moved over to the Akonadi system.

  And following that kmail now runs ok. I hope the collection of the above instructions in one place helps anyone else struggling with the same problem - I don't know whether it's a general problem or just due to the previous configuration of the machine. For comparison,here are my experiences with the upgrade of the previous ubuntu release. One machine upgraded, 2 more to go!

Ubuntu - natty narwhal and plasma

Back in this post, I wrote:

kde/plasma did look very nice before the upgrade but at the moment whenever I run it from login the system locks up and I have to reboot - this is before I can interact with the GUI - I've looked through the system logs and as yet have not spotted the problem. When I find a resolution - I'll update this post.

I've eventually got around to researching this, hand editing the startup file ~/.kde/share/config/ksmserverrc and gradually removing startup applications - that previous blog entry led me to suspect some of the terms I was launching - I removed those and it still locked, eventually I removed emacs and I could get in, if I ran emacs with no startup file (-Q) it locked up, having also spotted a

NVRM: Xid (0000:07:00): 13, 0001 00000000 00005097 000015e0 00000000 00000100

message in the logs just before the crash, I googled the NVRM: Xid bit and found this bug, which gives the solution to update the nvidia drivers, rather than the ones mentioned there, I went for not being quite so bleeding edge and installed the ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates ppa, restarted the system and I'm now happily running in the kde/plasma desktop environment!

Ubuntu - natty narwhal

Around a week ago the latest release of Ubuntu - Natty Narwhal was released, the upgrade of Beth's desktop went pretty smoothly and so I decided to upgrade this laptop. Laptops are often a little more problematic and I had lots of extra stuff installed so I knew it wasn't going to go as smoothly!
But here I am now running the new release with the new Unity desktop:

This is a work in progress I've found a number of issues and as I resolve them I'll put the solutions (which worked for me!) here:

• Initially I had problems with being unable to start the upgrade with an error message about held packages - I'd been running beta versions of some applications so I needed to remove the ppa's for dontzap and kubuntu-ppa/beta before it would start. The upgrade then ran smoothly - probably around 4 hours - though I was out for some of that time so it was sitting there waiting for me to reply when I returned!
  
• On reboot I spotted the first issue - the boot menu appears to think I'm running a Xen(virtual) kernel which is selected as the default boot - if I run this the kernel soon panics! Looks similar to this bug report but that claims to have been fixed well before release. (Later: I've reported this as bug 779029)
  
• When I tried the proper non-Xen kernel it booted fine, I use the kubuntu version of the distribution but first tried logging in using the new Unity desktop. Unfortunately I was then told that the hardware was unsuitable for running Unity and it would run the Gnome interface. Puzzling as this is a fairly good spec laptop. On checking I found that the machine claims that the closed-source nvidia drivers were installed but not in use! I tried uninstalling the drivers and reinstalling which didn't help. Just by chance I looked at the package manager for the unity desktop - I was looking for a diagnostic tool and found that unity wasn't installed! I don't know if it was quietly uninstalled when it thought the hardware wasn't good enough or if it is an upgrade issue. I installed some unity packages and as you see from the screenshot Unity runs fine. I started my Linux experience with WindowMaker and so the dock looked pretty familiar to me! I recommend the help menu to navigate around the new experience there looks to lots of good information on setting up things to your choice - a sample. You'll see from my screenshot that the background repeats - I'm using twin view with the screen split across two monitors and unity can't (or I've not found out how) to persuade it to stretch the background - but then gnome had the same issue before the upgrade. (Later: the system still claims the nvidia driver is installed but not in use - however it clearly is in use!)
  
• fluxbox - my usual minimalist interface was having problems before the upgrade - I assume with the nvidia driver and this is still an issue - I get shadows on the screen and windows occasionally need a forced refresh.
  
• kde/plasma did look very nice before the upgrade but at the moment whenever I run it from login the system locks up and I have to reboot - this is before I can interact with the GUI - I've looked through the system logs and as yet have not spotted the problem. When I find a resolution - I'll update this post. Some websearching reveals this bug I don't get as far as interacting with a terminal but I have graphics effects enabled and various terms start automatically when I login - maybe some hand editing of the config files is called for?

There's some fairly hard-core geekery in the above - thanks for sticking with the description to the end!

Later - Aug 2011 two comments on the above:

• I've now solved the kde/plasma locking the system up problem, see this blog update.
• I've also discovered which of the unity background image options allows you to stretch the background across two monitors - and hugin makes the production of panoramas easy - with another blog update!

fluxbox and ubuntu screen size issues?

kdeapp-menus
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

I use fluxbox and on both my ubuntu installations it appears that there is a problem with that window manager - when I try to maximize a window it expands to cover just the lower half of the screen. In addition some applications (those using Qt) popup menus in unexpected places! If you look at the screen shot of amarok - I've just clicked on Settings but the menu appears half way down the window - at the place where maximise thinks is the top of the physical screen. If I 'maximize' the application - or move the window down to that point - then the popup menu appears at the correct point. Is anyone else using fluxbox with ubuntu - are you also seeing this issue?
I also use fluxbox with the mandriva Linux distribution and there maximise etc works correctly, so either they#ve applied a fix to fluxbox or something at a lower level is not signalling screen size correctly.

Manchester goes Karmic

Watch the netbook!
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

I was at the Manchester Ubuntu Karmic release party last night at the Pitcher and piano. Not as focussed as the Jaunty do earlier in the year. A good get together though! I'd upgraded my work laptop earlier in the day - just so it was ready for the evening, went slowly but smoothly - the only issues I have is I seem to be constrained to use kdm as a login manager - before the upgrade I was using gdm

sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm

doesn't seem to do it. I shall have to try fiddling around in /etc/X11. (Later - ah this is gdm,it just looks rather different and at the monent has no, well not many, options on configuration).
Before the upgrade I was using firefox 3.5 which wasn't the 'official' version, post upgrade, 3.5 is official but the browser has my bookmarks/saved tabs and passwords from 3.0 and the ones from before are nowhere to be seen! A colleague has expereinced issues with an identical ASUS laptop and the nividia driver for the G9650M GT graphics card. It seemed to be ok for me but once I started something kde related, I too, got graphical artifacts (junk!) all over the screen. Known bug with the latest nvidia driver and that card (happens on both Linux and Windows) and they don't appear to be in a hurry to fix it. I shall try keeping away from kde and see what happens! My other photo from the evening is here.

Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty

Went to the Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope party at the BBC in Manchester.
We had some debate as to whether the cake was going to have 9.04 candles (picture in this flickr tag set)
I had a bizarre experience trying to run Jaunty on the laptop during the evening. Tony had a bootable USB stick with Jaunty which he had just demonstrated. I tried it on mine, it got to the Ubuntu splash screen and just sat there never getting to the booting progress bar, lots of flashing the wireless and disk lights but no reading of the USB at all (except initially). Eventually I got some cryptic error message (sorry can't remember!) tried a couple of things but then tried again and got the same issue. I then tried the Jaunty cd they had around and that wouldn't boot either!?
I then tried booting off the hard disk (Ubuntu Intrepid) and that also failed with some weird gdm error - I use this version on a daily basis, so it normally works. Laptop battery then died (it is not lasting well) so when I found a mains socket I think I then tried a Jaunty DVD which someone else had used which didn't work either, then I managed to boot my hard disk Ubuntu - much to my relief! - tried again with the USB and the same failure, refusing to read the USB stick.
On the way home on the train the cd which didn't work at the BBC put me into Ubuntu Jaunty with no problems - bizarre - I'll blame too many laptops too much wireless network or something!
Jaunty has a very impressive review here and I will be installing it on the laptop - but not that one - I hope a new machine will be delivered early next week!

Ibexed!

Following, a bit back, reflections on an upgrade to Ubuntu's Hardy Heron, here are a few things I found when upgrading the work laptop to Intrepid Ibex:

• I only had around 1 gig free on the / partition, started the upgrade and it stopped, complaining it needed around 1.3 gig. Not a great problem I thought and cleared the required disk space
• It then decided that it really needed 2.1gig(!), this required some more thought and I decided to move /var to a new partition (fortunately I had one I'd used for /var on an old Debian install). Having noted that I needed to keep some of /var on / (/var/run and /var/lock), I copied over the /var area - set the new mount point and rebooted - forgetting to free the disk space so a certain amount of back tracking was in order!
• The upgrade process was then happy, though having given /var 2gig I was a little concerned when after the downloads there was around 30meg free - during the actual upgrade that shrank until it claimed there was no space left there - fortunately the upgrade proceeded!
• Got to the reboot and I waited the upgrade window closed, and I waited.. eventually - cautiously, I kicked off the reboot manually - my guess is that if I'd been running gnome rather than fluxbox, I'd have seen something?
• On the reboot X complained that the ATI graphics drivers weren't working - rather to be expected -installed the ubuntu ones and I now have xinerama working again.
• Initially amarok failed to run complaining about the absence of the xine drivers but after running banshee (the gnome music player) I think it may now be working well.
• ..Looks good so far!

and another Ubuntu upgrade oddity!

Following on from this collection, I've just noticed this

$ iwlist eth1 scanning
eth1 No scan results
$ ifconfig eth1
eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1a:73:28:ec:d6
inet addr:192.168.1.9 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0

so I'm connected wirelessly through eth1 (I am honestly!) but it can't see any wireless access points. Pardon!?
PS - all explained now - you need sudo iwlist eth1 scanning
they've tightened up permissions on scanning for wireless connections. Not too surprising when you think about it.