Upgrading from Hardy to Jaunty : suggestions

Hardy is an LTS release which means Long Term Support and that means it gets all the bug-fixes and everything first before Jaunty. Also Hardy is the 'stable' release and this means it's the one that corporate business users and many others will be sticking with until the next LTS release in 2010. The LTS support for 8.04 lasts until 2011 giving people plenty of time to switch over. Many people would consider moving to Ubuntu's 9.04 (Jaunty) a down-grade because 9.04 doesn't have this high level of support, although each release does get about 18months support, leaving Jaunty with about 1 years support left.

Testing an upgrade by setting up a dual-boot (or adding one to an existing multi-boot) seems a very sensible way forwards. Ubuntu needs about 15Gb to feel comfortable and can use the same swap-partition that's already on your drive. Also it can read the data that is already on your main Ubuntu partition. I think this would be an excellent way forwards. You could even take Kosmic Koala out for a test-drive this way :) Amongst distro-hoppers it's quite normal to have 1 stable OS and then one or 2 partitions to try out other versions of linux on, often the stable one is Ubuntu 8.04 :)

Here are some instructions on setting up a dual-boot with Windows but a lot of it is about the same making a dual-boot with another version of linux too.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsDualBoot

We could help suggest one way to partition your drive to help make that part easier. Just let us know the result of

sudo fdisk -l

note the "-l" is a lower-case "-L", also it would be handy to know what the size of your current partitions are as quoted by gparted (Gb & Mb makes a lot more sense than number of cylinders ;) )

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Dear Tom,
thanks for the exhaustive reply.
this is the infomation which you want: the result of fdisk -l:

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xe98a535b

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 5 40131 de Dell Utility
/dev/sda2 * 6 397 3145728 83 Linux
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda3 398 2327 15502725 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 2328 14593 98526645 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 14469 14593 1004031 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 2328 13969 93514302 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 13970 14468 4008186 82 Linux swap / Solaris

as per gparted sda6 is ext 3 89.18 MB, used 31.42 MB,
sda 5 & 7 linux swap 3.82 MB & 980.50 MB
all of the above under sda 4
sda 3 ext 3 14.78 GB used 284.65 MB
sda2 ext 3.00 gb, 92.8 mb used
sda1 fat 16 39.19 mb, 8.68 mb used
there is unallocated 2.94 mb
the reason for so many partitions is that i had reinstalled hardy and also tried out dual booting with win xp which could not be installed successfully.

I plan to try Dell's factory recovery DVD iso forinstalling 9.04.
thanks,
regards
Kartik

Don't worry, such things happen. We could probably try to tidy it up here and now? Could you let us know how much ram you have so we could sort your swap partitions out better?

Ahh great. So you've booted up into the Ubuntu that you normally use for most things? In that case can you use the "Places" menu to find the different partitons such as sda3 which is probably called something helpful like "12.9 GB Media" and see if there's anything in there you want to keep - if there is then please drag it into your Documents folder somewhere ;) The same for sda2 ("2.5 GB Media"?) It looks as though the much larger sda6 is your main Ubuntu that you really use assuming you muddled up Mb when you meant to say Gb?

In gparted sda6 is the really large partition right? I think the order on the disk is

sda1, sda2, sda3, sda4, sda6, sda7, sda5

so it's not really as messed up as one might initially think :) The partitions are always numbered chronologically rather than by position so you can imagine that some people have very strange numbering :) Yours is fine :)

Also sda4 is like a bucket containing all of sda5 to sda7. Hard-drives can only have 4 Primary partitions (Thanks to microsquish. Other types do exist but Windows can't cope with them). However, it was realised that more could be useful so a special type of partition was made & called "Extended Partition" and this can contain quite a few other partitions but they have to be "Logical Partitions" rather than "Primary" ones. On most top-end hardware there's no discernible performance difference but with some machines it's better to keep OS and swap spaces in Primary Partitions for a slight boost in performance.

Ok, so i am just 'waiting' to hear if sda6 is really large or very tiny and also to hear the results of

free -m

Thanks and regards from
Tom :)

Hi!
These are the details you want to know:
1. RAM : 3 GB
2. sda 6 is 89.18 GB ( sorry my mistake while typing), the order of the partitions are as you have mentioned.
3. I am getting a 3.2 and a 15.9 GB media under places which are showing a folder called lost & found which cannot be opened: the following message comess: The folder contents could not be displayed., you do not have the permissions necessary to view the contents of "lost+found".
4. the result of free -m:
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3033 766 2267 0 24 354
-/+ buffers/cache: 387 2646
Swap: 3914 0 3914
 Thanks and regards
Kartik

Ooops, sorry. After saying i was 'waiting' of course i got distracted by other questions and stuff ;) Thanks for your answers there.

1. That's quite a lot :) You need a swap partition of just over 3Gb, lets say 3.5Gb
2. No problem. That's all good :)
3. Also no problem. I think Lost&found is the wastebin so we can leave that.
4. Oops sorry yes that shows us what you said in Q1 already ;)

Ok, i have got a plan. I think that deleting all the partitions except sda1 & sda6 (& sda4 of course) would nicely de-clutter your drive and leave you with space to do quite a bit.

In gparted you might need to right-click and then choose "Swap Off" or "umount" before it will let you delete a partition. Hopefully it wont let you delete sda6 nor sda4 anyway but it's also well worth keeping sda1. All the rest can go though :) Remember to click on "Apply" to action th deletes ;)

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

i deleted the partitions sda2 & 3, sda 5 i found was an inactive swap partition which was already off and could not be deleted as there were other partitions of higher numbers. I dont know if i can format it to ext 3. Now I have 17.79 MB of unalloted space.
regards
Kartik

Hi :)

The bulk of the unallocated space is all together isn't it? With Gparted you can create a single Primary ext3 partition there. When you use gparted to create a partition it's good to make sure the tick-box "Round to cylinders?" is ticked.

Then install Jaunty (9.04) to that using "Manual Partitioning" when you get to that stage of the installer. just edit the new sda2 to set it's "Mount Point" to "/" which is the beginning of the linux folder structure

Good luck with this!
Regards from
Tom :)

Hi!
Have created the new partition sda 2, am presently downloading iso for 9.04.
will keep you updated once i am through!
thanks a lot once again and regards
Kartik

Hi :)

Note that any Ubuntu cd can be booted as a LiveCd so that while installing you can still pop into here through firefox on the top taskbar. To do so simply put the Ubuntu Cd in the cd/dvd-drive and reboot the machine. It should get you to a menu with "Try Ubuntu without changes to this machine", if it doesn't then this guide might help
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootFromCD
Choosing the "Try Ubuntu ..." should get you to a working desktop which we call a "LiveCd session", if it works. Firefox on the top taskbar and the installer icon at the top right of the desktop are probably the most useful parts of this right now but also gparted is quite handy sometimes :)

I have been thinking that while a normal install might be good to just finish quickly and use there is an opportunity to make something a little more advanced but a lot more robust. Now that you are used to partitioning it would be quite easy really :)

For a separate /home partition delete sda2 and set up the following

sda1 unchanged
sda2 5Gb Primary ext3 for /
sda3 10Gb(ish) Primary ext3 for /home
all the rest unchanged

then when you get to the "Manual Partitioning" section, the bottom of the 3 options, then just as before except edit sda3 to set it's "Mount Point" to "/home". Then make sure it's only sda2 & sda3 and the swap that get formatted.

Good luck with whichever way you go with this!
Regards from
Tom :)

Hi! Tom,
I finally installed Jaunty following your steps. The transition was smooth and most of the problems which I had with Hardy: wifi, multimedia video and audio were sorted out.
It took a couple of hours to get going (like installing medibuntu repository for multimedia, making wifi work), and finally I had a' functional' OS.
Probably my previous experience with Hardy has helped. I realised that an Internet connection is an must for ubuntu. Overall I have found the experience with Jaunty better than Hardy. I plan to gradually switch over to Jaunty, try out all the applications ther.
One more thing: shall I persist with Hardy or remove it?
Thanks and regards
Kartik

An internet connection does seem fairly crucial for installing Ubuntu and for each of the major 6 monthly upgrades although there are ways around that once you've learned your way around. The package updates and even installing new programs tends to be quite light on downloads and can be done through other machines via a usb-stick or multi-session cd or something.

2nd time lucky is impressive. I had several bad efforts with Mandriva, then a couple of tries with Kubuntu before i had success with Wolvix and Ubuntu. Mandriva gave me too many choices and i chose to have everything which set me up as a server and confused everyone else on the network. The network admin wasn't happy with me & i managed to do the same thing a couple more times, lol. I really hate blue and radically re-theming & endlessly tweaking Kubuntu finally managed to break it. Wolvix is very easy and gentle on the eye and i like Ubuntu's earthy tones so both have been good.

Normally i would advise keeping a 2nd OS on a system, it's always good to have a backup option and it's good to have something to tinker around with without potentially breaking your entire system. At the moment it's kinda dominating your system and seems to be suffering from one of the ways Windows tries to stack the deck against it's competition.

So i would boot into Jaunty, use the "Places" menu to get into sda6 (which Places probably 'helpfully' lists as "83.5 GB Media") and then navigate to the /home/username/Documents folder to copy all your data to your new Documents folder listed in the "Places" menu. Same for Music, Video, Pictures, Desktop - really dig around in that /home/username folder and even go back up to /home to check there's no other users in there. Then it would be a good plan to tidy up sda7, sda6, sda5 & sda4. Let me know when you've got your data safely onto sda3 and i could guide you through this last part?

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

hey guys
i tried to dual boot(hardy-jaunty) like the OP but instead of installing the lpia built i installed the i386 built in my laptop now i found the lpia and i want to swap how do i do that?

Hi :)

Please re-post this as a new question to give more people a chance to answer
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+addquestion

Good luck & regards from
Tom :)

Hi! Tom
Sorry for the delay in reply to your last message.
I was busy professionally.
I was busy acquainting myself with Jaunty, now I am quite comfortable with it.
I have found that newer releases of Ubuntu are better than the older ones(LTS or otherwise), it is better to upgrade.
Regarding shifting my files into sda3, i found that my sda 3 has only 17 GB, while my data from the other 83 GB media is about 22 GB.
However I have taken a back of my data etc in external hard drive.
Is there a way to remove or downsize Hardy and increase my home folder?
regards
Kartik

Hi Kartik :)

That sounds like a good reason for delay. i hope it was all successful :) Please can you tell us the sizes of your partitions and/or give us the output of

sudo fdisk -l

again? Remember the " -l" is a lower-case " -L" Hopefully it should be fairly easy to resize the partition that is your /home partition but it sounds like things have changed round a bit so it makes sense to see the specifics of what is required.

Thanks and regards from
Tom :)

Hi! Tom,
the results of fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xe98a535b

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 5 40131 de Dell Utility
/dev/sda2 * 6 655 5221125 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 656 2327 13430340 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 2328 14593 98526645 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 14469 14593 1004031 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 2328 13969 93514302 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 13970 14468 4008186 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Also the results of gparted

sda1 fat 16 39.19 mb, 8.68 mb used, Dell Utility
sda2 ext 3 4.98 gb 4.12 used, boot
sda3 home 12.81 gb, 10.66 used, home
sd4 extended
sda5 swap 980.5 mb
sda6 ext 3 89.18 gb used 25.63 gb
sda 7 swap 3.82 gb

I have backed up my stuff in sda 6

regards
Kartik

HI

If all the sda6's /home is copied to external drive then boot into the Ubuntu 9.04 that is set-up right on your hard drive. Then go into Synaptic Package Manager, from the top taskbar/panel

System - Administration - Synaptic

In the "File" menu in Synaptic choose "Save Markings As ... " and remember to tick the box at the bottom labelled "Save full state, not only changes", give this file a good name such as "list of programs in ubuntu" and copy the file into the /home folder that is on your external hard-drive.

When you have done that then reboot into a LiveCd session
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD
and in that go up to the top taskbar/panel and in gparted right-click on sda7 to do "Swap Off", then on sda6 to do "umount" and sda5 to do "Swap Off". Then you should be able to delete sda7, sda6 & sda5. Click on the "Apply" button. It wont allow you to delete sda4 until you have deleted those higher numbers. Once sda4 has also been deleted then it should allow you to resize sda3, remember to "umount" sda3 before resizing it to almost fill the drive. Also remember to leave at least 3Gb at the end of the drive.

I would recommend leaving about 20Gb of space at the end of the drive. You will need just over 3Gb for a linux-swap as a Logical Partition inside an Extended Partition Partition but i would also recommend making the Extended Partition about 20Gb so that you can also fit another Logical Partition inside that Extended one and make this 16Gb (approx) partition into another ext3 or fat32 or something. This extra partition would be great to have so that you can install and play around or experiment with different versions of linux (or even just slightly different installs of Ubuntu) without disturbing your main stable version that is on sda2.

Good luck with al this!
Feel free to ask about detail or about specific steps in there.
Regards from
Tom :)

HI again

So the partitions in my plan would end up a bit like this

sda1 No change
sda2 No change
sda3 A lot bigger
sda4 an all new Extended Partition
(deleting and re-creating is quicker & easier than resizing or moving)
 . sda5 Logical Partition 3.5Gb linux-swap
 . sda6 Logical Partition 16.5Gb (perhaps a bit less) ext3

Note that when copying the contents of /home back from the external drive it would probably be better to just copy the contents of the
/home/username/Documents
/home/username/Music
folders and leave all the folders that start with a ".", such as
/home/username/.config

Then try booting back into the hard-drive's Ubuntu 9.04 and see how it looks. If it's all completely wrong settings then let me know and i can help fix it from there - although i'm sure you've probably guessed how ;)

If some programs are missing at that point then they should be fairly easy to bring back through using the file we made earlier in Synaptic :)

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

HI! Tom,
thanks for your guidance.
this is the result of fdisk -l now
Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xe98a535b

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 5 40131 de Dell Utility
/dev/sda2 * 6 655 5221125 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 656 10885 82172475 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 10886 14593 29784510 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 10886 11278 3156741 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 11279 14593 26627706 83 Linux

I have now kept about 25 Gb free (for trying out Karmic Kaola!!)

Once again thanks, I have learnt a lot from this exercise including the benefits of a live cd.
Did not realise that live cd has so many uses.
Finally the fear of trying out 'new' is now removed and I have got a way of trying out newer releases of Ubuntu now.
It is thanks to people like you that Ubuntu community is consolidating and growing everyday.

regards
Kartik

Brilliant, nicely done :)))
Yes, that's one of the big hurdles for people - fear of the unknown. In Windows world playing around and testing things out often leads to disaster but linux is made to explore and tweak. Linux offers freedom of choice where Windows demands freedom from choice. Both are valid stances tho.

If sda6 is 25Gb then you have far more space than you need for almost any distro. Ubuntu is famous for being one of the heaviest around and without having a separate /home needs 15Gb - assuming your data is going to take up a fairly small space. With a separate /home partition it only needs about 4Gb really but i would feel more comfortable giving it a fair bit more.

Anyway, the point is that if you play around with different distros and find another one that you also like then you have plenty of space to shrink sda6 to install it properly and use the same /home partition as your current Ubuntu 9.04. Then you would still have plenty of space for an sda7 for further experimenting ;)))

People often say that if you have 2 or more distros sharing the same /home partition then it's a good idea to use a different username for each to keep the desktop setting and effects separate in order to get the most benefit from the differences between the distros. Of course you could then login to both users from either distro and see just how messy the other ones settings make whichever you are in :) Does that make any sense? When i wrote it there was no problem but re-reading it i can see a lot of confusion.

There's a cautionary tail about distro hopping tho
http://forums.wolvix.org/index.php/topic,1040.msg4956.html#msg4956
and a good place to look up different distros ...
http://distrowatch.com/

Many thanks, good luck and regards from
Tom :)

PS Oh and welcome in to linux-land, especially the Ubuntu corner of it :))

Hi! Tom
Yes sda6 is about 25 gb. I have kept plenty of room for experimentation! As of now , I am quite satisfied with Ubuntu.
However, seeing your links, my curiosity has been kindled for trying out other distros.
Probably will try them some time (esp volwix) when I am relatively free.I will come back to your comments when I am in that stage, and will follow them.
Once again thanks a lot,
regards
Kartik

You are welcome, it's been fun and it's good to see you have a good and flexible system now :))

Some of the smaller distros, such as Wolvix, really start to show their main advantage when running Windows apps in linux using Wine. Particularly noticeable is how much faster Windows games run - frame-rates jumping from 10 or 20fps to 60fps and stuff like that! I would guess that virtual-machines in VirtualBox are also a lot faster in smaller distros but my only experience is 1 days/worth of running a vm in Ubuntu and it needed to be in Ubuntu for the task.

Running a vm such that i could boot it up using an iso image without having made a the iso into a Cd was good but wasn't really like the real thing. Close tho :)

The main thing is to get one OS working reliably and then to play around tweaking the other OSs when you have time and are in the mood for it.

Good luck, welcome in and regards from
Tom :)

Hi! Tom,
An update if you are still subscribed to this.
I did a fresh install of Karmic now using your previous guidelines.
Reformatted / and /home partitions to ext4. (after saving the contents of my previous home folder & the list of programmes into an external hard drive).
Got my laptop running on booting up and after loading my software and contents of the home folder it has all the settings and appearance of jaunty preserved!
Overall the feel and performance of Karmic is great, it is worth the upgrade.
regards and thanks once again,
Kartik

Hi :)

Glad to hear you migrated up to Karmic Koala using the same guidelines i gave for Jaunty Jackalope :) Congrats :)

Now i usually suggest that people try a LiveCd version before doing any install or upgrade. This usually makes sure that the Cd itself works but also makes sure the hardware doesn't have unexpected issues that will need sorting out quickly after the full install.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD
Some multimedia wont work on a live Cd session but it usually does give a good indication of whether you really want to proceed.

The next release of Ubuntu is due to be the 10.06 which is another LTS release due in 2010, June of course (hence the version number). I am hoping that a few people make this upgrade & then stick with that for a few years. I was also surprised that i suggested reformatting the /home partition but perhaps that was just to get it up to ext4 from some earlier version of ext. Now that it's on ext4 there should never be any need to reformat it again. The / partition can be reinstalled onto without needing to reformat anything but during the reinstall you will need to remind it that you do want to use your existing /home as your /home in the future.

Hopefully that should all be a lot easier now you have done the trickiest upgrade! :)
Thanks, good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Hi :)

Have you been able to test the new Ubuntu 10.04 before it gets officially released?
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/testing/lucid/beta1
If download connection speed is still a problem then i wouldn't bother until a week or so after the end of April release date & even then i would recommend using the shipit service to get an official cd delivered for free
https://shipit.ubuntu.com/
If you have friends, family or colleagues that might be interested in trying Ubuntu then it might be worth ordering a few more Cds rather than just 1 for yourself. Of course the Cds can be used many times but it's a good plan to make sure you always have 1 cd within fairly easy reach of your machine just in case.

Trying it as a LiveCd or as an extra dual/multi-boot would be ideal. Developers and everyone are keen to try to iron out any problems before 10.04 gets officially released so you might find faster & more effective answers to your bug reports which would make 10.04 work better on your system for you

Thanks and regards from
Tom :)

Hi! Tom,
I started trying Ubuntu 10.04 in its alpha release itself and is going on smoothly without any problems. I am dual booting it with 9.10, and sometime later propose to replace 9.10. At present I have installed 9.10 in a different partition from /home and 10.04 in a single partition.Is it possible to assign the same /home partition to 10.04 which belonged to 9.10 and retain the current 10.04 partition as /. In this way i can simply delete my 9.10 partition once I am comfortable with 10.04.
regards
Kartik

Hi :)

Yes, of course. If you use 9.10 and 10.04 as a dual-boot you can share the same swap partition & /home partition but it is a good plan to use a different username for each of the 2 versions otherwise it can get very confusing for the machine.

Given the excellent way you are testing it at the moment you have a lot of choices.

You might want to copy the contents of the alpha's /home into the right place in the main /home partition in order to get the right config files in the right place and also to get all your data back in the right place too. This guide might give you some ideas but don't follow it tooo closely as you don't want to lose your old data.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Partitioning/Home/Moving#Copy%20/home%20to%20the%20New%20Partition

To keep both current installs so that you could check your new 10.04 against the alpha you could create a new 5Gb partition and install to the using the "Manual" or "Advanced" partitioning option in the installer. Then just edit the new 5Gb partition so that it's "Mount Point" = / and edit your /home's "Mount Point" to /home. Then you can reboot back into the alpha, go into

Synaptic - File - "Save markings as..." - "Save full listing not just changes"

to get a text-file that the new install of 10.04's Synaptic can read and install all the same programs that you had on the alpha.

Err i am sure you can find a smarter way that suits your machine better lol
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)