Downloading an ISO image, burning it, installing Ubuntu Linux and then updating all the outdated packages is a waste of time. Why don’t install directly the most updated packages by downloading them from the web?
This is the idea of the network/internet installation, netinst, netinstall, netboot or network install. Call it as you prefear. I googled for a while but I didn’t find anything useful at first glance. I found some links about “PXE” that doesn’t say anything to me. That’s why I’m writing this blog entry: to help you find what you are looking for.
If you want to install ubuntu by using a minimal ISO image, here you are. Download mini.iso from archive.ubuntu.com (netboot).
Edit 15.6.2007: Feisty Fawn netboot
I won’t write a guide on how to install ubuntu using this image. If you were looking for this you are supposed to know what you want and how to proceed.
Anyway, it’s relatively easy: just burn the ISO, boot your PC from the CD-ROM and follow the on-screen instructions for the keymap, language, partitioning etc.
At the end of the basic installation (packages are downloaded from the web) you are prompted if you want to install ubuntu-desktop, kubuntu-desktop or whatever. Just install what you need. At the end you will have your ubuntu linux box installed exactly as you wanted, but with the last versions (stable) of the packages. If you want to install directly the unstable ones, you will need to modify the download sources (urls) manually when required (I’m not sure about that, please leave a comment if you did). Good luck.
Tags:
installationminimalnetworkubuntu
December 28, 2006, Category: IT stuff
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Introduction
If you upgrade your ubuntu breezy distribution to dapper before its official release (June 1st), you may encounter some problems, as I did. In this post you can find a guide to upgrade from breezy to dapper and some fixes for the issues that affected my distribution (and possibly yours) after the upgrade process.
Warning: if you are using ubuntu linux in production environments (at work) and you don’t want to risk to lose an entire day to fix a possibly broken upgrade, I suggest to wait a couple of months (until dapper is mature enough and all the upgrade issues are fixed) before upgrading. If you can risk go on and have fun 
I was using kubuntu breezy with Firefox 1.5 and Thunderbird 1.5 installed following these guides:
I forgot to remove them before upgrading. I suggest you to get rid of them (but keep the profiles, so when you upgrade to dapper all your extensions and settings will be already there) by following the uninstall instructions (see links above), else you can do that later…
Upgrading to dapper
My old sources.list file was looking as follows:
deb http://ch.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://ch.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy main restricted universe multiverse
## Major bug fix updates produced after the final release of the
## distribution.
deb http://ch.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://ch.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy-updates main restricted universe multiverse
## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the ‘universe’
## repository.
## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu
## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to
## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in
## universe WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu security
## team.
# deb http://ch.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy universe
# deb-src http://ch.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy universe
## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the ‘backports’
## repository.
## N.B. software from this repository may not have been tested as
## extensively as that contained in the main release, although it includes
## newer versions of some applications which may provide useful features.
## Also, please note that software in backports WILL NOT receive any review
## or updates from the Ubuntu security team.
# deb http://ch.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy-backports main restricted universe multiverse
# deb-src http://ch.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy-security main restricted universe multiverse
# deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy-security universe
# deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy-security universe
## Backports
#deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://kubuntu.org/packages/kde352 breezy main
deb http://kubuntu.org/packages/koffice-15 breezy main
#deb http://kubuntu.org/packages/amarok-latest dapper main
As you can notice I was using the latest KDE version (3.5.2) from the kubuntu.org repositories. The amarok repository was commented because I tried it and it didn’t work for dependencies with dapper packages that couldn’t be installed as I was using breezy.
If you are using kubuntu, make sure that you have installed this meta package before upgrading to dapper (else kde could be removed):
- sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop
In order to upgrade to dapper I had to replace all the “breezy” occurrences in my sources.list file with “dapper”. With the “vi” editor you can do this as follows:
- sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources-breezy (backup the file just in case)
- sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list
- :1,$s/breezy/dapper/ (search “breezy” and replace with “dapper”)
- :wq (to save and quit)
My new sources.list file is looking as follows:
deb http://ch.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://ch.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper main restricted universe multiverse
## Major bug fix updates produced after the final release of the
## distribution.
deb http://ch.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://ch.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-updates main restricted universe multiverse
## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the ‘universe’
## repository.
## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu
## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to
## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in
## universe WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu security
## team.
# deb http://ch.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper universe
# deb-src http://ch.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper universe
## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the ‘backports’
## repository.
## N.B. software from this repository may not have been tested as
## extensively as that contained in the main release, although it includes
## newer versions of some applications which may provide useful features.
## Also, please note that software in backports WILL NOT receive any review
## or updates from the Ubuntu security team.
# deb http://ch.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-backports main restricted universe multiverse
# deb-src http://ch.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security main restricted universe multiverse
# deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security universe
# deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security universe
## Backports
#deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://kubuntu.org/packages/kde352 dapper main
deb http://kubuntu.org/packages/koffice-15 dapper main
deb http://kubuntu.org/packages/amarok-latest dapper main
When your sources.list is ready, you can proceed as follows:
- sudo apt-get update
- sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
After the upgrade I logged out, restarted the X Server and logged in. Kde was still 3.5.2 but it looked different, I guess because it took some default configuration values.
Firefox and Thunderbird
As dapper already contains the latest Firefox (1.5.0.3) and Thunderbird (1.5.0.2) versions I removed Firefox (1.5) and Thunderbird (1.5) that I manually installed before (see above).
Openoffice
I noticed that openoffice2 was no more there… I try to manually install it as follows:
sudo apt-get install openoffice.org2
But I got the following error: “openoffice2.org: openoffice.org2: Depends: openoffice.org (> 2.0.2) but it is not going to be installed”. Thus I asked for some support in the freenode #ubuntu+1 IRC channel and someone told me to just install the “openoffice.org” package. I did that and surprise: it worked. Do as follows:
- sudo apt-get install openoffice.org
KDE issues
Panel Menu icons not updated
The problem is that the menu icons weren’t updated. Openoffice was there but not the icons, the same problem occurred for other programs. To resolve this I had to move (I never delete, just in case) the ~/.config and the ~/.local/share/applications folders:
- mv ~/.config ~/.config.old
- mv ~/.local/share/applications ~/.local/share/applications.old
Then I logged out and logged in in order for the kde menu to be (autopmatically) recreated correctly. It worked as expected.
Konqueror opening bookmarks in new windows instead of new tabs
I don’t know why but in dapper konqueror changed its behaviour. I had to reconfigure it as follows:
Konqueror > Menu “Settings” > Configure Konqueror > Web Behaviour > Tabbed Browsing > Advanced Options > thick “Open as tab in existing Konqueror when URL is called externally”.
Quanta Plus
I have the same problem as for Konqueror. Each time I edit a file it opens a new Quanta instance instead of using a new tab in the same one. I’m actually looking for a way to solve this.
Edit 09.06.06: to solve the issue go in the KDE menu, to the Quanta Icon > click on it with the right mouse button > Edit Item > replace “quanta %U” with “quanta –unique > /dev/null 2>&1″ and uncheck the option “Enable launch feedback”.
Sound not working anymore
I had another problem. The sound. With breezy I was using the kernel image 2.6.12-10-686 and my USB headset (I have no soundcard at work) was properly working. A friend of mine told me that it’s because the udev support was introduced only from the kernel version 2.6.13. Probably breezy was designed to create the devices at the boot time and dapper is “lazy” and it expects that the kernel does that. As I had an older kernel than 2.6.13 the device wasn’t created. To see if the problem affects also your upgraded distribution, issue this command:
If you get “No such file or directory” you may need to install a newer kernel image, as follows:
- apt-cache search linux-image (to see which versions are available)
When I wrote this post the newer linux image was the 2.6.15-23, thus, as my computer had a 686 compatible processor, I installed the following:
- sudo apt-get install linux-image-2.6.15-23-686
Conclusions
To summarize I was using kubuntu breezy with the latest kde (3.5.2) repositories from kubuntu.org, I had Firefox 1.5 and Thunderbird 1.5 manually installed (because breezy had older versions). After upgrading to dapper Openoffice was gone, the kde menu icons where not updated and the sound was not working anymore. I fixed these issues as I described in this post. I hope it may help other people that can’t wait till the official dapper release on June 1st Good luck.
For more (official) documentation, take a look at https://wiki.kubuntu.org/Testing/UpgradePaths
Take a look also at the Ubuntu Dapper Drake 6.06 Guide (it’s really a very well done guide to help you to satisfy all your needs).
A special thanks to the people that helped me in the IRC channels #ubuntu, #ubuntu+1 and #kubuntu on freenode.
Tags:
dapperubuntuupgrade
May 23, 2006, Category: IT stuff
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