The initial plan was to do a complete install from CD. But since Brasero didn’t like burning CDs (today), that plan went out the window – for the moment. Instead I went for an upgrade.
Downloading
According to the meter the download would take approximately four hours! I’ve read that upgrading from Vista to W7 could take a whooping 12-14 hours, so four hours didn’t seem so bad. The meter also went down to 1-2 hours, but at the same time; it also went up to 13-14 hours.
After watching the speed not actually going up, I decided to stop the download and look at ways to speed up the download. I found this site: http://www.ubuntugeek.com/select-fastest-mirror-for-your-ubuntu-9-10-karmic-upgrade.html
The change did seem to have some impact. The download time went from four hours to 35 minutes.
While doing this, I decided to use a XP-machine I have running to burn the ISO. So I copied the ISO the computer and burned it. The image was burned to the same CD that Brasero had rejected. From this I can come to one quick conclusion: Brasero is one buggy software!
Installing
Download was much faster after changing repository and the install started. This took about two hours.
The best way to make the installing quickly is to babysit the upgrade. Especially if you have done some adjustments to default configurations; in my situation it means keeping the mysql-configuration file. This in turn gave me some problems when I was to start up the server after the upgrade, more on that in just a moment.
Other than following the last steps of the upgrade, the installation of new files seemed to go OK. But I was oh so wrong.
Problems
The first problem I got was starting up the mysql-server. The log was filled with messages that could seem like the apparmor was the root of the problem. And the suggestions in Launchpad was to insert a line in the apparmor configuration file. This didn’t solve the problem. In my case the solution was to remark a line related to Berkley database in my.cnf file. (Status: Fixed!)
The next problem that I experienced was that OpenOffice wasn’t upgraded or installed. There wasn’t any open office at all, very odd as it used to be there prior to the upgrade. So I installed that one again. The install cannot have been quite perfect as I am now stuck with Java/non system open and save windows. This annoys me. (Status: Fixed)
Then I was to move more music to my iPod and so I opened up Banshee. But Banshee couldn’t find the iPod. So that was a no go. I installed Rhythmbox, but I have not installed music yet, nor downloaded the latest Podcasts. (Not fixed, but is reported here, here and here.
It is now a bit scary – and annoying – that this bug actually is more than a year old.
The 9.10 experience
Normally I would keep the default background and the theme, but this time the developers and the graphical staff connected to Canonical has done a great job with background images and other themes. So for the first time in my Ubuntu / Gnome history, I changed the background and the theme. And I was pleased with the result – even though if it became even more gray and brown.
I also felt that the picture was sharper and that it was easier to read on webpages.
Summary
Doing a clean install would and will be faster, and I have seen that the upgrade does not take into account where username and buttons should be. This is one of the reasons why I like doing clean – or semi-clean installs. When I write semi-clean installs, this means that I keep the Home partition and erases everything else. It is a reason why I do this:
I have a bunch of emails I – until I save them and back them up – need to keep.
The laptop is running an apache webserver and all websites are on the home partition
The mySQL-databases are also moved to the home partition
Due to the troubles with Banshee and OpenOffice I am – while writing this – considering to do a semi-clean install to fix the problems with the before mentioned applications. If I can’t solve them during the evening, the CD will be inserted and a semi-clean install will take place.
So: follow this space.
On the other hand, this is not a long time support release, so I can live with doing this kind of upgrade now.
Disclaimer: The upgrade was done on the same day as 9.10 was released, which most likely effects download time.
