Good news for Wubi users - Natty Narwhal 11.04 is out and it is probably the safest Wubi install for some time, mainly due to all the grub2 fixes that came out recently.
There's one gotcha that was missed during development and this is that Wubi, when run standalone, will still give you the choice between Ubuntu and Ubuntu-netbook. However if you choose Ubuntu-netbook you'll get an error message that it couldn't download the metalink.
What's the reason? The netbook-edition in Maverick was basically the same as 32-bit Ubuntu except it included the Unity interface. With 11.04 the newly rebuilt Unity interface is now standard on regular Ubuntu, so there's no need for a separate Netbook-edition.
Showing posts with label Natty Narwhal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Natty Narwhal. Show all posts
Friday, April 29, 2011
Friday, April 8, 2011
Wubi Natty will be ready for Beta2
Wubi has seen some major focus from Canonical's developers (Colin Watson) in the past week or so, finding and fixing major bugs including long-standing Grub-related bugs affecting 10.04 Lucid Lynx and 10.10 Maverick Meerkat (these releases will see the fixes a little later). But for 11.04 Natty Narwhal, Wubi is looking stable now for Beta2 - or if you're using the current-daily CD images.
This means that both new 11.04 installs as well as upgrades from 10.10 to 11.04 are now working!
PS There's just one innocuous message you'll see before the grub menu is displayed, regarding the prefix not being set.
This means that both new 11.04 installs as well as upgrades from 10.10 to 11.04 are now working!
PS There's just one innocuous message you'll see before the grub menu is displayed, regarding the prefix not being set.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Natty is natty
In my previous post I mentioned that Natty is now working with Wubi (on the current daily-live image), and also that the new Unity desktop is now working on my old Dell with an ATI X1300 Radeon (whereas with 10.10 netbook edition and early Natty Alphas, Unity did not work at all).
Since then I've reinstalled a number of times and I'm coming to like Natty and Unity. It feels - well - "natty". Not that that's a word I'd use frequently and I consider it only marginally better than the upcoming Oneiric Ocelot (that must be some good weed over at Canonical).
The only Wubi issues I've found are a couple of boot problems with the latest version of Grub. The first was fixed very quickly, and the second only seems to affect my installs when they're not on the main Windows partition. I've worked around this by manually booting and then editing grub.cfg by hand. I believe that it's basically the same grub rebooting issue from 10.04 and upgrades to 10.10, but this time there is no workaround - other than changing the 00_header script in /etc/grub.d/ but hopefully this will be resolved before release.
The more people that test and report bugs, the better. So if you decide to try Natty on Wubi, please report any bugs you find in launchpad.net and make it better for newcomers to Ubuntu.
Since then I've reinstalled a number of times and I'm coming to like Natty and Unity. It feels - well - "natty". Not that that's a word I'd use frequently and I consider it only marginally better than the upcoming Oneiric Ocelot (that must be some good weed over at Canonical).
The only Wubi issues I've found are a couple of boot problems with the latest version of Grub. The first was fixed very quickly, and the second only seems to affect my installs when they're not on the main Windows partition. I've worked around this by manually booting and then editing grub.cfg by hand. I believe that it's basically the same grub rebooting issue from 10.04 and upgrades to 10.10, but this time there is no workaround - other than changing the 00_header script in /etc/grub.d/ but hopefully this will be resolved before release.
The more people that test and report bugs, the better. So if you decide to try Natty on Wubi, please report any bugs you find in launchpad.net and make it better for newcomers to Ubuntu.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Wubi finally working in Natty Narwhal
I've just tested the latest Wubi.exe available here. It took a while to download the latest daily-live Desktop CD image (in the end I did that myself from here). But after that installing Wubi was painless. Apart from a benign grub2 message, the Ubiquity installer was impressive - looking ready for release - and seemed faster than prior releases, as did booting up for the first time.
Surprisingly Unity even worked on my computer - I'm not totally sold on it and there were some rendering issues, but at least now I have the opportunity to review it, instead of staring at a blank screen.
So - in summary - the installation of Wubi Natty Narwhal worked flawlessly. As always, alpha testing has risks, so take necessary precautions.
Surprisingly Unity even worked on my computer - I'm not totally sold on it and there were some rendering issues, but at least now I have the opportunity to review it, instead of staring at a blank screen.
So - in summary - the installation of Wubi Natty Narwhal worked flawlessly. As always, alpha testing has risks, so take necessary precautions.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Wubi pulled from Natty Alpha3
For those hoping to test Natty Narwhal 11.04 using Wubi, it will not be fixed in time for Alpha3 (the bug report is available here). The new target for a fix is Beta1.
If you read my previous posts, you will know that you could install Alpha1 with Wubi (with some workarounds), but with Alpha2 a new ubiquity bug prevented this from working. I haven't tested this lately, so I don't know whether ubiquity has been fixed. But it's safe to assume that the only option now for Wubi Natty testing is to install Maverick 10.10 and then upgrade.
It shouldn't really be a surprise. Wubi is intended for the newcomer to Ubuntu so having a working Wubi option early in development is not a top priority. Although I am puzzled what the major difficulty is. Also, the fact that there are so many major changes to grub and ubiquity between Maverick and Natty should be sobering for those that like to upgrade to each new release (these don't seem to be very stable products). When you also factor in the major changes to the front-end (Unity) and it seems to me that the Ubuntu developers are being stretched pretty thin. At the same time there've been some pretty major bugs in Lucid that have gone unpatched for over a year.
Wubi itself is due for an upgrade. With a 2007 version of grub4dos that hangs up on ext4 partitions, and some pretty bad usability bugs (e.g. the python code that chokes on multimedia card readers) and confusing (meaningless) error messages... someone needs to step up.
If you read my previous posts, you will know that you could install Alpha1 with Wubi (with some workarounds), but with Alpha2 a new ubiquity bug prevented this from working. I haven't tested this lately, so I don't know whether ubiquity has been fixed. But it's safe to assume that the only option now for Wubi Natty testing is to install Maverick 10.10 and then upgrade.
It shouldn't really be a surprise. Wubi is intended for the newcomer to Ubuntu so having a working Wubi option early in development is not a top priority. Although I am puzzled what the major difficulty is. Also, the fact that there are so many major changes to grub and ubiquity between Maverick and Natty should be sobering for those that like to upgrade to each new release (these don't seem to be very stable products). When you also factor in the major changes to the front-end (Unity) and it seems to me that the Ubuntu developers are being stretched pretty thin. At the same time there've been some pretty major bugs in Lucid that have gone unpatched for over a year.
Wubi itself is due for an upgrade. With a 2007 version of grub4dos that hangs up on ext4 partitions, and some pretty bad usability bugs (e.g. the python code that chokes on multimedia card readers) and confusing (meaningless) error messages... someone needs to step up.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Anticipating Natty Alpha 2 with Wubi
So, it's Alpha 2 week and what better time to check out Wubi again. But the news isn't good. In fact, things have gone from bad to worse. Before you could install Natty Wubi by replacing the buggy wubildr with a working Maverick copy to kick-start the installation. Now it just results in a loop in the installler (ubiquity) saying "No root filesystem has been defined".
So much for that... Let's try the upgrade option instead.
And the silver lining is... that the upgrade from Wubi Maverick to Natty was very smooth. No errors. No strange popups. No Afghanistan keyboard. In fact, the only thing I noticed was an "error: file not found" as grub booted into kernel 2.6.38-1.
So upgrading a Maverick install is still the preferred way to go if you want to test Natty on Wubi.
PS I didn't expect the fresh Natty Wubi install to work because the Natty wubi.exe hadn't been updated (since early December). And the new installer bug isn't too surprising either - it's Alpha after all and you need to expect these things. However, I do think it's fair to expect that sometime between December 2nd and February 2nd that the developer would have done one or two unit tests on Wubi.exe and discovered the problem (or at least noticed the bug report).
To be honest, I'd prefer they stopped messing with Wubi Natty and fixed the far more important Lucid Grub issues... but I know that's not likely to happen.
Just today there was someone on Ubuntuforums.org who had their computer completely wiped (Factory restored) by some lousy 'tech support' due to the Wubi grub rescue issue. These are real, live, normal people trying out Ubuntu and it'd be nice if the devs took that a little more seriously.
So much for that... Let's try the upgrade option instead.
And the silver lining is... that the upgrade from Wubi Maverick to Natty was very smooth. No errors. No strange popups. No Afghanistan keyboard. In fact, the only thing I noticed was an "error: file not found" as grub booted into kernel 2.6.38-1.
So upgrading a Maverick install is still the preferred way to go if you want to test Natty on Wubi.
PS I didn't expect the fresh Natty Wubi install to work because the Natty wubi.exe hadn't been updated (since early December). And the new installer bug isn't too surprising either - it's Alpha after all and you need to expect these things. However, I do think it's fair to expect that sometime between December 2nd and February 2nd that the developer would have done one or two unit tests on Wubi.exe and discovered the problem (or at least noticed the bug report).
To be honest, I'd prefer they stopped messing with Wubi Natty and fixed the far more important Lucid Grub issues... but I know that's not likely to happen.
Just today there was someone on Ubuntuforums.org who had their computer completely wiped (Factory restored) by some lousy 'tech support' due to the Wubi grub rescue issue. These are real, live, normal people trying out Ubuntu and it'd be nice if the devs took that a little more seriously.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Natty 11.04 Alpha 1 Upgrade with Wubi - Latest
I ran the Natty upgrade again today from my backed up maverick root.disk using the daily Alternate CD (January 12*). There are some interesting changes. For one, lots more errors during the upgrade including one saying the whole upgrade failed. But it didn't.
And a nice change is that as I logged in - forgetting to switch from Unity to the Classic desktop - there was a popup informing me that my hardware did not support unity and, would I like to switch to classic? Great! It didn't work, but a good idea all the same - and I assume it will work soon.
So after re-creating the 'logout launcher' I escaped Unity and switched manually to Classic Desktop and then it logged in fine (apart from having to reload all the crashing panel objects.)
Here are some pics from the upgrade process. The following popup appeared at least 3 times (and might have something to do with the fact that Natty has my keyboard set up as USA/Afghanistan now) ...
This one looked serious:
This one sounded like it was toast:
Despite the serious message - the upgrade worked, Natty booted first time... and nothing too exciting has happened since.
* I ran the upgrade from the daily image of the Alternate CD on January 10 and January 12 successfully. The images shown are from Jan 12; there were no material differences that I've noticed between the two. When I attempted to do it on Jan 11 it wouldn't allow the upgrade to begin due to some package with an incorrect version. The message is, if you find that the upgrade fails one day, just wait and try the following day (this is normal for alpha testing since the repositories are updated frequently and sometimes packages get out of synch). Also, be careful if you are offered a Partial Upgrade when running the Update Manager in Natty. Sometimes this is required but often it's an out of synch set of updates so it's best to be sure - use apt-get update and dist-upgrade to figure out what will be removed and decide whether it's an error or required.
And a nice change is that as I logged in - forgetting to switch from Unity to the Classic desktop - there was a popup informing me that my hardware did not support unity and, would I like to switch to classic? Great! It didn't work, but a good idea all the same - and I assume it will work soon.
So after re-creating the 'logout launcher' I escaped Unity and switched manually to Classic Desktop and then it logged in fine (apart from having to reload all the crashing panel objects.)
Here are some pics from the upgrade process. The following popup appeared at least 3 times (and might have something to do with the fact that Natty has my keyboard set up as USA/Afghanistan now) ...
This one looked serious:
This one sounded like it was toast:
Despite the serious message - the upgrade worked, Natty booted first time... and nothing too exciting has happened since.
* I ran the upgrade from the daily image of the Alternate CD on January 10 and January 12 successfully. The images shown are from Jan 12; there were no material differences that I've noticed between the two. When I attempted to do it on Jan 11 it wouldn't allow the upgrade to begin due to some package with an incorrect version. The message is, if you find that the upgrade fails one day, just wait and try the following day (this is normal for alpha testing since the repositories are updated frequently and sometimes packages get out of synch). Also, be careful if you are offered a Partial Upgrade when running the Update Manager in Natty. Sometimes this is required but often it's an out of synch set of updates so it's best to be sure - use apt-get update and dist-upgrade to figure out what will be removed and decide whether it's an error or required.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Upgrade to Natty 11.04 Alpha 1 with Wubi
An alternative to installing Wubi 11.04 Natty Alpha 1 from scratch - which is a convoluted process at the moment... is to upgrade from a current Maverick install. This bypasses the bad wubildr and Ubiquity installer issues. It does take a little bit longer to get setup, but it's quicker to repeat the upgrade.
Warning: with Alpha testing, something that works one day, may break the next. Please don't attempt this unless you have a dedicated test machine. The following example installs Wubi to the same partition as Windows (C:) - there is a difference, see note at bottom.
Step 1 - Install Wubi 10.10 Maverick
I picked 6GB for my install size.
Run all available updates.
Boot back into Windows and backup the root.disk and c:\wubildr (for repeat testing)
Step 2 - Download the daily 11.04 Natty Alternate CD
Since you'll probably want to repeat the upgrade at some point, it's a good idea to use zsync to keep your .iso up to date. If this is a once off, you could skip this step and just run the update online, but it takes much longer, in my experience than just downloading the alternate CD.
To download the 32-bit alternate CD:
Step 3 - Upgrade to Natty
Boot into the Wubi maverick install and run the upgrade from the alternate CD:
When you start the upgrade it asks you whether to check the internet for the latest packages - it's not really necessary since you have the latest daily image - and there's less chance of catching a buggy update - plus it's much quicker running just off the alternate image.
During the upgrade you get prompted a few times, but nothing exciting happened. I noticed by watching the grub.cfg file get regenerated (at least) 3 times and seeing the exception output, that the /boot/grub folder remains empty until the final time, when grub-install runs. This updates the wubildr and also places all the grub modules in /boot/grub. At the end the grub.cfg is regenerated in the same way that breaks wubi installs on 10.04.1 and upgrades to 10.10.
Step 4 - Reboot into Natty
The Wubi install didn't shut down when I requested a restart - it needed a little push (ALT+SysRq R-S-U-B). On restart, as expected due to the grub2/Wubi problems already covered in other posts, Wubi doesn't boot (but I had to try). I ended up at a grub prompt (not a rescue prompt), which is easy to boot from. I then chose the Classic desktop to login to, and had to click on multiple "Reload" buttons to fix the broken panel objects.
Welcome to Natty!!!
Step 5 - A new Grub2 wrinkle
So the accepted fix with Wubi installs is to clean out the /boot/grub directory and regenerate grub.cfg. This does spit out one error (on 10.10) but it's not an issue - about a missing /boot/grub/video.lst. However, with Natty, now Grub checks the syntax of the grub.cfg and rejects it if it finds errors. So the empty load_video function causes a syntax error.
You can get around this by leaving video.lst in /boot/grub, but that just spits out errors and reboots your machine when trying to boot your install. So... instead you have to manually rename grub.cfg.new to grub.cfg. Alternatively you can patch /etc/grub.d/00_header. What a pain! There must be an easier way to do this!!!
The instructions to patch grub, and the new command to manually rename grub.cfg.new follow:
That's about it. Natty boots fine after that, apart from having to click RELOAD on all the panel objects each time. Don't forget to select the "Classic" desktop unless you have a decent test machine that can handle Unity.
PS another nice thing is the Firefox beta. It looks very similar to Chrome - which is good for Firefox.
NOTE: if you install Wubi to a partition other than Windows, there is no way to update the wubildr file that is required to boot the Wubi install. Likely the upgrade will fail as the grub.cfg file has changed radically (I haven't tested it yet, but it pays to be cautious) and my previous test showed that the Maverick wubildr did not work. There are ways to generate a new wubildr file if you need to, but that's not covered in this article.
Warning: with Alpha testing, something that works one day, may break the next. Please don't attempt this unless you have a dedicated test machine. The following example installs Wubi to the same partition as Windows (C:) - there is a difference, see note at bottom.
Step 1 - Install Wubi 10.10 Maverick
I picked 6GB for my install size.
Run all available updates.
Boot back into Windows and backup the root.disk and c:\wubildr (for repeat testing)
Step 2 - Download the daily 11.04 Natty Alternate CD
Since you'll probably want to repeat the upgrade at some point, it's a good idea to use zsync to keep your .iso up to date. If this is a once off, you could skip this step and just run the update online, but it takes much longer, in my experience than just downloading the alternate CD.
To download the 32-bit alternate CD:
zsync http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily/current/natty-alternate-i386.iso.zsyncSee this for more info on zsync: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ZsyncCdImage
Step 3 - Upgrade to Natty
Boot into the Wubi maverick install and run the upgrade from the alternate CD:
sudo mount -o loop natty-alternate-i386.iso /mnt
sudo /mnt/cdromupgrade
When you start the upgrade it asks you whether to check the internet for the latest packages - it's not really necessary since you have the latest daily image - and there's less chance of catching a buggy update - plus it's much quicker running just off the alternate image.
During the upgrade you get prompted a few times, but nothing exciting happened. I noticed by watching the grub.cfg file get regenerated (at least) 3 times and seeing the exception output, that the /boot/grub folder remains empty until the final time, when grub-install runs. This updates the wubildr and also places all the grub modules in /boot/grub. At the end the grub.cfg is regenerated in the same way that breaks wubi installs on 10.04.1 and upgrades to 10.10.
Step 4 - Reboot into Natty
The Wubi install didn't shut down when I requested a restart - it needed a little push (ALT+SysRq R-S-U-B). On restart, as expected due to the grub2/Wubi problems already covered in other posts, Wubi doesn't boot (but I had to try). I ended up at a grub prompt (not a rescue prompt), which is easy to boot from. I then chose the Classic desktop to login to, and had to click on multiple "Reload" buttons to fix the broken panel objects.
Welcome to Natty!!!
Step 5 - A new Grub2 wrinkle
So the accepted fix with Wubi installs is to clean out the /boot/grub directory and regenerate grub.cfg. This does spit out one error (on 10.10) but it's not an issue - about a missing /boot/grub/video.lst. However, with Natty, now Grub checks the syntax of the grub.cfg and rejects it if it finds errors. So the empty load_video function causes a syntax error.
You can get around this by leaving video.lst in /boot/grub, but that just spits out errors and reboots your machine when trying to boot your install. So... instead you have to manually rename grub.cfg.new to grub.cfg. Alternatively you can patch /etc/grub.d/00_header. What a pain! There must be an easier way to do this!!!
The instructions to patch grub, and the new command to manually rename grub.cfg.new follow:
sudo mv /boot/grub /boot/grubold
sudo mkdir /boot/grub
sudo cp /boot/grub/grubenv /boot/grub
sudo update-grub
sudo mv /boot/grub/grub.cfg.new /boot/grub/grub.cfg
That's about it. Natty boots fine after that, apart from having to click RELOAD on all the panel objects each time. Don't forget to select the "Classic" desktop unless you have a decent test machine that can handle Unity.
PS another nice thing is the Firefox beta. It looks very similar to Chrome - which is good for Firefox.
NOTE: if you install Wubi to a partition other than Windows, there is no way to update the wubildr file that is required to boot the Wubi install. Likely the upgrade will fail as the grub.cfg file has changed radically (I haven't tested it yet, but it pays to be cautious) and my previous test showed that the Maverick wubildr did not work. There are ways to generate a new wubildr file if you need to, but that's not covered in this article.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Natty Narwhal 11.04 Alpha 1 with WUBI
So the adventurous often want to try out development releases of Ubuntu and what better way to test than with Wubi - in theory. In practice though, Wubi isn't the main focus and usually only gets considered closer to the release.
But curiosity killed the cat... so here goes:
1. Windows install
I use zsync to keep a current copy of the daily live image of the Natty desktop-i386.iso. Since the .iso change so frequently it saves time and ensures you always have an up to date copy. I extract the wubi.exe from it and copy both the .iso and wubi.exe to the same folder in Windows. Then run wubi.exe.
The Windows install GUI looks good - it's identical to previous releases except it shows 11.04 - and when finished, asks to reboot.
2. Ubiquity install
After installation, the first attempt to boot Natty drops you at a grub prompt.
GNU GRUB version 1.98+20100804-5ubuntu2.
I attempt to boot the install:
grub> configfile (hd0,msdos2)/ubuntu/winboot/wubildr.cfg
Voila...
I then chose the classic desktop, as my last experience with the new Unity desktop didn't go so well:
Apart from a bunch of Error popup windows for panel objects that failed to load everything looks good.
First experience...
It looks pretty much the same as Maverick, but I notice there's now a "Root terminal" in Accessories. Love it! This is where I found the actual problem with the booting: there is no grub.cfg. I guess the grub error in ubiquity caused that part to be skipped. There's a grub.cfg.new so I just renamed that.
I decided to try out the new Unity desktop again, but it didn't work - I'm testing on my old junk PC with an ATI radeon 9000 card!
So now it's time to reboot and I discover that the Maverick wubildr is not compatible with the new Grub - every time I select Ubuntu the computer reboots. Back to the manual boot (I have another Ubuntu install so I can get to a grub prompt).
Rebuild wubildr...
Clearly Grub has changed radically - surprise surprise. It now refers to the drive as /dev/sda instead of hd0. So, that's probably why it's rebooting. Let's try regenerating the wubildr file. Oops logged in to the Unity desktop by accident... PS to logout I had to create a launcher on the desktop with command: /usr/bin/gnome-session-save --kill as I couldn't access any menus.
Then, to rebuild wubildr from root terminal: grub-install /dev/sda2 (don't try this on non wubi installs, also don't try it on wubi installs that aren't on the same partition as Windows's C: drive).
SUCCESS!
GNU GRUB 1.98
Ubuntu, Linux 2.6.37-10-generic
...
And it boots! Happy testing everybody*
(*And by everybody, I mean, those that consider their computers to be test machines - this is an early alpha release so you need to be prepared for disaster).
PS my windows is on /dev/sda2 - all places that refer to (hd0,2) or (hd0,msdos2) and /dev/sda2 are based on that.
But curiosity killed the cat... so here goes:
1. Windows install
I use zsync to keep a current copy of the daily live image of the Natty desktop-i386.iso. Since the .iso change so frequently it saves time and ensures you always have an up to date copy. I extract the wubi.exe from it and copy both the .iso and wubi.exe to the same folder in Windows. Then run wubi.exe.
The Windows install GUI looks good - it's identical to previous releases except it shows 11.04 - and when finished, asks to reboot.
2. Ubiquity install
- Bad WUBILDR
So the first problem is the wubildr is bad. When you select Ubuntu from the Windows Boot Manager it hangs at Try (hd0,0) Wubildr. Replacing this with a wubildr from a Maverick install works fine and gets you to the second phase of the installation. (Note, in my case I had to replace wubildr on my first partition - a hidden rescue partition - not just the wubildr on my Windows partition. I did this via Ubuntu as it's not visible from Windows.
- Grub error during installation
After fixing the wubildr, the Ubiquity installer proceeds as normal with the slideshow. Until a popup appears entitled3. Booting the installed Natty
Bootloader install failed.You'll be warned "You will need to manually install a bootloader in order to start Ubuntu"
Sorry, an error occurred and it was not possible to install the bootloader at the specified location. How would you like to proceed?
- Choose a different device to install the booloader on (empty drop down box)
- Continue without a bootloader (PICK THIS ONE)
- Cancel the installation
After installation, the first attempt to boot Natty drops you at a grub prompt.
GNU GRUB version 1.98+20100804-5ubuntu2.
I attempt to boot the install:
grub> configfile (hd0,msdos2)/ubuntu/winboot/wubildr.cfg
error: no such device: /ubuntu/install/boot/grub/grub.cfgSo it turns out - after some investigation - that there is no /boot/grub/grub.cfg - when I skipped installing the bootloader it failed to create it. OK, no prob, just do a manual boot:
error: no such device: /grub.cfg
It is not possible to boot from the Ubuntu image.
Please verify blah blah blah and run chkdsk /r
insmod ntfs
set root=(hd0,msdos2)
loopback loop0 /ubuntu/disks/root.disk
set root=(loop0)
linux /vmlinuz root=/dev/sda2 loop=/ubuntu/disks/root.disk ro
initrd /initrd.img
boot
Voila...
I then chose the classic desktop, as my last experience with the new Unity desktop didn't go so well:
Apart from a bunch of Error popup windows for panel objects that failed to load everything looks good.
First experience...
It looks pretty much the same as Maverick, but I notice there's now a "Root terminal" in Accessories. Love it! This is where I found the actual problem with the booting: there is no grub.cfg. I guess the grub error in ubiquity caused that part to be skipped. There's a grub.cfg.new so I just renamed that.
I decided to try out the new Unity desktop again, but it didn't work - I'm testing on my old junk PC with an ATI radeon 9000 card!
So now it's time to reboot and I discover that the Maverick wubildr is not compatible with the new Grub - every time I select Ubuntu the computer reboots. Back to the manual boot (I have another Ubuntu install so I can get to a grub prompt).
Rebuild wubildr...
Clearly Grub has changed radically - surprise surprise. It now refers to the drive as /dev/sda instead of hd0. So, that's probably why it's rebooting. Let's try regenerating the wubildr file. Oops logged in to the Unity desktop by accident... PS to logout I had to create a launcher on the desktop with command: /usr/bin/gnome-session-save --kill as I couldn't access any menus.
Then, to rebuild wubildr from root terminal: grub-install /dev/sda2 (don't try this on non wubi installs, also don't try it on wubi installs that aren't on the same partition as Windows's C: drive).
SUCCESS!
GNU GRUB 1.98
Ubuntu, Linux 2.6.37-10-generic
...
And it boots! Happy testing everybody*
(*And by everybody, I mean, those that consider their computers to be test machines - this is an early alpha release so you need to be prepared for disaster).
PS my windows is on /dev/sda2 - all places that refer to (hd0,2) or (hd0,msdos2) and /dev/sda2 are based on that.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)