12.04.1 wubi.exe released... Wrong version error

With the 12.04.1 release, Wubi.exe was also bumped to 12.04.1. For those that don't know, Wubi.exe is very particular about which version it will install: it first checks the ISO and rejects it if it doesn't match.

DEBUG Distro: wrong version: 12.04 != 12.04.1
So, why is this a problem? Simply that not all flavours of Ubuntu e.g. Lubuntu/Xubuntu/Mythbuntu get a 12.04.1 ISO released. And Wubi.exe is clever enough to know that - it still has the address for the 12.04 ISOs for these flavours and will happily download the entire thing... and then stupidly reject it.

So that all seems rather pointless and frustrating to the users. Especially since the same thing happened with 10.04.1 - someone might've figured out the pattern by now. But in their defence, it's taken me 10 minutes to write up this post, so you can see why it'd be so difficult to fix.

Actually a look at the code indicates that Wubi.exe for 12.04 will happily install a 12.04.1 ISO, just not the other way round. So if they had just left it at 12.04 and updated the link to the 12.04.1 ISOs then... no breakage.

Workaround
An easy workaround is to use the 12.04 Wubi.exe for your favourite flavour (anything other than Ubuntu... except Kubuntu which has been broken for Wubi installs since 12.04 was released). So you can install Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Mythbuntu, Edubuntu in this manner. Here is a link to it: http://people.canonical.com/~evand/wubi/precise/wubi-r266-signed.exe

Update
Probably to repay me for doing just 10 minutes of research, I've found out that Xubuntu, Mythbuntu, Edubuntu and Kubuntu all have a 12.04.1 release. So in fact, it's Wubi 12.04.1 that is at fault here for not updating the metalinks. It's only Lubuntu that's stuck on 12.04. Either way, none of these work without some manual workaround.

Workaround part 2
If you want Kubuntu, Mythbuntu, Edubuntu or Xubuntu, download the ISO first, save it in the same folder as the 12.04.1 Wubi.exe and run wubi from there (disconnect from the Internet prior to running).

Six Wubi rules

These are my Wubi rules to make your experience trouble free... hopefully:

1. Never force shutdown the computer while Ubuntu is running. Linux has a built-in safe-reboot option that you should familiarize yourself with upfront: Alt+SysRq R-E-I-S-U-B. If that fails and it's totally hung up (no hard drive activity light) then you have no choice, but to hard-reset. But first make sure you entered REISUB correctly.
2. Don't change the boot order from Windows to Ubuntu, or shorten the timeout. Windows is the host operating system and it should take priority or you might fall into a fairly common trap that leaves only the Wubi install bootable. When you want Ubuntu to be Number One, then you can install a normal dual boot or replace Windows.
3. Create a Windows Repair CD before you need it. It will help if you don't follow the advice in Rule 2. Also, you can repair NTFS (using chkdsk) from a Windows repair CD, but not from Ubuntu.
4. Have a good data recovery plan. If you don't have a Windows Install DVD, make sure you create Windows Restore DVDs. When you start to play with multiple operating systems and, later, partition, you want to have good backups. Also, if you don't follow Rule 1, or you have hardware incompatibilities, you could lose data on the Wubi install. So backups are important. 
5. Don't migrate data to your Wubi install. Wubi uses a virtual disk, a large file. Moving personal photos, videos, music from your Windows host to the Wubi install is like combining all those individual files into a huge, single file archive. So your risk of data loss just went up exponentially. It's totally unnecessary to move data that is easily accessible on /host or other NTFS partitions. And on top of that, data on the virtual disk is not (easily) accessible from Windows. Obviously there's some data that has to be on the virtual disk, but don't blindly copy everything.  Make use of the free Ubuntu One service to automatically synchronize backups of your important folders.
6. Be very careful going for help when you get stuck. Sometimes it's critical to mention you have Wubi, sometimes it's not. Knowing the difference is not always clear so it's safer just to state it up-front. Remember that most hardcore Ubuntu users and developers don't use Wubi, so consider all advice carefully. Anything to do with installing Grub, bootloaders, reinstalling Ubuntu from a CD, wiping partitions... are likely to be invalid and will damage Windows - and this is the most common advice given to Wubi users. Remember that Wubi does not have a hardcore base of experienced users so proceed with caution...

So that's about it. Some people choose to use Wubi long-term - or once they start using it they don't see the need to switch to a normal dual-boot. Personally, I'd recommend switching to the normal dual-boot, but if you follow the above advice you're at least  minimizing risk to yourself.

I have already given other advice on how to upgrade a wubi install here, and how to take a fully-bootable backup of your Wubi install here, so haven't included these here.

Boot-repair and Wubi

Boot-repair is a product that has appeared in the past year or so and has speedily been incorporated in community-editable support documentation (basically all Ubuntu documentation). There's no question that the author has put a lot of effort has gone into creating and maintaining Boot-repair and it has apparently been embraced as a very useful tool by the community at large.

But I wouldn't recommend it for Wubi installations and here's why...

Wubi boot problems are different
There are some key differences in the way that Wubi boots. It uses the Windows boot mangler, not the bootloader in the drive MBR to boot. So that's the first thing to check... do you actually have boot problems or is it something different?

If Windows boots okay then boot-repair is not for you
As mentioned, Wubi boots via the Windows boot manager (yes that was a deliberate typo before). So technically your computer boots okay. Boot-repair is more concerned with the boot mechanisms that occur prior to the Windows boot manager showing e.g. the bootloader (drive MBR), the boot flag, etc. So running it isn't going to help. In one case it has stopped Windows booting. To be fair to the author, the problem mentioned in that thread has apparently been fixed, but I'm not sure that boot-repair is mature enough to handle all the myriad of Windows configurations out there.

If Windows doesn't boot, then you should use Windows Repair instead
As stated before, if you do have issues with Windows, then your best bet is a Windows repair disk. Windows repair is an official Windows repair mechanism supported by Microsoft, who hopefully understand their product.

If Wubi isn't booting then probably you need to run chkdsk
This cannot be done using boot-repair, only through Windows or Windows Repair. The most popular post on this blog is all about the damaged root.disk. This is by far the most common problem with Wubi installs, and the first thing you should consider when you have issues.

What Boot-repair will do
Boot-repair detects Wubi installs and will fsck the root.disk (fsck will fix any ext4 file system damage on the virtual disk). It's not always clear to new Ubuntu users how to do this, since you need to create an Ubuntu CD/USB, boot from it, mount the partition containing the root.disk and then fsck it. There are many guides on how to do all this, but of course it's easier to have this all automated for you.

Summary
I have no doubt that boot-repair has helped many people - and there don't seem to be too many misgivings about it out there in the community. But at the same time, in my opinion, it's been incorporated too rapidly into the official documentation e.g. here without sufficient warning that the tool is not officially supported by Canonical, and in some cases, might be classified as experimental.

Xubuntu option to be removed from Wubi

It looks like Xubuntu will no longer be offered with Wubi, from release 12.10 onwards.

I was browsing the Wubi code the other day and noticed this revision: Drop Wubi for Xubuntu at the request of Pasi Lallinaho. Pasi Lallinaho is the project lead for Xubuntu: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PasiLallinaho/

Xubuntu is typically used on lower spec hardware so it's probably not a big surprise to see this move. The minimum requirements for Xubuntu typically are lower than that of the Ubuntu installer (ubiquity) so in some cases the Wubi install would fail when a normal Xubuntu install would succeed. But I don't know the real reason behind this move.

Weird clicking noise in Chrome

For anyone who is experiencing sound issues in Chrome, there is a workaround. I use the browser a lot and it's been making my Ubuntu experience very irritating lately. Videos have been impossible to listen too and even using Gmail has been irritating with a background 'static heartbeat' that runs continually.

It doesn't affect Firefox, so that's an option, but if you depend on Chrome like me... here's the fix:

1. Go to chrome://plugins/
2. Expand the Details (click plus sign on right side)
3. Disable the Pepperflash plugin

It looks like the issue is documented as a chromium issue in a number of places e.g. here and here.

What's wrong with Wubi/Ubuntu

It speaks volumes that the most popular post on this blog is Missing the root.disk. It has nearly double the hits to the next most popular post (that also relates to Wubi boot problems).

What does this mean: to be missing the root.disk? 
Well it's the catastrophic failure of Wubi, the damage and possible destruction of the virtual disk, in other words, the entire Ubuntu operating system and data. There really can't be much worse of a failure.

What is the cause?
It could be the forced shutdown of the computer, for example, due to a system freeze. In some cases, users reported a crash. In other cases, they reported nothing more than running available updates. It's not conclusive what the main cause is.

Why do people force shutdown?
There are probably many reasons this happens... like any bug that causes a system freeze. E.g. on my 12.04 Ubuntu install when I come back from suspend the screen sometimes remains black (mouse still visible). This isn't a freeze but there is no obvious way to shutdown or restart and no apparent fix/workaround. It would be totally understandable that some people might force shutdown if that happened to them. Especially coming from a Windows background where there is no alternative to REISUB. In fact, on my test Windows 8 install it freezes frequently and - as far as I know - that's my only option to reset.

So usability bugs like that could also be behind the corruption.
PS For this particular bug, I generally Ctrl+Alt+F1 and restart the lightdm desktop service (but it still kills all open apps). 

Why does a forced shutdown corrupt the ext4 and/or ntfs file system?
This is perhaps the more relevant question. Maybe the journalling built into ext4 leads to corruption (speed over stability?). But this is pure speculation - and I thought Wubi installs were supposed to automatically sync all changes, precisely to avoid this problem.
And why would  this affect the root.disk, a fixed-size file on NTFS...why does Wubi even update anything that could lead to this fixed file becoming corrupt? This seems like a major flaw.

How unstable is Wubi?
It's not possible to answer this without understanding how many people use Wubi and how many of those experience corruption of the root.disk. The fact is that I have never lost a root.disk to corruption in multiple years of testing Wubi, and over a year of continual use of Wubi (running the development releases)... so while I can't definitively say what is going on, I don't believe it's that unstable.
Regardless, the fact is, it shouldn't happen to anyone, and clearly it happens to many.

Why do people use Wubi?
I get that Wubi is a great way to try out Ubuntu without partitioning. It runs extremely close to a normal dual boot, that it showcases Ubuntu for those that are understandably nervous about partitioning. That makes sense. But why do they people keep on using it? Probably because it works too well. There isn't a whole lot of understanding about why it's not a great idea to do all your university coursework on a Wubi install and not bother to back it up. There also isn't any notification or warning when you install Wubi from here that there could be problems ahead or even an explanation of how Wubi is different unless you follow the links. In short, there's no reason for a user to switch to a partitioned install (usually until a major failure and the resulting investigation).

What do I think about Wubi?
I think it's pretty amazing to try out Ubuntu, but that it's poorly supported: I don't believe there is a credible maintenance and testing infrastructure for Wubi. If there were then you would see some effort to resolve these sorts of issues. And from experience I can assure you that getting even well-understood, major Wubi issues resolved (even when the fix is known), can be like pushing a rope.
Having said that, 12.04 is probably the most stable Wubi release ever - there's a huge drop in support requests. So it's working better than ever before and it seems to be popular and part of Canonical's strategy to spread Ubuntu.

Wubi maintenance
I touched on the fact that I don't believe there is a credible maintenance plan in place for Wubi. My impression is that, in general, Canonical's resources are stretched too thin. There are many important, unresolved issues with Ubuntu at any point in time, and Wubi's issues are obviously not high on that list. I've been using 12.04 since it's release and I've found a number of usability bugs that make it a frustrating experience. On top of that, the seemingly small Ubuntu developer team are always fully occupied, working hard to produce these relentless 6 month releases, which I believe is far too frequent. All that time spent on a development release for zero production users is time taken away from millions of real production users. This doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever. It should be the other way around. Because of this endless cycle of less than perfect releases and not fixing existing problems they are slowly going to whittle away at the support base and scare off newcomers. So... in short I believe the Wubi maintenance issues are minor compared to the general maintenance issues.

Edubuntu - it burns!!!

Lately I've decided to use Edubuntu... But there have been some pain points, none more-so than the boot splash screen. You know, that white Edubuntu spash screen that modern laptops on full brightness just about shatter your retina as it boots? If all you know is the soothing Ubuntu purple screen (haha) then consider yourself fortunate.

So what can you do... surely you can just change it? Yeah, go to software center and search on boot and/or splash and/or eye's burning and ... nothing. But surely you know the boot process thing is called "Plymouth"? Oh yeah, okay try that... nothing!

No, you have to search on plymouth-theme. That will trick Software Center's advanced heuristic irritation algorithm to show you what you want!? (Why on earth would a search on plymouth not produce results that plymouth-theme produces?)

So, there it finally is - the Solar Theme I love. It's darker blues will soothe my eyes and not excite the senses (like that rude purple). Install it... bing, bang, boom, done!!! Ah, no, that's not the way it's done. It still comes up all whitey-brighty.

Well, duh, I didn't tell it to use Solar as default. How would it know!!! (Stupid me). What you obviously have to do is go to a terminal and run:
sudo update-alternatives --config default.plymouth
And select the number that matches the Solar Theme. Enjoy.

Please someone post a comment and tell me what I missed - there must be an easier way!!!