Ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10 upgrade

[Tom Metro]

Thanks to all who responded to this question. A few follow-up comments 
below.


Tom Metro wrote:
> The other thing I saw noted were a bunch problems with proprietary
> nvidia drivers, which I happen to be using:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/464591
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers-180/+bug/438398
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers-180/+bug/474917
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers-180/+bug/456637

One of these tickets recommending setting an option for the NVidia 
driver to disable a power saving mode. (For some users, with out this, 
graphics didn't work at all.) I figure it's easier to add it now, rather 
than trying to paste it in from a console later. Since adding it, it has 
made a very noticeable difference in the system's fan speed/run time. 
Clearly something I'll want to remove post-upgrade, if it isn't needed.


David Kramer wrote:
> - The biggest one, probably due to MythTV, is that my server ended up with
> an incompatible mix of mysql 5.0 and 5.1 packages.

I noticed the release note about the MySQL upgrade, but don't anticipate 
a problem, as I'm not sure I'm using it for anything on this box. Lets 
see...nope, only the client libraries are installed.


> - Also related to MythTV was that it wrote its own default apache vhost,
> so mythweb came up when I went to http://www.thekramers.net

I use 8.04 LTS for my MythTV back-end, so as to avoid disruption. Though 
8.04 is feeling rather long in the tooth these days.


> - It overwrote my bashrc.local.  The whole point of bashrc.local is you
> put your stuff in it and it doesn't get trashed by OS upgrades.

Did you file a bug?


> Other than that, I was a little disappointed in the incosistency of the UI
> during upgrading.  Whenever it needed to overwrite a config file, there
> were two or three different styles of dialog boxes that would come up,
> with different options, some of which did not include showing a diff.

I haven't ran across that, but the  again I always do upgrades from the 
command line.

I used to stop and consider each of these prompts during an upgrade, but 
now I tend to just select the option to keep my customized version 
always. Post upgrade I then run a find command to show the config 
collisions and then at my leisure I merge the local changes (tracked 
with RCS) into the new versions, if there are useful updates, and 
generally clean up the temporary files. Someday I'd like to use 
something more powerful than RCS that could make the merge process less 
manual, like bzr.


> I do use nVidia proprietary driver on all three machines, and all three
> worked fine.

Good to know.

Bill Bogstad wrote:
> My Myth BE is still running 0.21 so my biggest problem was with the
> FE software.  I ended up installing the 9.04 FE debs and the result
> is acceptable.

I take it you couldn't find any "back" (forward) ports of 0.21 to 9.10?


> Oh, I forgot to mention sound.  As seems to be the case with any Linux
> system I've touched in years, it was a pain. It's more or less working
> again.

I'm hoping with this upgrade I'll finally not have to build the ALSA 
driver from source after every kernel update. But I won't be surprised 
if that's still the case.


Laura Conrad wrote:
> With 9.10, I never did really get the screensaver/power management
> working right, so I'm still running 9.4 on the desktop.  

I don't have power management - specifically suspend/hibernate - working 
with 8.10 or 9.04 on the laptop in question, so if it doesn't work in 
9.10 I won't be any worse off. (As I recall the problem I had was that 
the video card didn't turn on after resuming. Probably something that 
can be scripted around, given enough time to experiment. I tend to keep 
the machine doing stuff most of the time, so I haven't felt compelled to 
solve this.)


Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
> I would encourage you to make a backup of your system, and just go for it.

Of course. The system gets its data backed up automatically, but this 
reminds me that I've never created a set of "bare-metal" recovery DVDs 
for it. Time to fire up Mondo Rescue.

  -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/