[Linuxcommand-announce] [LinuxCommand.org: Tips, News And Rants] Project: Getting Ready For Ubuntu 10...

[William S. <bs...@pa...>]

Now that Ubuntu 10.04 Beta 1 has been released, it's time to start our
work. In this installment we will obtain a copy of Beta 1, make some
installation media, install it, and begin our testing.

Getting The Beta 1 Image

This page has links to the ISO images that we will use. Of course, you
could just download them from your web browser, but what's the fun in
that? Since we are command line junkies here at LinuxCommand.org, we
use the command line to download our images. You can do it like this:

me@linuxbox: ~$ wget url

where url is the web address of the ISO image we want to download In my
case, I used this command to get the "PC (Intel x86) Desktop CD":

wget
http://releases.ubuntu.com/10.04/ubuntu-10.04-beta1-desktop-i386.iso


Creating Installation Media

The next step is making the installation media. I always use
re-writable media for this kind of work, so we have to first "blank"
our CD, then write the image on it. To do this, we use the wodim
program. First, we need to determine what our system calls the CD
burner. We can do this with the following command:

me@linuxbox: ~$ wodim --devices

wodim will execute and print a list of the optical media drives it
sees. The results will look like this:

wodim: Overview of accessible drives (1 found) :
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
0 dev='/dev/scd0' rwrw-- : 'Optiarc' 'DVD+-RW AD-7200S'
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

On my system, we see that the CD-ROM drive/burner is the
device "/dev/scd0". Yours may be different.

insert the re-writable disk into the drive. If your system
automatically mounts the disk, unmount it with a command such as this:

me@linuxbox: ~$ sudo umount /dev/scd0

Next, we blank the media with this command:

me@linuxbox: ~$ wodim -vv dev=/dev/scd0 blank=all

The blanking operation will take several minutes. After it completes,
we can write the image with this command:

me@linuxbox: ~$ wodim -v dev=/dev/scd0 -data
ubuntu-10.04-beta1-desktop-i386.iso

After the write is completed, we need to verify that the disk matches
the ISO file. Using this command will do the trick:

me@linuxbox: ~$ md5sum ubuntu-10.04-beta1-desktop-i386.iso /dev/scd0
7ddbfbcfcc562bae2e160695ec820e39 ubuntu-10.04-beta1-desktop-i386.iso
7ddbfbcfcc562bae2e160695ec820e39 /dev/scd0

If the two checksums match, we have a good burn.

Installation

Depending on which variety of 10.04 you have downloaded (desktop,
alternate, etc.), the installation procedure should be familiar to any
Ubuntu user. The live desktop version differs from previous versions in
that it no longer prompts you for running live or installing
immediately after booting, rather you are forced to wait (and wait...)
for the entire live CD to come up before being prompted with a
graphical screen. Not an improvement, in my opinion.

After installation, the first thing we do is open a terminal and
perform an update to the system using the following commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Be aware that during the testing period, the Ubuntu team releases a
steady stream of updates. It is not unusual for a hundred or more
package updates to be released each day during periods of heavy
development. I actually created this alias and put it in my .bashrc
file on the test machine:

alias update='sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade'

Now I just have to type "upgrade" to bring the machine up to date.

Paying For Your Software - Testing

This is a theme I have touched on before. If you have been an avid
Linux consumer, you should consider becoming an avid Linux producer.
Great software doesn't write itself. There are many ways you can help
build the future of computing (and by the way, cheer leading is not one
of them). One way is by performing good software testing. I have
included some links (below) that document some of the tools and
techniques that Ubuntu recommend for testing and bug reporting.

Meanwhile, Back At The Ranch...

Work continues on cleaning up the production systems in preparation for
the upgrade. I also performed live CD tests on both systems to look for
possible hardware incompatibilities. I haven't found any on the desktop
system (yet) and the laptop has some minor video issues when booting.
Work will continue.

Further Reading

10.04 Beta 1 Release Notes:

- http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/lucid/beta1
Some advice on CD/DVD burning:

- https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BurningIsoHowto
- https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CdDvd/Burning
- Chapter 16 of The Linux Command Line covers various kinds of storage
media.

Tips and techniques for software testers:

- https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing
- https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs
- https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingProcedures
Other installments in this series:

- Project: Getting Ready For Ubuntu 10.04


--
Posted By William Shotts to LinuxCommand.org: Tips, News And Rants at
3/23/2010 03:35:00 PM