Flight CD 2

Colin Watson cjwatson at ubuntu.com
Wed Dec 14 21:00:08 GMT 2005 

Hello world,

Flight CD 2 is ready. This is the second in a series of milestone CD
images that will be released throughout the Dapper development cycle, as
images that are known to be reasonably free of showstopper CD-build or
installer bugs, while representing very current snapshots of Dapper. You
can download it here:

  Europe:
    http://ftp.acc.umu.se/mirror/cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/dapper/flight-2/ (Ubuntu)
    http://ftp.acc.umu.se/mirror/cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/dapper/flight-2/ (Kubuntu)

  United Kingdom, and the rest of the world:
    http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/dapper/flight-2/ (Ubuntu)
    http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/dapper/flight-2/ (Kubuntu)

An Edubuntu release should follow soon. Please download using BitTorrent
if possible, and see http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Archive for other mirrors.

A list of notable changes in this release across the whole distribution
is available here, thanks to Matt Galvin:

  http://wiki.ubuntu.com/DapperFlight2


This release has been somewhat delayed due to the switch to Linux 2.6.15
and the new hardware detection and activation infrastructure that comes
along with it (new udev and the demise of the old hotplug scripts; see
http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2005-December/000028.html).
This is mostly done now, but the whole point of getting it in early in
the Dapper development cycle was to attract as many bug reports about
breakage as possible, so please do report (component: linux or udev,
depending on the bug) any failures to detect your hardware, especially
if those failures are also regressions from Ubuntu 5.10.

This release also includes a new simplified live CD boot system
(http://wiki.ubuntu.com/SimplifiedLiveCD), included at the eleventh hour
because the alternative options stood a good chance of taking
considerably longer to get working. This system should ultimately end up
being faster and more visually pleasing than the one in Ubuntu 5.10, but
at the moment it's text-only, spews a lot of error messages, and
includes long delays with no progress feedback (we would really have
preferred to land it just after Flight CD 2 rather than just before if
it had been possible, but there we go). Please don't file bug reports
just about the ugliness; we are aware of it and it will be improved.

Other significant changes affecting the installer and live CD include:

  * New graphical x86 CD bootloader screen, using gfxboot. This is
    partly there for general aesthetics and partly in order to push
    language selection back to the bootloader so that the live CD
    doesn't have to ask any questions (keymap selection will move here
    too but this hasn't been done yet). Bug reports (component: gfxboot)
    on any quirks this displays on your machine would be appreciated.
    While it's theoretically possible to enable this graphical
    bootloader for the installed system too, the use case for that is
    less immediately compelling and we probably won't look at it until
    after Dapper.

  * Default vga16fb resolution changed to 640x400. This should avoid the
    need to boot many machines with kernel arguments like vga=771 just
    to be able to see all of the screens displayed by the installer. We
    don't think that this change should make things worse on any
    machines, but if it does, please file a bug report (component:
    linux).

  * New udev-based PCMCIA infrastructure supporting the new kernel.
    cardmgr from pcmcia-cs is no longer especially useful, but I
    recommend not storming ahead and purging pcmcia-cs just yet; that
    includes some configuration files that we still need. If your PCMCIA
    cards don't activate properly, then please file a bug report
    (component: pcmciautils).

  * Switched to rewritten versions of the APT configuration and
    user/password configuration screens in the installer. The former
    will no longer ask duplicate questions in netboot installs, and the
    latter is now asked before base system installation.

  * 'localhost.localdomain' is no longer made the canonical hostname of
    127.0.0.1; the old behaviour broke some applications.

  * Automatic LVM configuration options are now available on powerpc
    too.

  * Various enhancements to rescue mode. On powerpc, it now knows how to
    offer an option to reinstall the yaboot bootloader; this will be
    added for other architectures and bootloaders in time too.

  * Added boot performance measurement support to the live CD; use the
    'bootchart' boot parameter to enable this.

  * Added a "boot from first hard disk" option to the CD boot menu.

  * Live CD boot text fixed (erratum from Flight CD 1).

  * Appearance of debconf priority question before reboot fixed (erratum
    from Flight CD 1).

Known bugs:

  * Network interfaces may not be brought up automatically on boot.
    Putting 'auto eth0' (or whatever your interface is called) in
    /etc/network/interfaces generally fixes this, although I'm not sure
    what the final fix is going to be yet.

  * Rescue mode selection is broken on some images when booting on an
    x86-64-class computer. The underlying issue has already been fixed,
    but it was going to take too long to run around rebuilding all the
    images. As a workaround at the boot screen, select the "Install to
    the hard disk" option, press F3 to edit boot options, and add
    "rescue/enable=true".

  * Rescue mode doesn't work on the live CD any more, as a casualty of
    the simplified live CD. I may bring it back at the cost of CD space,
    or we may do something else in the simplified environment; this has
    not yet been decided.

  * Network devices that require firmware will not be detected by the
    installer (a udev-udeb bug).

  * If the installer fails to detect your network card, then it's harder
    than it should be to continue without the network card and sort it
    out later. This bug was introduced by moving to the new apt-setup.

  * The live CD now uses unionfs, which seems very flaky on powerpc.
    Testing is welcome to check that it isn't just my machine; if that's
    the case, we will drop back to the old device-mapper snapshot
    approach there.


If you're interested in following changes as we further develop Dapper,
have a look at the dapper-changes list:

  http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/dapper-changes

We also suggest that you subscribe to the ubuntu-devel-announce list if
you're interested in following Ubuntu development. This is a low-traffic
list (a few posts a week) carrying announcements of approved
specifications, policy changes, alpha releases, and other interesting
events. Future Flight CD announcements may only go to this list.

  http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-announce

The Testing area of the wiki suggests various tests that can be
performed on Flight CD releases to try to catch bugs far enough before
the final release that they can be fixed:

  http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing

Bug reports should go here for now (although we intend to switch over to
Launchpad's bug tracking facilities soon):

  https://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/

Enjoy,

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]
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