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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">I'll toss my 2 cents in here as well.
Part of testing is to test out the installer. However, if your
afraid of losing data (and you should have a plan!), one trick I
like to use is to simply crack open my case and disconnect the
hard drive(s) containing my crucial data. Boom, problem solved. No
way is the installer going to nuke me now :-) If you only have one
disk, then this isn't an option for you. But I like to have
separate physical disks for testing for this reason. For example,
if I had a two disk setup I would do this:<br>
<br>
Disk 1:<br>
Partition into as many slots as you'd like, using any partition on
the disk as the root filesystem<br>
<br>
Ubuntu 10.04|Ubuntu12.04|Ubuntu12.10<br>
<br>
Disk 2:<br>
your home folder.. the entire disk, one partition, guard with your
life and have backups :-)<br>
<br>
Now when installing, disconnect disk 2. Do whatever you'd like on
disk 1, and if for some reason the installer wipes the disk and
kills my ubuntu 10.04 and ubuntu 12.04 partitions, I can report
the bug and not lose any sleep over it. Re-installing takes 20
mins. Re-attach my home drive to it and re-sync my installed
packages and I'm back in business.<br>
<br>
Naturally after installing, you could decide if you wanted to
mount disk 2 as /home on any of the root filesystems.. it would be
your choice :-)<br>
<br>
Thanks,<br>
<br>
Nicholas<br>
<br>
P.S. Ohh, btw, this applies to the stable releases too :-) Things
can, will and do break at any time. If your messing with a disk
that has important data (aka partitioning, installing grub,
installing an OS), you better have a impenetrable backup.<br>
<br>
On 08/21/2012 02:53 PM, Dražen wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CADg_278mMFVpa2h+x5iDFBEEfV17Y+fBmPnOEnC8aRM4s5ih3g@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">OK, thanks everybody for your quick suggestions!<br>
<br>
I think what Bryce and Andrea are suggesting would be what I had
in mind (using lxc containers would still prevent me from testing
the latest drivers).<br>
<br>
I'll try it out and add it to the mentioned wiki page as another
method if it works.<br>
<br>
Dražen<br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 7:51 PM, Andrea
Corbellini <span dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:corbellini.andrea@gmail.com" target="_blank">corbellini.andrea@gmail.com</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div class="im">On 19/08/12 20:36, Dražen wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Hi all,<br>
<br>
is there a way to run the development Ubuntu version dual
boot, but by<br>
using the OS installer (and other related stuff) from the
stable version<br>
so that there is little or no chance of it damaging other
partitions<br>
with the stable production installation?<br>
<br>
I'd like to run an Ubuntu+1 version for development and
testing<br>
purposes. Now, I prefer having a dual boot installation to
VMs, because<br>
of the ability to test on actual drivers (which are often
the cause of<br>
why I want to hack something in the first place). After
reading the<br>
description of this method on the wiki page<br>
(<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UsingDevelopmentReleases/OtherWays"
target="_blank">https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UsingDevelopmentReleases/OtherWays</a>)
it seems it<br>
has a major drawback because a bug inside the installer
(or, I guess,<br>
parts of the OS related to mounting other partitions etc.)
could cause<br>
the loss of data on the production installation, which is
quite<br>
unacceptable even with backups, as it takes a lot of time
to recover and<br>
get the system back to a usable state (especially if you
have other OSs<br>
alongside Ubuntu).<br>
<br>
What I'm wondering is if there is a way to run a
development version,<br>
but with certain crucial parts that could tamper with
other partitions<br>
taken from a stable release, where there is a higher level
of confidence<br>
that it won't cause data loss on other partitions. This
would in an<br>
essence be a sort of Ubuntu+1 installation sandboxed
inside a single<br>
partition.<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
</div>
You can do this:<br>
<br>
1. create the target partition and mount it somewhere;<br>
<br>
2. use debootstrap(8) like this: `debootstrap quantal
/somewhere';<br>
<br>
3. chroot into the /somewhere and install the tasksel package;<br>
<br>
4. run `tasksel install ubuntu-desktop';<br>
<br>
5. update grub's configuration as you like.<br>
<br>
This is basically what the Ubuntu installer does. You'll get a
perfectly functioning Ubuntu Desktop without running the live
cd.
<div class="HOEnZb">
<div class="h5"><br>
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
If something like this doesn't exist, would it be very
complicated to<br>
create as, for example, an automatically generated
remix? I think it<br>
would encourage many people to try out the development
version on their<br>
own machines, detecting driver-related errors (which get
masked by using<br>
VMs) much sooner. Also, it would allow developers to run
a development<br>
version straight on their bare metal production machine,
which would be<br>
a performance boost during their work.<br>
<br>
Dražen Lučanin<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
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