Newbie questions

[Joseph Areeda]

Thank you for the discussion Ronald.  I've been experimenting with natty 
and gaining confidence in a VM with a little dabbling on a new system.  
I've been working with CUDA apps on Maverick so I will probably 
participate in the nVidia installation tests

If I understand the gist of your comments I'd say:

There are so many things to test that using Natty anyway I can is 
helpful to some extent.  To test the installation uses the live CD, to 
test the packages update regularly, to test the hardware drivers use 
real hardware.

Is that close?

Some of my questions weren't clear but your discussion was useful.  My 
first question would have been better phrased "Should I start with a 
live CD install every time?".  And the answer is yes, if I'm testing 
installation procedures.

Your question:
> Why are you having to run Update Manager with LD_PRELOAD?  That one does
> sound like a bug, but it may be a known one (I haven't checked).
Yes it is a known bug, that's how I got the work around.  Seems to be 
fixed now, it had to with the order libraries were loaded.

I've also been trying to get started with the Bug squad and now have a 
better feel for when to report something as a bug.  I still like to get 
a crash report request or see it twice before I do but I'm less shy 
about filing an operator error as a bug.

As a newb in qa and bug squad (not development or unix) I have to say my 
biggest frustration is the proper answer to "where do I start?",  "what 
do I do now?"  seems to always be "start anywhere you want and do 
anything you want".  Not knowing what I want yet makes that weird.

I'm keeping notes with a wiki page in mind for the new guy.  Like so 
much in this business things things seem incomprehensible and 
overwhelming one minute then trivial and obvious the next.  That makes 
it real hard for those of you who know what you're doing to communicate 
to those of us who haven't had that AHA moment.

You've been a big help.

Thanks!
Joe

On 03/18/2011 05:53 AM, Ronald McCollam wrote:
> On Fri, 2011-03-11 at 07:06 -0800, Joseph Areeda wrote:
>> Greetings,
> Howdy! :)
>
>> I'm just getting used to all the changes in the UI in Natty.  I'm using
>> zsync to update the daily iso.  Is it necessary [or helpful] to wipe and
>> reinstall the iso every day?  I guess since I'm having install issues, I
>> should, but it's a bit of a process.
> Do you mean wipe the [virtual] machine that you tested the install on?
> If so, not really -- the install process should do that for you as long
> as you select 'erase and use the entire disk' during install.
>
> If you mean should you delete the ISO file before running zsync,
> definitely not.  zsync will use the file you have and download only the
> parts that have changed, so you'll download much much less data (and it
> will go faster).  If you delete the ISO first, zsync will have to grab
> the entire thing.
>
> zsync performs tests to be sure you have the correct bits, but you can
> always check yourself as well.  Use 'md5sum' and the published md5sums
> on cdimage.ubuntu.com in the same directory as the ISO.
>
>> Once I install an iso, should I do apt-get upgrade or work with the
>> packages on the CD?
> That depends a bit on what you're testing.  If you're testing a
> particular image (ISO testing) you want to stick with what was installed
> from the CD.  If you're doing general testing, you can do either -- but
> if you find a bug you'll want to upgrade anyway to make sure it hasn't
> been fixed since the image was created.
>
>> What about reporting problems that show up in the logs but not in the
>> UI?  Are those worth emails to this list?  For example, I'm having
>> trouble with the Update Center so I have to run it from the command line
>> with LD_PRELOAD and in the window I see "software-center.apt.aptcache -
>> WARNING - broken packages encountered while getting deps for daily-journal"
> The deps issue is *probably* just an indication that some packages
> haven't been fully updated in the repository.  I wouldn't worry about it
> unless it persists.
>
> Why are you having to run Update Manager with LD_PRELOAD?  That one does
> sound like a bug, but it may be a known one (I haven't checked).
>
>> As the new guy, I'm a little shy about filing bug reports until I can
>> figure out if it's me or Natty.  Is it better to ask or file bugs that
>> turn out to be my inexperience?
> When in doubt, file the bug. :)  It's better to catch things as early as
> possible, and if it turns out to not be a bug it's generally pretty
> quick to tell and close it out.  Just be sure to search in launchpad
> before filing a bug to make sure it's not already there. :)
>
>> I have a lot more questions like these but let's see if this email makes
>> it to the list.
> Got it here!  Thanks for helping!
>
>   - rm