Ubuntu Upgrade from 11.10. to 12.04

[Gilles Gravier]

Hi!

On 03/05/2012 19:29, Peter Hillier-Brook wrote:
> On 03/05/12 17:18, Gilles Gravier wrote:
>> Hi!
>>
>> On 03/05/2012 17:53, Peter Hillier-Brook wrote:
>>> I recently upgraded as above and all went well with 2 exceptions.
>>>
>>> 1    Upgrade Manager went into an infinite loop during the attempted
>>> download of the flash-plugin installer. Manual download outside of the
>>> Upgrade Manager succeeded whilst the afore mentioned program was
>>> looping
>>
>> Strange, but maybe adobe's site was down? Mine upgraded, including
>> flash-plugins...
>
> Maybe you missed the part where I said, "Manual download outside of
> the Update Manager succeeded *whilst* the afore mentioned program was
> looping?
Nope. But when distupgrade tries to get the file it uses the repository.
Which is one server. When you do a manual download, you get it from
another server, probably...

>>> 2    The impertinent programmer struck again and modified my BIOS
>>> without permission (as also happened during upgrade from 11.04 to
>>> 11.10). This cannot be justified as any part of an upgrade process.
>>
>> That's even stranger. How could it have modified BIOS? And more
>> importantly, WHAT did it modify?
>
> How it did it is simple enough, probably via assembler and a BIOS
> call, and what it did was change the boot order of my SATA disks. To
> be precise, it moved the disk with Ubuntu aboard (/dev/sdb) to the top
> of the pile. I normally boot via /dev/sdc which contains my work-a-day
> Kubuntu system and I get to Ubuntu (and Windows 7 on /dev/sda) when
> necessary via grub.
>

Let me guess. You used a removeable disk to install it. Like a USB key?
Or a USB connected CD/DVD-ROM drive? Some BIOSes automatically
reorganize disks when you have or remove such drive between boots. My
Shuttle with AWARD BIOS certainly does.

Other option is that maybe what was reorganized is not at BIOS level,
but just the fact that Ubuntu made a different disk's partition "ACTIVE"
and so the PC is booting on the partition marked at "ACTIVE" by default?
Or did you really go to BIOS and check the physical order of disks (in
which case, check for the previous point - run the machine... plug a USB
attached storage... reboot the machine with disk still attached... and
notice order of boot disks in BIOS... reboot again leaving the disk
attached... turn off the machine... remove the disk and reboot... notice
the BIOS message saying that storage devices were changed...)

Gilles.