Upgrading from Hardy

[Gregory Gamble]

Dear Nils

Thanks for all the assistance so far. I thought I'd let you know how I was getting on.
It seems I must have corrupted something important with my early forays into installing lucid ...
all attempts without erasing everything and starting afresh failed.

So I copied all my important files to some 8GB USB sticks ... and tried a from-scratch erasing-everything
install of Lucid. This succeeded. Somewhere in this process I found that the USB sticks were indeed
coming up as options for booting from when I hit the F12 button after start up. This was me not understanding
how it all worked ... I thought I had to hit F2 and change the order of priority ... look at HDD, then ... .

Anyway, I managed to install a working Lucid system.

So next I tried to install Trusty from the boot-usb stick, but I just got a black screen.
After reading a bit more, I found I could do: apt-get install usb-creator-gtk and then use the Make StartUp Disk tool
to create a bootable USB stick ... so I tried that ... and it seemed to be working but I was using same the image as for
the boot-usb stick ... and while it looked to be working it eventually went black screen too. So I thought perhaps it
was the image file that was the problem ... so I downloaded a slightly later version and used the same method of
creating a Trusty image on a USB stick. This one worked ... or at least it gave me a screen where it gave me the option
to install like Lucid, so I went through the same process ... but partway through the screen went all funny and that
was that. 

So now I'm going to try installing Precise from USB ... but this time I'll try doing it without erasing everything.
I'm half thinking that there's an inbuilt assumption that the PC has USB 2 or USB 3 ... and expecting faster speeds
that mine is capable of. Anyway if I succeed with Precise, I'll give Trusty another go. And if Precise fails, I may
try getting  a couple of DVDs and burning Precise and Trusty to those.

Thanks for all your advice it's been invaluable ... I can't see how I'd be where I am now without you steering me.

I may yet buy myself a new PC ... but I'd like to convince myself a little more that I've reached that point where I need one.

Regards and thanks again,
Greg G
________________________________________
From: ubuntu-users-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com [ubuntu-users-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com] On Behalf Of Nils Kassube [kassube at gmx.net]
Sent: Wednesday, February 03, 2016 3:19 PM
To: ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
Subject: Re: Upgrading from Hardy

Gregory Gamble wrote:
> I had tried the apt-get approach to getting to Lucid, but I think I
> did one step too many ... and it won't boot from the disk. So I tried
> the CD I burnt ... it seems I can't install from it as it wants to
> repartition. Fortunately all my home area and /usr/local stuff seems
> to be intact.

Well, it wants to know the partition(s) to use for the new install,
which usually means to repartition. However at the step where you select
the new disk layout, there is also the option to manually select the
partitions. Use this manual partitioning option. Then you have to select
the partition for "/". Check which file system type is used on you
current "/" partition - IIRC the default was ext3 for hardy. Then select
the partition and make sure to select the same file system type which is
in use now. Furthermore, you should make sure that the option to format
the partition is NOT set. Only if it doesn't format the partition, it
will preserve "/home" and some other directories.

> I can boot a trial Lucid from the CD I burned.
>
> I tried using gparted etc as mentioned in [1] to create a boot-able
> USB, and I believe it's configured exactly the way you describe.
>
> It looks as if I can't configure to boot from USB ... I tried to get
> it to configure booting from removable media in the BIOS, but it
> doesn't seem to want to do that.

If there is no boot option in the BIOS which really mentions USB, the
BIOS doesn't know how to do it. Then "removable" media is limited to
CD/DVD and floppy.

> Is it possible to configure "Restart..." in the ubuntu logout menu to
> load from /media/boot-usb (that's the label I configured it with).

I don't think there is such an option. But you could use the method I
used to boot from an ISO file on the USB stick to boot from the ISO file
located on your hard disk. Please have a look at [1] for the details.
Then you reboot and select the new entry from the boot menu.

> I did also try 'Install Ubuntu 10.04 LTS' but I quit at Step 5 when it
> wanted to re-partition the hard disk which I thought would just erase
> my /home area and /usr/local.

See above - the repartitioning step is where you must make sure that the
partition will not be formatted.

> And what about repairing my Lucid installation so it boots from HDD ?

You could start the lucid CD and from the live system reinstall grub to
the hdd. Please have a look at [2].

> ... or perhaps installing Trusty from:
> /media/boot-usb/isos/ubuntu-14.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso ?

You mean from your USB stick mounted at "/media/boot-usb"? No, I don't
think that works because after you reboot, the USB stick is no longer
mounted. But you can use the ISO file on the hdd (see above).


Nils

[1] <https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/ISOBoot#Creating_the_GRUB_2_Menuentry>
[2] <https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/Installing#via_the_LiveCD_terminal>


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