run ubiquity without starting full desktop

[Tormod Volden]

Binary package hint: ubiquity

Computers with 256MB of RAM or lower often work well once Ubuntu is installed. They are also able to run ubiquity. However, running ubiquity inside a full live session is too much, and the installer will die, often in the middle of the installation. A simple way of running ubiquity from the Desktop CD without starting the full live session is therefore needed for these machines.

This is easily done by inserting a hook in the gdm Xsession script to start ubiquity, similar to the "Failsafe Terminal" option.

Of course, the Alternate installer is an option, but it's such a shame to not use the beautiful ubiquity installer when in fact it can be used.

[Tormod Volden (tormodvolden)]

Here is a patch for gdm that includes a hook. It is perfectly non-invasive. When specifiying the boot option "only-ubiquity", ubiquity will be directly started on boot, instead of the gnome live session.

Evan D mentioned the "automatic-ubiquity" option which is part of the wubi framework. However, it uses the ubiquity --automatic option which is rather scary and my testing has shown that it is not a good alternative (for instance parted-server started doing a lot automatically without asking). Anyway, the future of wubi in Gutsy is uncertain at the best.

My patch actually works, today, and would be nice to have in Gutsy, even as a hidden and unsupported option for those of us who need it.

[irongrunty (wtfmanthatsnotcool)]

seconded, it would be nice.

and documentation about it would also be nice as well.

[Tormod Volden (tormodvolden)]

Here's another alternative, maybe the cleaner way to do it. The patch makes the ubiquity initscript handle the only-ubiquity boot flag (with manual installation) in addition to the automatic-ubiquity boot flag (for automatic installation).

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

ubiquity (1.6.2) gutsy; urgency=low

  [ Evan Dandrea ]
  * Add 'only-ubiquity' option to kernel cmdline to run ubiquity in a
    minimal session. Thanks Tormod Volden (LP: #148341).
  * Filter out partition selections that do not have any users.

  [ Jonathan Riddell ]
  * KDE frontend:
   - Change ext3 to a less dangerous looking colour than red

  [ Colin Watson ]
  * Disable the intro message, as Ubuntu 7.10 is approaching.
  * Update translations from Rosetta.
  * Automatic update of included source packages: choose-mirror 2.15ubuntu2,
    debian-installer-utils 1.48ubuntu2.

 -- Colin Watson <email address hidden> Fri, 05 Oct 2007 13:23:00 +0100

[Aaron Whitehouse (aaron-whitehouse)]

This mode should be automatically invoked if the user does not have sufficient RAM for the normal session. See Bug #156039