broken iso link on https://help.ubuntu.com/8.04/serverguide/C/jeos-initial-setup.html

[Marius Gedminas]

Binary package hint: ubuntu-docs

https://help.ubuntu.com/8.04/serverguide/C/jeos-initial-setup.html says

  wget http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/jeos/releases/8.04/release/ubuntu-8.04-jeos-i386.iso

that URL gives a 404 error. The correct link (currently) is

  wget http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/jeos/releases/8.04/release/jeos-8.04.2-jeos-i386.iso

[Connor Imes (ckimes)]

Thank you for reporting this bug, I'll put together a patch for the file.

[Connor Imes (ckimes)]

Ok, I've run into a bit of a problem and need some advice from other doc team members. We currently have the variable "distro-rev" which is set at "8.04" for the hardy branch. Am I correct in saying that this is declared in libs/global.ent?

Now this variable seems to work in most places so we shouldn't change it, but we don't seem to have one for point releases (e.g. 8.04.2). The link in question for this bug is making use of the distro-rev variable, twice actually. I could hardcode a ".2" after the second appearance of the variable (see below), but the problem would simply resurface when 8.04.3 is released and the file online is updated. It's possible that this problem exists elsewhere and simply hasn't been reported.

The line in question is:
<command>wget http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/jeos/releases/&distro-rev;/release/ubuntu-&distro-rev;-jeos-i386.iso</command>

The "ubuntu-" part needs to be removed, but the distro-rev following it currently needs a .2 appended.

How do we proceed?

[Artur Szymanski (arteek)]

Connor, what do you think about add to global.ent additional entity, eg. <!ENTITY distro-extraver '.2'>?
Then you could use it in document:
<command>wget http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/jeos/releases/&distro-rev;/release/ubuntu-&distro-rev;&distro-extraver;-jeos-i386.iso</command>
In case of normal release distro-extraver would be empty ('').
We could change distro-extraver entity only within global.ent file.
I tested it and it works.

[Connor Imes (ckimes)]

Artur, that is what I was thinking, but I'm just not sure on the repercussions of doing that, I think Matthew needs to comment. I would try and match the naming convention as closely as possible, and make it a fully unique string of the Ubuntu version.

Example:
   <!ENTITY distro-rev-point '8.04.2'>
In the case that it was the same as the distro-rev version since they don't use a ".0" - (let's plan for 10.04), you just set it:
   <!ENTITY distro-rev-point '10.04'>
and later becomes
   <!ENTITY distro-rev-point '10.04.1'>
and so on.

Then our documentation line becomes:
<command>wget http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/jeos/releases/&distro-rev;/release/ubuntu-&distro-rev-point;-jeos-i386.iso</command>

I hope that makes sense. Let me know what you think and I'll propose a patch.

[Artur Szymanski (arteek)]

Connor,

For me it looks reasonably. Although for regular releases these two entities would be the same.

[Connor Imes (ckimes)]

Here is a proposed patch for Hardy. It adds a new variable called distro-rev-point and updates 2 links in serverguide's jeos.xml file.

There may be other areas in the documentation where this new variable may be needed (or at least applicable). If we decide to keep this variable, I suppose it will need to be added in Karmic as well. I will propose this bug for Hardy and Karmic tasks, we can reject the latter if desired.

Thank you for your feedback with this report, Artur.

[Matthew East (mdke)]

I was thinking about whether we should be using a variable like this a bit more, and I've had a chat with some of the developers about this. I'm pasting below a snipped version of the log.

The conclusion that was come to is that we should avoid using the point release variable in the documentation. In general, we should use 8.04 for the release, and we should seek to avoid using a string with a point release in it where possible.

The problem with using the point release variable is that each time a point release is issued, we would have to issue an updated package with the variable amended, and to fix all the translations that referred to the previous string (because translations don't use the variable in the same way as the English version).

On that basis, I think the best fix to this bug is to remove the hardcoded url, and use something like this:

"Download the JeOS iso file from the <ulink url="http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/jeos/releases/&distro-rev;/release/">JeOS download page</ulink>."

(That folder will always redirects to the appropriate point release).

----

10:37:44 < mdke> When a point release is issued, does the proper name for a particular release include the point version? So is hardy called 8.04.2 or 8.04?
10:38:12 < mdke> the latter still, right?
10:38:39 < infinity> mdke: Depends on which proper name you're looking at.
10:39:03 < infinity> mdke: Check "lsb_release -a" on a hardy system, for instance.
10:39:11 < infinity> Description: Ubuntu 8.04.2
10:39:11 < infinity> Release: 8.04
10:39:25 < infinity> mdke: The former is the official name/version, which includes the .2
10:39:41 < infinity> mdke: But the release version doesn't increment for the sake of sanity of any tools that might check against that number.
10:40:09 < Amaranth> 8.04.2 sounds like it should have been released 2 April 2008 :P
10:40:20 < mdke> I see that http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download uses 8.04
10:40:40 < mdke> what I'm looking at is whether, and if so when, in the documentation we should update version numbers
10:41:01 < infinity> mdke: In the docs? Never, IMO.
10:41:09 < mdke> in some cases it's essential, because links to isos are broken (the iso has .2 in the name)
10:41:19 < infinity> mdke: Any links to download stuff end up symlinked with 8.04->8.04.$current anyway.
10:41:41 < mdke> http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/jeos/releases/8.04/release/ubuntu-8.04-jeos-i386.iso doesn't
10:41:44 < infinity> mdke: And do docs actually link directly to ISOs, rather than pages listing said ISOs?
10:42:14 < mdke> in one place, I think, bug 371773
10:42:16 < ubottu> Launchpad bug 371773 in ubuntu-docs "broken iso link on https://help.ubuntu.com/8.04/serverguide/C/jeos-initial-setup.html" [Medium,Triaged] https://launchpad.net/bugs/371773
10:43:07 < cjwatson> the directory is symlinked but the ISO basename isn't
10:43:14 < infinity> mdke: Yeah, I'd call that a bug in the way the docs are written, IMO...
10:43:29 < mdke> perhaps linking to the directory is a better solution, even if it requires the user to do a bit more work
10:43:59 < cjwatson> anyway, in general I think of 8.04 as the "series" and 8.04.2 as identifying a specific point
10:44:00 < mdke> d...

[Connor Imes (ckimes)]

Thanks Matthew, I understand the developers' concern with adding such a tag. I'll come up with a new proposed patch.

[Connor Imes (ckimes)]

Ok, I'm running into a bit of a dilemma. Currently the documentation states that you can download the _latest_ JeOS from such-and-such site which links to the 8.04 JeOS page.

Do we want to change the string in the documentation to say something like, "You can download JeOS from ..." and keep the existing link - http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/jeos/releases/8.04/release/
so that the host and guest versions match, OR...
Do we want to keep the idea of getting the _latest_ and link here instead - http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/jeos/releases/
such that when a new version is released, a user running Hardy as the host OS can grab a newer JeOS to run as a guest in a VM?

Thanks in advance for feedback on this.

[Adam Sommer (asommer)]

Hello Connor,

Thanks for working on this. I like the idea of linking to http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/jeos/releases/ and mentioning that's where to find the latest release.

I think users will be able to navigate to the latest once they find their way to that page.

Thanks again,
Adam

[Matthew East (mdke)]

Is there an issue with linking to the latest version if it means that the other instructions in the JeOS section of the guide might not work for that version of JeOS?

If so, probably the best approach is to link to the same version of JeOS as is documented in the guide.

[Connor Imes (ckimes)]

I think you're probably correct Matthew. It would be nice to also add a
note about getting newer versions, but seeing as there currently aren't
any and this is going to be a SRU, we probably shouldn't.

Adam, thanks for your feedback, but given that the rest of the
documentation is going to be geared toward JeOS 8.04, it's is probably
best to stick to that. We're not clear on what compatibility issues may
exist with the documentation or with the actual functionality.

Matthew East wrote:
> Is there an issue with linking to the latest version if it means that
> the other instructions in the JeOS section of the guide might not work
> for that version of JeOS?
>
> If so, probably the best approach is to link to the same version of JeOS
> as is documented in the guide.
>
>

[Connor Imes (ckimes)]

Sorry for the delay.

Here is an updated patch for Hardy. I had it link to the page where a user can download the Hardy version of JeOS such that it matches the rest of the documentation (per Matthew's comment). This also makes it line up with the link to the MD5SUMS file. I also reworded the sentence to make sense for this, and removed the portion related to directly downloading the .iso image.

I will prepare a patch for Karmic as well, which may or may not include more complex changes.

[Connor Imes (ckimes)]

On further inspection this isn't a problem in later versions of documentation, so this bug can be rejected for Karmic since we won't be adding variables either.

I just realized in my previous patch that I hardcoded the 8.04 from a copy/paste of the link. Sorry, here's an adjustment. I also updated the name of the link in this updated patch to match Matthew's idea for "JeOS download page."

Ok we're done, really! Thanks everybody for your input and feedback.

[Connor Imes (ckimes)]

The patch posted yesterday is for Hardy, adjusting release assignments and status accordingly.

[Connor Imes (ckimes)]

Hardy is EOL