Comment 0 for bug 64765

Binary package hint: installation-guide-i386

I've tried to install Ubuntu without official installation media, using only manual installation as described in Ubuntu Installation Guide (for Edgy):

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/i/installation-guide/installation-guide-i386_20060726ubuntu2_all.deb
-> "D.4. Installing Ubuntu from a Unix/Linux System"

Having installed Gentoo manually several times as well as Debian/SPARC, Ubuntu/i386 and after upgrading recently a Hoary installation to Dapper I thought about giving this method a spin. I've used a live CD distribution (PCLinuxOS .93A to be exact) and tried to follow the steps from the guide. Here are brief results with several recommendations:

1. Partitioning and creating filesystems went without any trouble.

2. Installing debootstrap was a bit puzzling, because the guide mentions the following naming scheme:

   debootstrap_0.X.X_arch.deb

This only applies to older versions of debootstrap (like 0.2.39ubuntu22 or 0.2.45ubuntu27):

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/d/debootstrap/debootstrap_0.2.39ubuntu22_i386.deb
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/d/debootstrap/debootstrap_0.2.45ubuntu27_i386.deb

Problem is, these versions do not support Edgy - they don't contain required scripts. Only version 0.3.3.0ubuntu6 supports Edgy installation and it's no more arch-dependent (contains no binaries and only bash scripts):

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/d/debootstrap/debootstrap_0.3.3.0ubuntu6_all.deb

SUGGESTIONS:
 - change "debootstrap_0.X.X_arch.deb" to " debootstrap_0.X.X_all.deb"
 - remove references to "binary" and "binaries" from the text

3. Creating /etc/fstab went without problems.

4. Configuring the keyboard was unsuccesful at first. Basically dpkg complained about console-data package not being installed (!). I installed two packages to silence it:

apt-get install console-data unicode-data

I need to be honest here - I installed unicode data instinctively, as I have seen that Dapper uses UTF-8 locales by default. After installation of the two aforementioned packages keyboard configuration finished successfully.

5. Network configuration and setting the hostname went without problems.

6. Locale configuration was unsuccesful at first. I installed these two packages:

apt-get install language-pack-en language-pack-pl

which also installed language-pack-en-base and language-pack-pl-base. Installation of these packages triggered the generation of en_* and pl_PL locales. Then:

dpkg-reconfigure locales

succeded, but triggered the generation of en_* locales again (!). However, pl_PL locale was not regenerated - it was considered current. Apart from that, this step finished successfully.

7. Kernel installation was rather easy. Since linux-image-686 turned out to be obsoleted by linux-image-generic I did:

apt-cache search linux-image
apt-get install linux-image-generic

This resulted in the screen notifying about initrd installation. As suggested, I've chosen not to proceed and added the /etc/linux-kern.conf (IIRC) with the line suggested by the message. Then:

apt-get install linux-image-generic

failed miserably. I needed to remove and reinstall the meta-package in order to proceed:

apt-get remove linux-image-generic
apt-get install linux-image-generic

8. Setting up a boot loader gave me the most trouble. I wanted to go with grub:

apt-get install grub

Somehow this didn't put any files nor dirs in /boot directory. So I've tried to automatically create a proper configuration, by using grub-update - but it notified me about missing /boot/grub directory. Finally I did:

mkdir /boot/grub
grub-update

This created /boot/grub/menu.lst file, but nothing else. By running:

dpkg -L grub

I was able to find out where are the grub files. Then I've copied them by hand:

for f in /lib/grub/i386-pc/*; do cp -a ${f} /boot/grub; done

Then grub complained about not being able to locate (hd0,2), where I wanted it to be installed. Soon I've found out that there was no /dev/hd* device nodes, nor /dev/sd* to be fair. I needed to create a bunch of them manually:

cd /dev
mknod -m 660 hda b 3 0
mknod -m 660 hda1 b 3 1
mknod -m 660 hda2 b 3 2
mknod -m 660 hda3 b 3 3
mknod -m 660 hda4 b 3 4
...

All this allowed grub to be installed on /dev/hda3 partition. I needed also to tweak /boot/grub/menu.lst a bit (mostly change "(hd0,0)" to "(hd0,2)") and issue grub-update once again, but now it was easy compared to the problems described.

SUGGESTION: figure out carefully grub installation method and describe it in the guide.

9. Creating a user, admin group and adding user to it went without any problems.

10. Reboot greeted me with unexpected problem, namely "savedefault" option in menu.lst prevented the system from starting. Removing this line resolved this problem for good.

11. installing the Ubuntu Desktop via:

sudo tasksel install ubuntu-standard ubuntu-desktop

was unsuccessful (there is no "ubuntu-standard" task). The shorter version:

sudo tasksel install ubuntu-desktop

took almost an hour (it was a slow machine, 1,7 Celeron, 256MB RAM), but eventually it succeeded. It was a reat reward after all the struggle! :)

Finishing thoughts:

I'm not sure if these are the real, repeatable problems or if this was the classical example of PEBKAC. I suggest someone to take a similar approach and try to install Edgy using this method, before making a final release. Some of these problems may quite easily be resolved by changing the dependencies of packages. Some may require documenting additional steps.

I've managed to overcome all those hurdles, but given the fact that they exist today means that the current documentation is at least misleading. Please look into it, if you have time. I was abel to deal with this breakage, but not everyone have to be so lucky.

With best regards,
Wiktor Wandachowicz