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bbfa235
(Get the code!)
How to safely "follow" an Alpha release.
I do, in fact, use Karmic on two media production machines-but I can recover a dead OS in 30 minutes tops.
Here's how:
1: some time ago, I prepared a bootable flash drive with Ubuntu on it. Any version will do, so long as
(in my case) it has cryptsetup on it and can handle the LUKS partition that is my home partitiojn.
2: Before upgrading to an alpha, I made a dd copy of /dev/sda1, my operating system partition, put the image in my home directory, set it up on /dev/loop0, and checked it with fsck.
3: I then upgraded the laptop to Karmic and saved the packages. That day's upgrade worked. My first Jaunty Upgrade(in Alpha 4) did not, so I dd'd the old OS image back onto sda1 until Alpha 5 was out that time around. When the laptop worked this time around, I transferred the packages to the offline desktop and used dpkg -i force-all * to put them in, also giving dpkg the option to tolerate 1,000 errors instead of just 50. It worked again.
4: Next, I made another dd copy of /dev/sda1 (you can do this while booted on it, it need not be quiescent), checked it, made a tarball of the last one, and deleted the previous original image.
5: When that buggy mountall/upstart combo broke things, I tried reinstalling old packages, no dice. Instead, I booted from the flash drive, mounted the home partition on /media/HDsecurity, and used dd to putn my last good setup (the Sep 11 one) back on /dev/sda1. I then rebooted, took those saved packages, upgraded to just before the trouble, and saved another dd copy, deleting the previous one.
When I hear mountall works, I will first make a fresh OS copy, then install it and see.
Alphas break-nautilus quit in Hardy Alpha 4, a libc6 upgrade broke Gutsy, nvidia didn't work in early Jaunty, you name it! That's how the bufgs are found so they can be squashed.
When you use alphas, you must understand your system and budget time for repairs. You wil learn much-and soon be able to fix the shit that breaks because of your own mistakes.