upgrade to 64

[geezer]

I just upgraded from 9.10 32 bit to 10.04 32 bit.

First time I have had a seamless upgrade. Getting better.

However, this upgrade is only a temporary fix. What I really want in the near future, is to upgrade to 64 bit and reformat my root partition to ext4 from ext3.

I am really, really holding back because I have a fair number (more than 2 ) of packages that are not in the standard distribution on the Live-CD. Some of them I readily know like Sun's VirtualBox and some I have absolutely no notion of the name of the package, like that little one that sits on the desktop and shows the current weather at a location I have set.

So before I upgrade to 64 bit, I need some way of storing a list or something of the packages I have installed which I can then use to install desired packages after the upgrade. Maybe all of the currently installed packages that are not on the Live-CD.

Is there any way of accomplishing this? An automated process would be the best.

[Snowhog]

Re: upgrade to 64

Is there any way of accomplishing this? An automated process would be the best.

This is Linux. Of course there is a way.

dpkg --get-selections | grep -v deinstall > installed-packages

This creates a list of the packages that are installed on your system. In the code above, it writes the output to a file, in your home directory, called installed-packages.

[geezer]

Re: upgrade to 64

I assume that the list is then used as:

dpkg < installed-packages

and that all packages that are already installed are ignored?

[Snowhog]

Re: upgrade to 64

Generate a list of all installed packages on your system:

dpkg --get-selections | grep -v deinstall > installed-packages

Then, after reinstalling Kubuntu, you can use this list to reinstall those packages:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
dpkg --set-selections < installed-packages
sudo dselect

[sixonetonoffun]

Re: upgrade to 64

I tried this and noticed you left out

sudo apt-get install dselect

Be interesting to see how it works out.

[MoonRise]

Re: upgrade to 64

And here I've been doing it the hard way!!

[sixonetonoffun]

Re: upgrade to 64

Fetched 781MB in 1h 43min 22s (126kB/s)
Extracting templates from packages: 100%
Preconfiguring packages ...

Pretty cool move there at any rate. I could never have done this before 3G its been an eye opening experience! I'm one of those lucky few who can see the DSL line but its still 1 mile away!

[geezer]

Re: upgrade to 64

foiled by the Kubuntu installer.

By upgrading to 10.04 32 bit, when the 10.04 64 bit installer sees the 32 bit installation, it refuses to allow me to install over the 32 bit upgrade.

I have 3 hard disks:

• sda
  • sda1 - Vista, ntfs
  • sda2 - backup1, ext4
  
  
• sdb
  • sdb1 - /, ext3 - currently 10.04 32 bit and where I want to install 10.04 64 bit
  • sdb6 - /home, ext4
• sdc
  • sdc5 - fat32
  • sdc6 - backup2, ext4

The 10.04 installation, absolutely reuses to list the sdb hard disk. I think it sees the 10.04 installation and is protecting me from installing over a current Kubuntu OS.

[dibl]

Re: upgrade to 64

I do not understand the partition numbering of those drives ....

However, setting that aside, why don't you just use GParted and re-format the second hard drive/first partition, if that's where you want the 64-bit OS? I like the Parted Magic Live CD, from here: http://partedmagic.com/download.html

Also, I like the "Alternate Install" CD, and if you choose "manual" partitioning I think it will absolutely let you choose that /dev/sdb1 partition.

[geezer]

Re: upgrade to 64

I do not understand the partition numbering of those drives ....

However, setting that aside, why don't you just use GParted and re-format the second hard drive/first partition, if that's where you want the 64-bit OS? I like the Parted Magic Live CD, from here: http://partedmagic.com/download.html

Also, I like the "Alternate Install" CD, and if you choose "manual" partitioning I think it will absolutely let you choose that /dev/sdb1 partition.

Thanks - I have the Parted Magic CD downloading now. I always have a hard time keeping my heart in my chest when I do something drastic like formatting my root partition. But since I will immediately re-boot with the Live-CD as soon as the formatting is completed, it should be no problem (fingers crossed). Would the Live-CD allow me to use the Parted Magic Live-CD to do the re-formatting and then just do the install from the Live-CD?

I understand your confusion with the partition numbering - it makes no sense to me either.

[geezer]

Re: upgrade to 64

Cannot install 64 bit Kubuntu.

Downloaded Parted Magic and formatted my root partition to ext4.

I thought this would solve the problem of the installer not listing sdb for me to install on over the 10.04 32 bit installation.

Booted the Live-CD and tried to install - THE INSTALLER STILL DOES NOT LIST SDB-1 FOR INSTALLATION.

The whole sdb hard disk is either not seen by the installer or it has somehow determined that it cannot install on that disk.

How do I force the installer to recognize the sdb hard disk (NOTE: I have listed the disks and partitions above in previous post)??

Since I formatted the root partition from ext3 to ext4 I cannot go back to the 32 bit 10.04 and am dead in the water until this problem with the installer is solved.

Thanks for any help you can offer.

[geezer]

Re: upgrade to 64

I've comeup with 2 tentative solutions:

• install 9.10 and then immediately install 10.04
• I'm running the Live-CD now and have the alternate CD downloading now. When that download finishes, use K3b to write the ISO to a CD and try installing with that.

Any thoughts as to a quicker easier route??

[geezer]

Re: upgrade to 64

This is getting really ridiculous.

Tried installing 9.10 - same result as with 10.04 - refuses to list sdb as a disk that can be installed to.

Dropped back to 8.04. Installation worked and the sdb disk was there and I installed to it.

Then rebooted with 10.04 Live-CD and tried to install. Again it refuses to list sdb as a disk that it will install to. Opened Dolphin and all of the disks and patritions are there and I can browse the directories.

BUT the installation program refuses to list sdb as available for installation.

Will try installing 9.10 over 8.04 and see if that works. If so then maybe I can install 10.04 over 9.10.

[dibl]

Re: upgrade to 64

Booted the Live-CD and tried to install - THE INSTALLER STILL DOES NOT LIST SDB-1 FOR INSTALLATION.

The whole sdb hard disk is either not seen by the installer or it has somehow determined that it cannot install on that disk.

How do I force the installer to recognize the sdb hard disk (NOTE: I have listed the disks and partitions above in previous post)??

I'm pretty certain you are seeing a "SATA mode" issue here. I have seen it when installing Kubuntu -- it is actually in the Ubiquity installer.

In your BIOS, (which needs to be flashed to its latest update, btw), when you go to the "hard drives" or "storage" page, and look at the SATA information, it will list a mode for each drive (or perhaps for both drives). For installation, you may need to set it to "Legacy IDE" or "Legacy". Then the drives and partitions should be visible to Ubiquity. After Kubuntu is installed and you can boot it, you can go into BIOS and set the SATA mode back to "AHCI", which is the higher-performance mode.

Or so goes my experience ....

[geezer]

Re: upgrade to 64

Okay - I FINALLY have a working installation again.

If it wasn't so sad and frustrating, it might actually be funny.

After doing the 8.04 and 9.10 installations, the 10.04 Live-Cd installation still simply would not work.

Finally, in desperation more than hope, tried the alternate CD.

Well, it's should be called legacy installation really, because it is the way the installation was before the real fancy GUI.

Holding my breath until it got to the disk scanning part where you can see the disks and set the mount points.

VICTORY - sdb was actually known and listed. I guess the disk scanning s/w on the alternate CD installation is different from the scanning s/w on the Live-CD installation. Which is strange since sdb was found under dolphin on the Live-CD. strange.

I was so nervous, that I think I got the 2 partitions on sdb reversed and installed the root on what should have bee the '/home' partition and may have left the '/home' partition out.

Anyway, on reboot, the partitions that were supposed to be mounted under '/home/backup-1' and /home/backup-2' couldn't be mounted. Of course the error message simply said that it was waiting for them to be mounted, not that the mount point didn't exists.

The only way I finally realized the error was to write down the UUIDs and boot the Parted Magic CD and look at the various UUIDs. The light dawned on what I had done.

Rebooted the alternate CD and went through the installation again with particular attention to the partitions and the mount points. Of course I had to format what had been my '/home' partition because the first install had done that anyway..

Then a horrible problem - GRUB couldn't find a certain file and dumped me into "GRUB-rescue" or some such thing. Total mystery as to what I was supposed to do there.

Rebooted alternate CD again and re-installed again and again paying very close attention to the various partitions. Then sat back and waited and waited and waited and waited - I was getting very good at that part of the installation. This time I was being a little more observant when the install GRUB section came up. The s/w flashed a screen for about 2 or 3 seconds about where it was installing GRUB.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

The Live-CD installed GRUB on the sdb MBR since that was where Kubuntu was installed.

The alternate CD installed GRUB on the sda MBR since that is the first hard disk.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

on the reboot after the install, I pressed F2 for the BIOS menus and changed the hard disk boot sequence from sdb, sda, sdc to sda, sdb, sdc.

Grub loaded and booted fine now.

Second task was to copy my old home directory from sdc to the newly formated home directory, 25+ GB.

Rebooted and got back most of what I had.

Now to do the package restoration and see where I am then.

I hope they fix the problem with the installation disk scanning s/w on the Live-CD - it simply does not work. The s/w on the alternate CD does work.

Any place to report the problem?? I really want them to be aware of and FIX the problem