Nicely Nitpick Noble 24.04 LTS

[NoWorries]

At least in a VM it was no problem to install Kubuntu 24.04 (development branch) on a virtual drive with an MBR/"dos" partition table and completely without an ESP…

What is the message you get when it fails?

The error message is:

[oshunluvr]

Are you installing to btrfs?

[claydoh]

From the bug report I linked to:


And the temp fix for this mentioned in the bug report is to edit a file before starting the installer in the live session:

To implement it in situ, edit /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/calamares/modules/networkcfg/main.py so that line 158 reads like:
os.chmod(f.fileno(), 0o600)
instead of its current state of:
os.chmod(f, 0o600)

[Schwarzer Kater]

NoWorries: This is what I referred to above (and claydoh , too - a solution is also in his posts above).
It has nothing to do with GPT / MBR partition tables or with "legacy" BIOS / UEFI .

But hopefully …/networkcfg/main.py will be fixed anyway in the next days…

[NoWorries]

I frequently enjoy using the latest software as I find it gives better performance. Unfortunately the latest change to the Lubuntu Calamares installer has resulted in me not being able to install pre-release versions of Noble on my ASUS Laptop that I use for testing.

A fix to solve this problem is provided above at Posts #41 and #48. However, on my ASUS Laptop for a full installation, I have found that I need to have the installation USB still plugged in for it to work. I have not been able to create an installation USB on Noble that works without any change suggested previously. For each test of progress I download a 3.7GiB iso file and then create a new USB installation disc. I have no idea as to how long this problem with Calamares will take to be fixed for testing my approach to Noble installation.

I just happened to login to my Mantic distribution on my HP Laptop and found an early iso file dated 30/08/23 that I downloaded for Noble. So because of the above uncertainty associated with the Calamares installer, I decided to install a startup USB file using this iso file.

This installation was successful and I had 1133 updates to install to bring my ASUS Laptop up to date. I have now successfully installed all my applications and networked my ASUS to my HP Laptop. So I no longer need to wait for the Calamares based installation to be sorted out.

[Schwarzer Kater]

One could read in Nate's blog today that there will be a Plasma 5.27.12 - so Plasma 5.27 is still looked after (at least a bit…).
Currently the latest version is 5.27.11 and the one in Kubuntu 24.04 LTS is 5.27.10.

I hope Plasma 5.27.12 will also make it into Kubuntu 24.04 LTS.

PS: I think my hope is in vain as Debian testing and unstable both still have Plasma 5.27.10…

[rossdv8]

From the bug report I linked to:


And the temp fix for this mentioned in the bug report is to edit a file before starting the installer in the live session:

I planned to give Kubuntu Nobbly a test just because I had the spare computer set up after testing Neon for the last few months.
I considered doing the edit thing, and decided that would just give me Kubuntu Maniac with a very few mods - so I reinstalled Neon, just to play with Plasma 6 again. I'll install Kubuntu again once it has Plasma 6 and has had time to get the wrinkles ironed out.

[WonkoTheSaneUK]

I'll install Kubuntu again once it has Plasma 6 and has had time to get the wrinkles ironed out.

As things stand, that'll be the 24.10 release ("Oblong Orangutan", or whatever Canonical decide to call it).

[NoWorries]

It's now the final Month before the Release of Noble Numbat 24.04 LTS

This month has been a very torrid time for me after I took the plunge and installed the proposed-plasma ppa. This broke my system and I spent some time in getting back to normal. The problem that I faced was with calamares installer as against the ubiquity installer. The main problem that I faced was that the EFI partition had to be 300 MiB in size and mine was 275 MiB. I could not increase this partition as the Windows partition was the next partition on my system. The calamares installer does not work with a partition smaller than 300 MiB like the ubiquity installer does.

There may be those on this forum who know how to solve this problem. I eventually solved it for me by installing the first iso that I got for Noble which uses the ubiquity installer. I must say that I am not looking forward to being able to install the next Kubuntu Version 24.10 which will undoubtedly have the calamares installer.

Now for the list of Info Version updates in the last month with the Application Version updates.

	2 Month Status	1 Month Status
KDE Plasma Version	5.27.10	5.27.10
KDE Frameworks Version	5.115.0	5.115.0
QT Version	5.15.10	5.15.12
Application Version	4:23.08.5	4:23.08.5
Kernel Version	6.8.0-11-generic	6.8.0-11-generic

Compared with last month where there were many version updates, this month has no version updates. However, many updates this past month have consolidated the existing versions.

I continue to frequently use Noble and appreciate its stability. I assume that other users of Noble are experiencing the same stability. Since Noble is an LTS, I assume the developers are concentrating on providing a stable and reliable system. I hope that those who update their systems to Noble have more success than I did with the calamares installer.

[jglen490]

... The problem that I faced was with calamares installer as against the ubiquity installer. The main problem that I faced was that the EFI partition had to be 300 MiB in size and mine was 275 MiB. ...

Really? My EFI is 100 MB, and has been for a long time! The contents weigh in at 6.1 MB. Have to wonder what's driving this

[Schwarzer Kater]

These 300MB have been the minimum ESP size in several distributions' installers for some time now, many (but not all) of them using the Calamares installer.
I also have wondered what the technical reason is, but found no satisfying answer.

[oshunluvr]

These 300MB have been the minimum ESP size in several distributions' installers for some time now, many (but not all) of them using the Calamares installer.
I also have wondered what the technical reason is, but found no satisfying answer.

I had a discussion at length on reddit about this topic. It seems (as usual maybe) that both sides of the issue (minimal vs. excessive) had valid points. The deeper issue may be that no one has actually set a standard. IMO it depends a lot on whether one uses strictly Linux vs. a mixed environment. Microsith "recommends" 100 MB. My Lenovo laptop with Windows 10 pre-installed had a 256MB EFI partition and currently has Windows 10 and Kubuntu 22.04 installed. So I pulled it out and booted up and here's where it's at:

/efi/BOOT = 3.1 mb
/efi/EFI/Boot = 1.9 mb
/efi/EFI/Microsoft = 26 mb
/efi/EFI/ubuntu = 4.3 mb

There's also an inconsequential amount of "$RECYCLE.BIN" and "System Volume Information." "df" reports a total of 35 mb used on the /boot/efi partition.

Anyway, it seems if you're strictly a Winblows user, 100 MB is probably fine. Even less if you're a single Linux distro user. If you multiboot several Linux distros AND Win-D'oh-s then 256 or up might be a good idea.

I've never seen a valid reason to go beyond that. Honestly, I could install 3-4 more Linux distros and still be under 100 mb.

[NoWorries]

Thanks very much for your systematic analysis. I must say that the ubiquity installer is a far more polite installer than the latest Calamares installer. I just hope that the insistence on 300 MiB is removed as new users wanting to try Noble may have problems which put them off trying Noble. This also overlooks the current problem with the install crashing and needing to edit the main.py file.

[Schwarzer Kater]

oshunluvr : That is exactly what I also have found out and observed - but I still could not name a technical reason for 300MB and above like e.g. Kubuntu 24.04's installer demands it!

For example:
the totally used space on my three ESPs combined (on three different drives) of one of my computers here is "only" 138 MB - for 1x Windows 10 installation and 13x Linux installations…

But the behaviour of some Linux installers is why I have been recommending 304-320MB for an ESP for some time now.

Edit:
to make this clear for everyone -> we are not talking about a /boot partition here, but about what in the average Linux installation is mounted to /boot/efi.

[oshunluvr]

to make this clear for everyone -> we are not talking about a /boot partition here, but about what in the average Linux installation is mounted to /boot/efi.

Excellent thing to point out. Not everyone drills down deep enough into this topic to realize what exactly we're referring to.

As to NoWorries point, I think often the developer(s) may take the easier path of just picking a default rather than offering yet another option for some less experienced user to get confused or make a poor choice of. Referring to the above comment, I could see a novice confusing /boot/efi with /boot and making the partition size many GBs rather than a few MBs.

Still, I have no clue way anyone would think more than 200MB is necessary, but that amount of wasted space is inconsequential these days given drive sizes.

I have an older Asus "ChromeBox" which I hacked and install Kubuntu 18.04 on several years ago. it has a 128G M.2 ssd in it and a 512M efi partition. I can't recall if that was the installer's default or I decided to use that much. It was my first EFI installation so either is just as likely. Regardless, the "wasted" 200-300M isn't worth the hassle of resizing the partitions to recover.

EDIT: I do find it humorous the Windows users will argue for 512-1024M for EFI when MS suggests only 100M.