Nicely Nitpick Noble 24.04 LTS

[cookiemuncher]

Mine is pretty small

/dev/sda6 vfat 96M 39M 58M 41% /boot/efi

[claydoh]

It may be a useful default if more than /boot/efi is used. Maybe on systems that have different forms of FDE available? It likely is as much a legacy sort of thing, like the "use 1.5x the amount of ram for swap" thing
I see MInt using 500. I don't recall how much my Fedora laptop was using.

[Schwarzer Kater]

Another observation in today's Kubuntu 24.04 (Dev) : Mesa is still at 24.0.1 and I hope that it will be at least at 24.0.3 for release…

[oshunluvr]

It may be a useful default if more than /boot/efi is used. Maybe on systems that have different forms of FDE available? It likely is as much a legacy sort of thing, like the "use 1.5x the amount of ram for swap" thing
I see MInt using 500. I don't recall how much my Fedora laptop was using.

I remember someone saying that some distros Pop!-OS put kernels or something in the efi partition thus requiring more space. I can't recall exactly, but it seemed odd at the time.

[oshunluvr]

I went back over the discussion and it's systemd-boot that uses a separate /boot partition which includes the EFI stuff along with the kernels and etc. In that occasion, you would definitely need a much larger partition - but it's not a /boot/EFI partition it's a /boot partition.

[jglen490]

My EFI is in /boot/efi. The rest of /boot is under / with everything else system-related. THBOMU, EFI gets bootstrapped, and then calls grub which brings in the kernel.

[NoWorries]

After all the problems I had with re-installing Noble and dealing with the 300 MiiB limit, I lost my Windows option in my boot options. So at the moment I have Noble and a re-installed Mantic showing on my boot options. For this system I did the following in superuser mode for my efi partition:

root@user:/boot/efi# du efi -ah
2.5M    efi/ubuntu/grubx64.efi
940K    efi/ubuntu/shimx64.efi
844K    efi/ubuntu/mmx64.efi
4.0K    efi/ubuntu/BOOTX64.CSV
4.0K    efi/ubuntu/grub.cfg
4.3M    efi/ubuntu
940K    efi/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI
88K     efi/BOOT/fbx64.efi
844K    efi/BOOT/mmx64.efi
1.9M    efi/BOOT
6.1M    efi
root@user:/boot/efi#
​

When I add up all these numbers, I get 26.456 MiB. Even if you add 100 MiB for Windows, this is much less than 300 MiB!

I just hope that those who deal with the developers can convince them to either modify the Calamares installer or revert to the Ubiquity install for Noble. After all, Ubiquity works well with Mantic after I had to re-install it following my problems with the Calamares installer and it also worked well when I used an early version of Noble with the Ubiquity installer.

[jlittle]

I had a go this afternoon at installing Noble, not specifying an ESP thus avoiding boot loader problems. It was a struggle, the installer kept crashing.

• The first was the "networkcfg/main.py" problem discussed above, first reported over a month ago. I applied the workaround in the bug report.
• Then it was fstab/main.py, specific to btrfs, trying to change attributes on a swap file. The installer does not have a way to say no swap file; one can say no to a swap partition, or yes, either way a swap file is set up in a subvolume @swap mounted on /swap. By using

sudo calamares -d

I identified the line that was crashing, that run chattr on the swap file, and commented it out.

• There was another crash to do with the swap file, so I tried a few more times with variations on having a swap partition and whether to format it. One attempt succeeded.

I just happened to have a spare volume that I was happy experimenting with; I didn't want to risk trashing my main Kubuntu install by installing Noble into the same btrfs. However, on the spare volume I used there were a few installs, and they appear to have been unaffected.

[jglen490]

At this late in the release cycle, and with the current install issues, looks like waiting for 24.04.1 LTS may be prudent.

[oshunluvr]

At this late in the release cycle, and with the current install issues, looks like waiting for 24.04.1 LTS may be prudent.

Still a full month out and two fairly minor issues with calamares configuration? Minor in terms of having already been identified and apparently fairly simple fixes. Seems a bit early to throw the baby out with the bathwater, doesn't it? IMO this is exactly why users are allowed to get pre-release versions - so these things get worked out before the official ISO is released. Having said that, if one is inclined to desire the least amount of bug related disruption, one has a full year before 22.04 support ends. So why not wait until March 2025 to transition?

It is Linux so we have options! LOL

Also worth noting Plasma 5 is now EOL. Seems likely that Plasma 6 won't be available for Kubuntu users until 24.10.

[Schwarzer Kater]

[…]
Also worth noting Plasma 5 is now EOL. […]

I think not entirely:

5.27 will be supported at least until Plasma 6.0 is released

Currently, no further bugfix release for 5.27 has been scheduled, but this might change in the future

The latest update to Plasma 5.27 (5.27.11) was released three weeks ago and as KDE developers already have posted there will be a Plasma 5.27.12…

[oshunluvr]

I had a go this afternoon at installing Noble, not specifying an ESP thus avoiding boot loader problems. It was a struggle, the installer kept crashing.

• The first was the "networkcfg/main.py" problem discussed above, first reported over a month ago. I applied the workaround in the bug report.
• Then it was fstab/main.py, specific to btrfs, trying to change attributes on a swap file. The installer does not have a way to say no swap file; one can say no to a swap partition, or yes, either way a swap file is set up in a subvolume @swap mounted on /swap. By using

sudo calamares -d

I identified the line that was crashing, that run chattr on the swap file, and commented it out.

• There was another crash to do with the swap file, so I tried a few more times with variations on having a swap partition and whether to format it. One attempt succeeded.

I just happened to have a spare volume that I was happy experimenting with; I didn't want to risk trashing my main Kubuntu install by installing Noble into the same btrfs. However, on the spare volume I used there were a few installs, and they appear to have been unaffected.

I decided to test the above info with this morning's ISO. It appears the BTRFS swapfile issue has been resolved but the networkcfg.py error still exists. Here's the steps I took:

1. I downloaded 03/27 ISO and created new VM (QEMU) and booted to the ISO.
2. I attempted to install using MBR and EXT4 and "whole drive" to purposely avoid the BTRFS/SWAP issue.
3. The Installation failed with network error.

Then I edited line 158 in the file /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/calamares/networkcfg/main.py from

os.chmod(f, 0o0600)

to

os.chmod(f.fileno(), 0o600)

and re-attempted installation. as described above and the installation succeeded.

Then I reattempted the installation as described above EXCEPT I selected BTRFS and "whole drive" and the installation was successful.

I checked the BTRFS file system and found:

• Three subvolumes: @, @home, and @swap.
• Contained within @swap was a single file: swapfile
• I checked the file attributes and found "noCOW" - C - and "no compression" - m - set as desired.

So it appears to me that at least one issue is already resolved.

Personally, as a BTRFS user I like the setup configuration re. the three subvolumes. It makes it easy to avoid backing up or snapshotting the swap without having to create a swap partition. Seems as though it would be easier for a novice to install using BTRFS.

However, Calamares still has an issue regarding the warning about a missing BIOS boot partition when attempting to use GPT instead of MBR. GPT is much better than MBR. It seems to me that if the goal is to make the installation easier for less experienced users, when one selects "Use the whole drive" and chooses GPT the installer should just make the needed partition and be quiet about it - rather than requiring the user to go back and choose manual partitioning.

[Snowhog]

Then I edited line 158 in the file /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/calamares/networkcfg/main.py from

os.chmod(f, 0o0600)

to

os.chmod(f.fileno(), 0o600)

I'd have thought the maintainer/packager would have already fixed this error. It isn't minor.

[oshunluvr]

I think not entirely:



The latest update to Plasma 5.27 (5.27.11) was released three weeks ago and as KDE developers already have posted there will be a Plasma 5.27.12…

"End Of Life" to my understanding means "No longer under development." Since 5.27 is the last version of Plasma 5 it is EOL or one could say "stable" meaning no new features will be added.

Maintenance will continue but not development. I know it's technical hair-splitting, but that's the way I see it. 5.27.12 is the last Plasma 5 version.

EDIT: I see you point might have been that Kubuntu 24.04 is still on 5.27.10 and will get 5.27.12 eventually. That's true, but the developers closed 5.27.12 development on Feb 14th. It just hasn't rolled down hill to Kubuntu yet.

[oshunluvr]

I'd have thought the maintainer/packager would have already fixed this error. It isn't minor.

Maybe they took a long vacation, LOL