Comments on: A Feisty Tale – Ubuntu Upgrade and Install Issues

By: Nicole

Nicole — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 21:02:31 +0000

Glad it was a help!

By: Fred

Fred — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:54:57 +0000

Man, you’ve saved me big time! I was having some trouble upgrading a machine that doesn’t have net access (that’s why I’m upgrading, something croaked) and I couldn’t seem to add the CD to the repository list. After reading your article, I read the same section as you and I see that the alternate CD is for ‘upgrading from older installations without network access’. I’be been at this 3 hours already – I’m glad Google found your blog! Cheers!

By: Calvin Mitchell

Calvin Mitchell — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 06:22:10 +0000

I got to the “Installation step failed” on the Kubuntu alternate CD…
…and never got past it.

…this is rediculous. I’ve been using Linux since Slackware 1.3 and NEVER had this much trouble with a distro.

My Dell Inspiron E1505 had similar fits with the Kubuntu live CD and DVD…

Let’s get it together, guys!

btw…any have a solution for this nightmare???

By: dohboy

dohboy — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 01:13:52 +0000

I had a similar problem upgrading from Dapper to Feisty. A friend of mine told me to just run the Feisty CD on, that upgrading Dapper–>Edgy–>Feisty was going to take a long time and wasn’t a good idea. I didn’t care, i just wanted it to upgrade without me having to actually sit there and keep an eye on it. If it took 48 hours I wouldn’tve cared.

I let Dapper update me to Edgy, and it took a while, but it worked. Immediately after it booted I started the Edgy–>Feisty upgrade. This is where I had similar results to your experience. The install ran all the way thru, although I wasn’t paying attention. I remember looking over and seeing it at 85%. Anyway I looked up again and the screen was black, so i touched the mouse… nothing. Looking at the lights, no hard disk activity. After a few minutes of praying and poking, I rebooted.

Almost immediately I knew I was screwed. I didnt get much past the bootloader when it started asking me where the kernel was. Never a good sign. I decided I’d have to install off the CD. I downloaded the workstation install cd, and booted it.

Again, similar to you, I was suprised that it was booting a livecd. I didn’t remember this being the norm. Anyway, it (eventually) booted all the way. The machine is sloooooow. I tell it to install, and it cranks for a while, then somewhere half way thru the install stops and the screen goes black. Same symptom, no response, dead.

At this point I went back and ‘discovered’ the alternate-install-cd. My experience after that was again similar to yours, the text-based installer worked like a charm. I had to reconfigure everything since the upgrade process pretty much hosed any chance of me recovering what I had on there. Fortunately i had backed up all my important files to the server before attempting the upgrade.

Im glad to see Im not the only one who has had strange Feisty upgrade issues.