[Bug 64765] Re: [Edgy] installation-guide-i386 - several steps are misleading or cannot be finished

[bellojibo]

** Changed in: installation-guide (Ubuntu)
       Status: Confirmed => Incomplete

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Title:
  [Edgy] installation-guide-i386 - several steps are misleading or
  cannot be finished

Status in “installation-guide” package in Ubuntu:
  Incomplete

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: installation-guide-i386

  I've tried to install Ubuntu without official installation media,
  using only manual installation as described in Ubuntu Installation
  Guide (for Edgy):

  http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/i/installation-guide/installation-guide-i386_20060726ubuntu2_all.deb
  -> "D.4. Installing Ubuntu from a Unix/Linux System"

  Having installed Gentoo manually several times as well as
  Debian/SPARC, Ubuntu/i386 and after upgrading recently a Hoary
  installation to Dapper I thought about giving this method a spin. I've
  used a live CD distribution (PCLinuxOS .93A to be exact) and tried to
  follow the steps from the guide. Here are brief results with several
  recommendations:

  1. Partitioning and creating filesystems went without any trouble.

  2. Installing debootstrap was a bit puzzling, because the guide
  mentions the following naming scheme:

     debootstrap_0.X.X_arch.deb

  This only applies to older versions of debootstrap (like
  0.2.39ubuntu22 or 0.2.45ubuntu27):

  http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/d/debootstrap/debootstrap_0.2.39ubuntu22_i386.deb
  http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/d/debootstrap/debootstrap_0.2.45ubuntu27_i386.deb

  Problem is, these versions do not support Edgy - they don't contain
  required scripts. Only version 0.3.3.0ubuntu6 supports Edgy
  installation and it's no more arch-dependent (contains no binaries and
  only bash scripts):

  http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/d/debootstrap/debootstrap_0.3.3.0ubuntu6_all.deb

  SUGGESTIONS:
   - change "debootstrap_0.X.X_arch.deb" to " debootstrap_0.X.X_all.deb"
   - remove references to "binary" and "binaries" from the text

  3. Creating /etc/fstab went without problems.

  4. Configuring the keyboard was unsuccesful at first. Basically dpkg
  complained about console-data package not being installed (!). I
  installed two packages to silence it:

  apt-get install console-data unicode-data

  I need to be honest here - I installed unicode data instinctively, as
  I have seen that Dapper uses UTF-8 locales by default. After
  installation of the two aforementioned packages keyboard configuration
  finished successfully.

  5. Network configuration and setting the hostname went without
  problems.

  6. Locale configuration was unsuccesful at first. I installed these
  two packages:

  apt-get install language-pack-en language-pack-pl

  which also installed language-pack-en-base and language-pack-pl-base.
  Installation of these packages triggered the generation of en_* and
  pl_PL locales. Then:

  dpkg-reconfigure locales

  succeded, but triggered the generation of en_* locales again (!).
  However, pl_PL locale was not regenerated - it was considered current.
  Apart from that, this step finished successfully.

  7. Kernel installation was rather easy. Since linux-image-686 turned
  out to be obsoleted by linux-image-generic I did:

  apt-cache search linux-image
  apt-get install linux-image-generic

  This resulted in the screen notifying about initrd installation. As
  suggested, I've chosen not to proceed and added the /etc/linux-
  kern.conf (IIRC) with the line suggested by the message. Then:

  apt-get install linux-image-generic

  failed miserably. I needed to remove and reinstall the meta-package in
  order to proceed:

  apt-get remove linux-image-generic
  apt-get install linux-image-generic

  8. Setting up a boot loader gave me the most trouble. I wanted to go
  with grub:

  apt-get install grub

  Somehow this didn't put any files nor dirs in /boot directory. So I've
  tried to automatically create a proper configuration, by using grub-
  update - but it notified me about missing /boot/grub directory.
  Finally I did:

  mkdir /boot/grub
  grub-update

  This created /boot/grub/menu.lst file, but nothing else. By running:

  dpkg -L grub

  I was able to find out where are the grub files. Then I've copied them
  by hand:

  for f in /lib/grub/i386-pc/*; do cp -a ${f} /boot/grub; done

  Then grub complained about not being able to locate (hd0,2), where I
  wanted it to be installed. Soon I've found out that there was no
  /dev/hd* device nodes, nor /dev/sd* to be fair. I needed to create a
  bunch of them manually:

  cd /dev
  mknod -m 660 hda b 3 0
  mknod -m 660 hda1 b 3 1
  mknod -m 660 hda2 b 3 2
  mknod -m 660 hda3 b 3 3
  mknod -m 660 hda4 b 3 4
  ...

  All this allowed grub to be installed on /dev/hda3 partition. I needed
  also to tweak /boot/grub/menu.lst a bit (mostly change "(hd0,0)" to
  "(hd0,2)") and issue grub-update once again, but now it was easy
  compared to the problems described.

  SUGGESTION: figure out carefully grub installation method and describe
  it in the guide.

  9. Creating a user, admin group and adding user to it went without any
  problems.

  10. Reboot greeted me with unexpected problem, namely "savedefault"
  option in menu.lst prevented the system from starting. Removing this
  line resolved this problem for good.

  11. installing the Ubuntu Desktop via:

  sudo tasksel install ubuntu-standard ubuntu-desktop

  was unsuccessful (there is no "ubuntu-standard" task). The shorter
  version:

  sudo tasksel install ubuntu-desktop

  took almost an hour (it was a slow machine, 1,7 Celeron, 256MB RAM),
  but eventually it succeeded. It was a great reward after all the
  struggle! :)

  Finishing thoughts:

  I'm not sure if these are the real, repeatable problems or if this was
  the classical example of PEBKAC. I suggest someone to take a similar
  approach and try to install Edgy using this method before making a
  final release. Some of these problems may quite easily be resolved by
  changing the dependencies of packages. Some may require documenting
  additional steps.

  I've managed to overcome all those hurdles, but given the fact that
  they exist today means that the current documentation is at least
  misleading. Please look into it if you have time. I was able to deal
  with this breakage, but not everyone have to be so lucky.

  With best regards,
  Wiktor Wandachowicz

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