<p>Heh, heh.<br>
Massive upgrades are never fun or fast.<br>
I setup an inhouse repo clone so I update one system and all others point to if for their updates. Pretty easy with fedora. Dunno on 'buntu.<br>
So at least my internal machine update at wire speed or drive speed. 3 spindles of sata2 and dual gig nics bonded.</p>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Nov 9, 2011 11:37 AM, "Ron Frazier" <<a href="mailto:atllinuxenthinfo@c3energy.com">atllinuxenthinfo@c3energy.com</a>> wrote:<br type="attribution"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Hi all,<br>
<br>
Thanks to all who replied to my thread about not using Unity in Ubuntu<br>
11.04.<br>
<br>
Wikipedia has a pretty good article on Ubuntu:<br>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_%28operating_system%29" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_%28operating_system%29</a> They say<br>
standard releases are supported for 18 months and, starting with 12.04,<br>
the LTS releases will be supported for 5 years.<br>
<br>
Well, I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade 3 computers from Ubuntu<br>
10.04 to Ubuntu 10.10 to Ubuntu 11.04 after backing them up. This<br>
message goes beyond the subject of Unity and Gnome, so I decided to<br>
start a new thread. I discovered some really interesting things about<br>
the upgrade process I thought I'd share. One computer is done, the<br>
other two are in process. I may just end up keeping 11.04 until 12.04<br>
comes out in case I want to get off the 6 month upgrade train.<br>
Everything I read tells me I don't want Unity, so I may not upgrade to<br>
11.10 right away, at least until I do more research on it. On 11.04, I<br>
can still get my Ubuntu Classic desktop.<br>
<br>
First, using the default settings, the download of the over 1000 upgrade<br>
packages is abysmal, enough to make you want to break things. On the<br>
first machine, it took 2 hours to download each of the package sets for<br>
the two sequential upgrades I had to do. I was considering doing bodily<br>
harm to some dishes, or else just falling asleep and falling out of the<br>
chair. I then did some Googling around and found out the most amazing<br>
thing. You can change the server it upgrades from. Not only that, you<br>
can have it test over 300 of them to see which is fastest. What an<br>
epiphany!<br>
<br>
Here's how to do it:<br>
<br>
Start Update Manager (Menu, System, Administration, Update Manager).<br>
Click the settings ... button.<br>
Enter your administrative password.<br>
<br>
(Side note, I went to the Other Software tab and unchecked all my PPA's<br>
and additional software sources before upgrading. Don't know for sure<br>
if it would cause a problem, but, since lots of those are based on the<br>
old distribution, I figured it would be a good idea.)<br>
<br>
Go to the Ubuntu Software tab.<br>
There is a line that says "Download From:" and the dropdown box probably<br>
says United States Server.<br>
Click the dropdown box.<br>
Click other ...<br>
A "Choose a Download Server" window will appear.<br>
Click the "Select Best Server" button.<br>
The system will start probing each server in the list and calculating<br>
the fastest response.<br>
Once it's done, one certain server will be highlighted. In my case, it<br>
was Duke University.<br>
If you like it's choice, click the Choose Server button.<br>
You should then be back at the Software Sources window, which you can close.<br>
<br>
After this, your updates will be fetched from this new server you<br>
picked. I'm pretty sure you can use this for routine updates as well,<br>
so they will be fast, whether you are upgrading the OS or not.<br>
<br>
The difference between the two was mind boggling. My cable modem<br>
normally peaks out at about 24 Mbps. For the first machine, I spent 4<br>
HOURS watching downloads at less than 100 K BYTES / s, which equates to<br>
about 1 Mbps. After making this change on two other machines, I started<br>
upgrades on both. As I said, they're still in progress. However, the<br>
download part is done. You have no idea how gratifying it was to see<br>
two machines simultaneously downloading data at over 1000 K BYTES / s, a<br>
full 10 X faster, almost saturating my internet pipe, AND, the progress<br>
graph on each said estimated completion time for the download of UNDER<br>
10 minutes. That's about how long it took too. WOW!<br>
<br>
The upgrade process was pretty much automatic, except a few times it<br>
kept asking about whether I wanted to keep or discard certain<br>
configuration files. Because of these questions, you can't just walk<br>
away. The actual patching process takes 1 - 2 hours. I didn't always<br>
know what to say. I think I let it replace the sudoers config file and<br>
a few others and told it to keep the ntp and grub files. Hopefully<br>
keeping those won't cause a problem, but I figured ditching them would<br>
cause more problems.<br>
<br>
I have only a bit of experience with the one machine at the new rev<br>
level. However, I am typing this message on it. There are no obvious<br>
major things that blew up because of the upgrade. I can say the ATI<br>
video card driver is working - YAY. The swap file is working - YAY.<br>
The CPU temperature sensor is now working and wasn't before - YAY.<br>
Hibernate still fails - BOO. The power management settings changed, so<br>
I changed them back - BOO. I had to reinstall the Flash Player and I'll<br>
have to recheck it's settings - BOO. And, the Firewall is not working -<br>
BOO.<br>
<br>
So, it has been mostly painless, except for the very slow downloads<br>
initially, but not totally painless. Going forward, I'm going to check<br>
on all the main applications I use, which I was doing for maintenance<br>
anyway, and see A) which ones work, B) which ones are receiving updates,<br>
and C) which ones had their settings changed. Hopefully not too many<br>
will need tweaking.<br>
<br>
Also, I've found another way to set the login screen to the Ubuntu<br>
Classic, if that's what you want. Note, if you're running Unity, you'll<br>
have to figure out how to get to this screen.<br>
<br>
Access Menu, System, Administration, Login Screen<br>
Click the Unlock button.<br>
Enter your administrative password.<br>
At the bottom, there's a line that says "Select" and a drop down box<br>
then "as default session".<br>
Set the dropdown box to Ubuntu Classic and close the window.<br>
<br>
It should boot into Ubuntu Classic from then on. You can also control<br>
whether there is a login sound and whether it auto logs in from here.<br>
<br>
Well, overall, I'm liking the results, but it looks like I do have some<br>
homework to do making sure everything is working and is configured the<br>
way I like it. Hope this info is helpful to others considering upgrades.<br>
<br>
Sincerely,<br>
<br>
Ron<br>
<br>
<br>
--<br>
<br>
(PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to<br>
call on the phone. I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy<br>
mailing lists and such. I don't always see new messages very quickly.)<br>
<br>
Ron Frazier<br>
<br>
<a href="tel:770-205-9422" value="+17702059422">770-205-9422</a> (O) Leave a message.<br>
linuxdude AT <a href="http://c3energy.com" target="_blank">c3energy.com</a><br>
<br>
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</blockquote></div>