Ubuntu (/ʊˈbʊntuː/ oo-BOON-too) 12.04

Why pronunciation? I just went through a OMG-Ubuntu page that asked its readers how they pronounced Ubuntu. This pronunciation is how i do it, and a person had got a lot of likes for it too. Apparently that's how Nelson Mandela pronounces it, and he knows Zulu (obviously!) and Ubuntu comes from Zulu, so putting all the facts together, that's how Ubuntu is supposed to be pronounced. Anyway, this was just for your info, friend.

Now, What i wanted to chronicle here is the journey i'm about to undertake, which is both risky and \m/ adventurous! Well, Lets see.

First off, I'm a great fan of Ubuntu 10.04, so i've been using it for about 1 year now (Don't laugh. Before that all i did was distro-hopping, so 2 months was the longest i had any operating system on my computer (Arch, because I'd customised it from root (well, literally, / root (these nested brackets! Argh!)))), until suddenly, I had to use my computer for serious work, so i settled with Ubuntu 10.04 (not that i stopped distro-hopping, my VirtualBox has 18 operating systems and only disk space limits me :D).

Obvious questions arise when I decide to upgrade - Will I have all the software i previously had? Do I have any kind of backup? The Ubuntu 10.04 support period ends in April 2013, why hurry? Yes, I might have all the software I had if I upgraded using the method I'm going to use now, but developers have warned me about some bugs. Yes, I have a backup, I'll explain how it works if my upgrade fails or if Ubuntu 12.04 beta1 sucks and i decide to come back. Hurry? Because I am crazy about trying out new things. Moreover, march is relatively free in our academic schedule.

SO! Yes. Now I'm upgrading the existing system. Well, something tells me I've to try to upgrade in the early morning, because internet is faster then. But I'll be jobless today night, isn't it? Waiting for upgrade to get over and performing my (last) backup of Ubuntu 10.04. Well, I cant resist putting up the backup script, which is there on my other blog entry too:


function backup_madi {
         today=`date +%d%b`
         sudo tar cvpzf /disk/backup/backup_$today.tgz --exclude=/proc --exclude=/lost+found \
         --exclude=/disk --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/sys --exclude=/home/siddhartha/.axel/* \
         --exclude=/home/siddhartha/{Documents,Downloads,Music,Videos,Pictures} \
         --exclude=/home/siddhartha/.Virtualbox/* /
         echo Backup done on $today. >> /disk/backup/log.log
 }


So. After all this, I start the upgrade process.

1. Let's make sure we have updated the current system. Otherwise (i dunno why) there might be problems after the upgrade. 

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade




2. Now, I call the update manager with the -d option:

sudo update-manager -d




This'll take a lot of time, depending on your internet connection. My internet connection provided by NITK goes at 12MBps (yes, M'B'ps!) from youtube servers but from Ubuntu servers, after all sorts of customization and changing servers, I get around 60KBps. Well, maybe because the servers are throttled.

3. Ah. First roadblock. Well, unsurpassable, it turns out. My root partition is full and it needs 3 more GBs. Now, my mission is aborted. :/ Get you on the other side, on Ubuntu 12.04, I'm gonna do it using DVD. :/ 

Afterall, there is a way. In every situation. Well, in this case i explored the situation. I had /usr folder of about 6 gb. If i could mount it on another partition of same format, I could mount it at /usr. This way, I can have more space in my root folder.

So I boot into my all-time favourite RescueCD. I mount the partitions in two folders of /root like this:

/root# mkdir rroot ddisk
/root# mount /dev/sda5 rroot
/root# mount /dev/sda6 ddisk
/root# cd ddisk
/root# mkdir usr
/root# cp -afv /root/rroot/usr/* /root/ddisk/usr

The options I gave to the cp command are explained in the man pages of cp, but I'll just run through them - -a to switch to archive mode - it saves all file permissions irrespective of the mask settings of the destination drive. -f forces copy - if any file is inaccessible in the destination it'll replace it, -v for verbose mode so you'll get an output of 'source'->'destination' for each file you copy instead of the traditional dead screen which usually makes me worry.

Well, now the last change I gotta do is to mount /disk/usr at the former /usr. Edit /etc/fstab from RescueCD and do this:

/root# vi /root/rroot/etc/fstab

Now, the partition (/dev/sda6) was already configured to mount on /disk on bootup. Now, all I had to do was add this line in the end -

/disk/usr       /usr                            auto    bind    0 0


Well, reboot into your old system to find that you've freed up atleast 6 GB space! Now continue where i left!! :D Upgrade is happening. Its gonna download 2.5 GB! So I'm gonna leave it on and run to class now.

Edit: Mar 23, 2012
It took few days! But i knew I was just one early morning away from downloading everything in super high speeds in an hour. That came today :D NITK's internet is super fast in the early morning. So all i needed to do was to get up early, start the update. It happened. Now installing the updates. It might take hours, as stated in the warning. Sadly its an interactive process and i'll have to be around for it to happen.