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Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala” Problems & Solutions

Having bought a Unibody MacBook Pro and running Mac OS 10.6, I decided to upgrade my Samsung NC10 from running Mac OS 10.5.8 to running the latest Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) from Canonical.

Canonical have completely revolutionised the concept of Linux on the desktop by packaging a distribution that is lightweight, fast, attractive, functional, and is – above all – actually usable as a day-to-day computing environment by your average computer user: as with OS X, the powerful underpinnings aren’t exposed and so don’t scare away the casual user.

The UNR variant of Ubuntu has been available since Ubuntu 8.04 (April 2008) – although at this time packages had to be pulled-in from external repositories or built by hand on top of an existing Ubuntu installation. A packaged version was available – but this would wipe the computer onto which it was installed, and there was no “Live” trial available.

With Ubuntu 9.04 (April 2009), UNR was offered alongside downloads of Ubuntu desktop, and with the latest Ubuntu 9.10 UNR has received a face-lift and appears to be a first-class citizen of the Ubuntu hierarchy along with Ubuntu Desktop and Ubuntu Server.

(This probably says much about the success of low-cost “netbook” computers, usually with Intel’s 1.6GHz Atom processor, 1GB RAM, and a 10″ screen or smaller. Variations exist with slightly faster processors and/or up to 12″ screens – and system memory can often be upgraded to 2GB, but as a rule the hardware is remarkably consistent. Due to their low-cost, the market has lapped them up – and the low price-point has meant that they are often supplied with Linux exclusively, or at a lower price that Windows-equipped versions)

It is Ubuntu’s reputation for just-works™-ness that I feel is in danger – I’ve run into no less that three show-stopped bugs with the installation of UNR 9.10. All of these were (relatively) easily fixable once I’d found the source of the problem, but I feel that this is beyond what it is reasonable to ask the average user to work through. Worse, all of the problems seem to be down to insufficient testing on the part of the UNR developers. If Linux on the desktop is to succeed, then gateway distributions such as UNR must work first-time all of the time…

Creation of UNR bootable media for a netbook lacking an optical drive requires a machine already running Windows or Linux (and if not Ubuntu Linux, then the installation procedure is tricky). There is no solution currently available for Mac users, and nothing that a non-expert would want to attempt for non-Ubuntu Linux. I did try ‘dd’ing the UNR ISO image to a USB key, but this was unable to boot. This is a shame, since if a bootable USB-specific image was distributed then it could be written to a USB key from any OS.

I followed the UNR installation instructions and used their Windows utility to write the image to a 2Gb USB key. Since the ISO image itself was only some 680MB, I chose the option to make the remainder of the space available for persistent storage, anticipating that there might be some proprietary hardware drivers required. I then booted the netbook from this device and got the Ubuntu boot-logo and then… nothing. The screen blanked, and nothing else happened. I rebooted again and still nothing. I ran the media-check boot option, and my installation media was verified as being correct.

Going beyond what any average user could be expected to do, I then editing the bootloader options to remove “quiet” and “splash” in order to see what was happening, and indeed this game me a little more information. The last error message was “Cannot mount /dev/loop1 on /cow“… “cow” in this case being “Copy-On-Write” (e.g. the additional space on the USB key) rather than anything trying to be cute. Searching online for the solution to this, it transpires that there’s a bug – whether in the UNR image or in the usb image writer I know not – that means that installation will always freeze at this point if the persistent storage option was chosen. I re-downloaded the image and re-wrote it, and the boot process was able to complete successfully. At the time of writing, the installation instructions still don’t mention this fact.

In any case, I was now able to proceed through the installation phase and restart once complete – at which point I was left staring at a screen cheerfully announcing “No Operating System Installed“. Bah. I rebooted from the USB key and re-ran grub against the newly-installed installation: no difference. I reinstalled again… and there was no difference. Eventually, I came across the solution which was to enter a hidden BIOS settings page and disable AHCI-mode for the internal SATA port. From this point, the UNR installation on the internal drive booted correctly. This one I’m not blaming on UNR: Mac OS is also unable to boot with this option enabled, so it may be a BIOS bug. If I record the problem here, though, it may help anyone else who has the same problem.

Finally, after all of these trials and tribulations and, by now, several days on-and-off, I finally had a working UNR installation… almost. Within the Live USB environment, UNR couldn’t activate the laptop’s wireless hardware, but was able to detect its presence and reported that proprietary drivers were available. These could be installed but, requiring a reboot and lacking persistent storage (grrr), these could not be activated. On booting the installed OS, no mention was made of these proprietary drivers. Even running the tool designed to manage these drivers made no mention of their existence, and the Ubuntu repositories had no installable software of a matching description. It appears that the only place that these drivers actually exist is on the installation USB key, and even these are only installable by resorting to the command-line.

What actually needs to be done is to install packages ‘patch‘ and ‘dkms‘ from the standard repositories (which requires an internet connection in itself – thankfully the wired interface does work), and then install (‘sudo dpkg -i‘) the ‘pool/b/bcmwl-kernel-source‘ deb package from the USB installation key. After this is installed and the system rebooted, then the Hardware Manager then sees the proprietary driver and the hardware it drives.

With all of this sorted out, the system now seems fast and stable (unlike the Live environment, which froze on me twice of about four uses), and seems to do its job well. It’s certainly better-adapted to the small screen that Mac OS ever was, and the hardware support is much better (with trackpad-scrolling (but not multi-touch), audio, and most function keys working out of the box). It’s just a shame that these last remaining rough edges weren’t caught and corrected – because it’s these brick-walls which will prevent a wider up-take of UNR, and I’m willing to state categorically that the current UNR is significantly more usable and productive than any pre-installed netbook OS, be it another Linux variant or be it Windows.

2 replies on “Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala” Problems & Solutions”

Hope that since this post you’ve been enjoying the fruits of yr labours with a powerful and stable karmic.

i found these useful hints
http://maketecheasier.com/13-ways-to-customize-ubuntu-netbook-remix-for-better-usability/2010/02/07
and plenty of relevant material at ubuntu forums for adjusting & enhancing the netbook experience.

i’ve put some work into my current Ubuntu install based on 9.10 karmic nbr2 and am very happy with the results

screenshots of my work in progress at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoI4wRVVjBs

you make some very pertinent points in yr post about the power of NBR systems and the pitfalls en route . . to the bootable Linux CD that is solid enough to mount a challenge to the desktop monopoly, and offer a painless route for users to verify ( and if necessary patch) their new system beofre commiting to an install( which would also need to provide a seamless dual-boot scenario for those who wish to continue using other OS).

i hope that 10.04 Lucid as a new long-term support release may be that wished-for system.( tho there are still issues notably with wifi)

envisage a process . .
download .iso or boot from CD
install iso to bootable USB( woth persistent storage)
boot from stick to test and patch for target computer. ..

boot options –
run live CD “original” . . the starting point., ignore persistent data
run live CD “vanilla” . . the ( current )starting point., ignore persistent data
run live CD “patched for my system”
install “vanilla”
install “patched” – ( if patch tests all passed )
( and the usual safe modes )

patched would offer a diagnostic system test as per MS
with an interactive patch dialogue ( to stand in for the hours of hunting down and fixing problems )
the user can skip this and proceed and has the option to resume the process either from within the session or at the next boot.
once satisfied the user can proceed to an install .. probably via remastersys creating a fresh .iso which we can then use to repopulate our USB
whi
we’d need plenty of space on the USB drive –
i’ve been struggling to keep everything within my 4Gb root filesystem ( no fancy mounts) with my present karmic.

room for – the original .iso
the vanilla machine – presently the entire content of the USB
the patched machine – which starts the same as the vanilla machine

and plenty of time for the various scripts to shunt things about between iso’s and
bootable images.

i’ve sen some suggestive leads about chain loading from a number of .iso images on the same stick but at that point decided to settle for one stick at a time for the time being !

Jumping thru hoops indeed . .

i had no wifi or other problems once i’d got a running karmic9.10 but en route . .

after a sdd crash i fouond myself with only ubu 8.04 on my stick.
this booted and installed correctly so the next step was to get a 9.10 installed.
tried this with several unsuccessful iterations when the previously booting stick decided not to . .

who knows whether the cat mbr.bin ( intended to write the MBR of the stick ) had any effect or was superceded by manually running grub-install from ubu 8 to the stick.

.. more than we ever wanted to learn about grub n mbr n such !

but finally got to boot casper on the stick and from there sucessfully installed 8.10 over the existing install ( no formatting ) preserving some useful stuff . .

i’m an EEE PC user planning an imminent move to Ubuntu Lucid & Debian Sid plpanning to repeat the 8.04->9.10karmic process with Lucid if necessary iin the event the vaunted/ problematic upgrade path fails.

i’m hoping to be able to upgrade my machine rather than do a fresh install, tho i have by now got .iso’s of my present install and backups( dumps ) of gconf.

if all goes well i should be within striking distance of reliably creating bootable sticks from arbitrary .iso sources,

i’ve been using virtualbox ( non-free ) to preview the various iso’s

i’m writing now on a live session USB system created from eb4 – which is an NBR derivative using debian sid as well as ubuntu repos. touch wood it’s been fast n solid all day – with working wifi, sound, video and a good ubuntu desktop.
when i reboot to my 9.10 i shall have a good look at the USB disk to see how it works and if/ how it differs from the 9.10 version.

scuse the long post . .
Best Regards

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