Ubuntu 8.10 Install

My first foray into LINUX isn't going very well. Every attempt to get
this one installed into a new VM fails. I get to the "Installing
Restricted Drivers" and the screen turns brilliant green and then lapses
into some sort of pixally divided screen with vertical green lines and
text that is missing every other pixel. Below the green lines is
something that resembles fractal paintings.The install continues, but I
am unable to tell what is happening as the green lines cover any text.

Towards the end of the 'things it is doing' I get:

Loading, please wait
[something]: Setting mode [640x430 ??] Failed
screen ini: Failed
Linux [something] 2.5.27-7-generic [something (dates, I think)]

And, then, nothing. No more movement of the cursor after 30 minutes.

Is this version of Linux able to be installed on a VM?

GP

 

Thanks Mark for the speedy reply. While I was waiting to see if anyone
would reply, I restarted the install, but added an option (using the
"F4" menu) to use what they called 'safe video'. This time, The screen
did do the same thing, but after about 3 minutes it cleared out and
wallpaper appeared. Soon a window appeared that led me through the
install procedure steps (name, how big a HD, that sort of stuff), and I
am - so far - installing just fine.

I guess the next thing is to install the VM Additions so I can go from
window to window easily.

GP

--->

 

Also, one of the things I did do was edit the VMC file and make the
video card have 16Mb vice 8Mb. Don't know for sure if that made a
difference, but the progress bar is up to 56% system installed.

You might want to get a copy of this one Mark if it installs all the
way. Quite painless, after you get by the initial weirdness.

GP

 

I agree Bob. The whole screen looks like somebody put down a latte and
it overflowed on the screen. Good analogy with the bloodstain though.
I think it actually is a fractal.

This installation is just to see what all the hullaballoo is about with
Linux. I doubt I will make any practical use of it. What the heck,
VHD's are cheap (and disposable).

GP

--->

 

Safe mode is useless, it doesn't change the color depth. Ubuntu
installs in 24bit color, which VPC doesn't support. Safe mode doesn't
change from 24bit color. Your best bet is to to a text install and
then configure X after the installation.

There are no Linux Addtions for VPC, only Virtual Server, and they
need to be tweaked for use with Ubuntu.

 

Thanks for the info Steve. I had heard about the 24-bit video, but it
appears to be installing - and in color. The progress bar is up to 68%
installed now. I do agree that the color scheme is pretty muddy-looking
though.

GP

 

Hmm, that's interesting. I'll have to give 8.10 a whirl in VPC. I
just installed it in VMW WKS 6.5 to see if it's worth putting on some
hardware.

 

Update: Somewhere along the line, after I downloaded and installed some
drivers, the screen went a bit "nuts" and then restored itself. I
though it was installing an updated driver BUT when it restarted, the
horizontal hold was completely skewed around so that the mouse pointer
was a horizontal line. Now, I have no way to try and get the original
resolution back. Is there a way to start it in command line mode and
reset the video adapter to it's original resolution (864x480 I think it
said - I would have though 640x480, but I'm sure it wasn't standard).

Too tired to mess with it tonight though. I'll attack it tomorrow.

GP

 

But as someone else pointed out, if you download and install VMWare
Player then you can also download an already installed *and working*
virtual machine for Ubuntu as what they call a "virtual appliance".
VMWare actually has support for Linux Ubuntu including the equivalent
of the Addotions (vmware tools in their parlance) which means you get
mouse integration etc. No need to hassle with the install yourself...

 

<CTRL><ALT><F1> from graphics mode to switch to text mode

 

Try installing it under VirtualBox -- also free.

But as to your skewed resolution under MS VPC, edit Xorg.conf
as in "sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf" from your console prompt, and change
the two occurrences of "24" to "16".

From your skewed desktop, you should be able to drop to a text console
with CNTL+ALT + (F1 or F2 or F3).

FACE

On Mon, 24 Nov 2008 20:30:48 -0500, in microsoft.public.virtualpc,

 

--->

Excellent advice Bo. I will go that route instead. This installation
took almost 4 hours, and it is still not operating right. My other post
details what happened.

This is just an exercise for me to see what it is capable of and an
'appliance' is just the ticket.

GP

 

--->

Thanks very much for that Steve. I'll put it into use right away.

GP

 

Another great tip. Thanks FACE.

GP


--->

 

I've decided to take Bo's advice and move to VMWare. Playing around
with this installation is more trouble than it is worth. Especially
since once I got into text mode, the green bars were back and the text
was unintelligible. The prompt was under the green bars so I don't know
what is was prompting until it moved out from under the bars. Talk
about blind leading the blind.

GP

--->

 

On Tue, 25 Nov 2008 11:49:19 -0500, in microsoft.public.virtualpc,

Actually..........you can thank Bob Comer from this group (I believe it
is). He told me.

FACE

 

Probably the best move.

FACE

On Tue, 25 Nov 2008 12:05:41 -0500, in microsoft.public.virtualpc,

 

My thanks to all who contributed to this thread. I downloaded and
installed both VMWare Reader and the Ubuntu 8.10 pre-configured OS.
Both work flawlessly and did so right out of the "box". Since I had no
need to interact between host and guest I wasn't concerned that I
couldn't "see" my own computer's shared directories and such. I could
see the rest of the computers on the LAN as well as the Internet.

This is a great place to get advice.

GP

 

And you now have the benefit of using USB devices in the Linux guest
too...
If you install the vmware tools (if they are not already installed)
you will get mouse integration as well. I installed Ubuntu 8.10 about
a week after release into my VMWare Workstation 6.5 (no hassle doing
it from the Ubuntu CD, really). Then I was prompted to install the
tools as well so I did that, but afterwards the mouse integration did
not work. :-(
Asked my daughter about it (she works on the VMWare team developing
the stuff) and she said that they had noted it but it was an Ubuntu
thing.
After a few days and after my Ubuntu had made the regular updates I
suddenly had mouse integration working! And that was *without* doing
anything to the vmware tools. Just getting Ubuntu to update itself
about 2 weeks after release of 8.10 fixed the problem.

 

--->

Very cool, indeed. I was a bit leery of the menu item for connecting my
external USB drive (on the host) because of the parenthetical phrase
that was added stating("disconnect from host)" or something like that.
When I clicked it, my host immediately complained that I had unplugged a
USB device without notifying it.

I have spent most of the day testing my web pages and decided that I
didn't really need the VMWare on my laptop but, instead, would install
it on my desktop when I got home. The uninstall did NOT go well.
Halfway through the uninstall it stalled and then things got really bad.
The drivers for the VMWare network that gets installed hung, the
uninstaller quit working and eventually explorer.exe stopped responding.
I eventually managed to recover from that by trying an uninstall in
safe mode - surprise - VMWare wasn't in the list but all the icons and
directories in Program Files were still there. It was loads of fun
untangling VMWare from my system and getting it back into order. You
wouldn't believe the amount of Event Log errors that popped up.

Things are apparently back to normal now that I ended up cleaning up the
Program Files directory for VMWare manually.

GP