I wanted to install an Ubuntu upgrade on a very old machine, from 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron) to 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx). I like Ubuntu, so please do not take this post as a moan about it.

(See here for more information on Ubuntu releases.)

The download of the packages went fine, but the upgrade froze at about 75%. Which is probably not a good thing, as there is no cancel option at this point. Sure enough, on the reboot, the system was not happy.

It was at this point that I discovered the CD-player on the computer was not working either (a hardware issue rather than anything to do with the upgrade).

Luckily, I had an old copy of 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake) that I could use to back up important data.

I then looked around for non-CD installation options. There seemed to be 3 options:

• Install from ISO mounted on a partition
• Install from ISO placed on a drive
• Install from the network

This is not an area that I am overly familiar with, so problems that I had are likely to be PEBKAC.

The method that I eventually got working is the install from the network. Here are a few hints:

• The install can appear to hang in places. This usually means that it is taking a long time. I got quicker response times later in the evening
• It offers the option of installing lots of extra software towards the end. Don’t! Because your system will not be left in a working state if anything goes wrong at this point. Just install the necessary software later on, once you have a working system. The install process is much more robust once Ubuntu is installed.
• Take care to get the right linux and initrd.gz files. These exist, for each Ubuntu version, for a reboot from the network, an install from the network, and many other purposes.

I also learned a lot about fdisk and the GRUB (bootloader). GRUB is a very useable piece of software. I will write more about it in a later post.

I managed to get Lucid Lynx installed, but it is too slow on the machine (256MB of memory, so maybe not too surprising). Hardy Heron continues to be my default version, and is pleasantly responsive.