UbuntuSolutions

I started installing Jaunty on my computers 2 weeks ago. The first one to get the honor was a new Acer Aspire One. For this one as for the other ones, the install went flawlessly:

• the installer shrunk the windows partition automatically
• wireless was working after install (except on the all Aspire One with the Atheros interface. Not resolved yet because of lack of time but it appears a solution exists: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/350352)
• graphics with 3D compiz effects were all working now using the 180.44 driver that got installed seamlessly.

After the initial  install, I had some troubles...

Troubles with Ext 4

No trouble with ext4 on the new AA1, the conversion worked, nothing to complain about.

It was a very different story on a Dell laptop of mine. The conversion to ext4 succeeded there too, the machine rebooted fine after the conversion, but then I read a post about the need to append  "rootfstype=ext4" to the kernel line in /boot/grub/menu.lst. I decided to go for it. Big mistake.

Now, that was a really stupid idea. I can't say for sure that's what broke it but in any case, the machine would not reboot after that, it would only go to grub console.

I tried reinstalling grub several times:

• boot with a live CD (I used a Jaunty live USB pen that I had)
• go to the grub prompt by simply typing "grub"
• root (hd0, 5)
• setup (hd0)

That rewrites the MBR with a brand new grub (supposedly supporting ext4 since it's 9.04). That didn't help. It wouldn't go past the grub console on startup. No error message is shown. The console sees the partitions, it even sees the files on the partition I want to boot from but it would not boot from it. Trying to 'cat' a file from grub shows only garbage.

I also tried to repair the partition table just in case (using systemrescuecd and Test-Disk). Nothing would help.

Fortunately, when booting from a live CD, I was able to mount the partition where I had my home directory so I could back it all up. I finally resolved to reinstall the system entirely with a full disk repartitioning and reformatting and I restored the home directory from the backup. That all went fine. I had lost a crazy amount of time on that issue though. So my recommendation is to not add that "rootfstype=ext4" to menu.lst. At best it will change nothing, at worst it's going to kill your installation.

Boot time

I measured the boot time before and after the upgrade and reinstallation on that Dell laptop. The startup time is measured between grub and the gdm login page:

• Intrepid: 52s
• Jaunty after upgrade still using ext3 on the main partition: 46s
• Jaunty after upgrade after the ext4 conversion: 46s
• Jaunty after full reinstall from scratch (using ext3): 36s

So, that's not quite what the hype tells us it is, it's merely an 11% boot time improvement from Intrepid to Jaunty and ext4 does not make any difference.

ATI, fglrx and xorg 1.6

Jaunty comes with xorg 1.6 and ATI has not released a unix driver yet that supports it. As a result, 9.04 does use the open source driver called just "ati" on machines using ATI video cards. I was a little reluctant to upgrade on an old desktop with an ATI card because of that. I'm not a Quake player but I didn't want to lose the compiz effects.

But it the end, this open source driver works wonders, the 3D effects appeared just as smooth as on intrepid and the CPU usage actually appeared lower while playing videos. I don't think I will swittch back to the ATI fglrx proprietary driver!