On my latest attempt to install Ubuntu 10.04, by online upgrading from 9.10, all the details are in https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/598693

Suffice it to say that attempting to install Ubuntu 10.04 by yet another method doesn't work. And some more hours of my time wasted. And it won't boot into anything now.

Supposing it were a hardware error - which seems unlikely since I have only really had problems with Ubuntu (Fedora 13 and RedHat 9 seem fine), but at this point I'm willing to consider any possibility, how would I check for this, and diagnose it (ie work out what bit(s) to replace) ?

knoppix has the reputation of booting on almost any (working) hardware.
Search on knoppix cheatcodes (kernel parameters you can pass at boot time) for maximally verbose output and maybe it'll tell you what is broken.

This isn't going to work if you "can't boot anything".

If I had a broken, old, low-end system, and didn't have spare parts to swap around, I'd just throw it away, and get something better rather than waste time on it.

Well, I could install and can use Ubuntu9.10 and Fedora13, apparently quite satisfactorily, and it also has Windows which is used regularly. So I'm a long way from "can't boot anything".

But at this point I'm willing to consider the _possibility_ that there may be a hardware problem, in which case I've been unfairly bad-mouthing Ubuntu10.04. But that's a very long way away from having a broken, old, low-end system that deserves to be thrown away.

Anyway, do h/w problems tend to manifest themselves like all of the above? I thought they would more likely lead to random crashes.

Further attempts reveal what seem pretty clearly to be software bugs

(1) They give instructions to put the installation software on a hard disk partition,
and then to boot that and install from it. This goes fine until the installation program
(running from a hard disk partition) demands that partitions on the hard disk be unmounted,
which of course can't be done since the device is busy because the installation program is running on it. (the partition I used was /dev/sdb4)

(2) Then when I try to use the instructions to put the installation s/w on a USB stick and boot from that, it mounts /dev/sdb4. I can't tell for sure whether it booted the USB stick or booted from /dev/sdb4. The same when I tried to boot from the installation CD, it went off and mounted /dev/sdb4.
When I deleted /dev/sdb4 it would boot from either the USB stick or from the CD.

(3) Then installation from the USB stick seemed to run OK, but when I restarted at the end, expecting a working system at last, I got a window saying "running in low-graphics mode", with lots of error messages, a button saying OK which I suppose I was meant to click, but the mouse wouldn't move or click.

I am sooooo sick of spending all this time on Ubuntu.

Since my last post - which seems to describe two distinct bugs - which can hardly be attributed to a hardware error,
I put in two bug reports into the Ubuntu bug-reporting system.

For one, no followup whatsoever.

For the other, someone moved it from "bugs" to "questions" (no indication of why it might not be a bug), then silence.

Is this typical experience when reporting Ubuntu problems ?

Use following steps to sort out the login-problems:

step1: Logged in as root user in full test mode by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del
Give log in name :root
Give root user password:

Now you get # prompt which is root user prompt
To create new user names (say ram,sunita with their corresponding passwords.Try the following steps:
Step2:# useradd ram
# passwd :
Similarly for the creation of username
# useradd sunita
# passwd :
:
Now you've created the usernames ram or sunita from # prompt;so you can login as ram to get $ prompt in step3 i.e.
Step 3: #login - ram
$
Step 4: press Ctrl+Alt+F2
to login as ram in GUI mode
Thanks & regards,
-Sanjay Khandelwal.

Thanks for your reply - but the original problem has disappeared since I attempted to reinstall Ubuntu - even when this didn't work, it overwrote the previous installation. So I can't test your suggested solution.

As for problem number (3) from a few posts back, I think this arose from the fact that installing Ubuntu doesn't remove the results of a previous failed installation attempt - it leaves some old files there which interfere with the correct working of Ubuntu. I could try to reconstruct the exact details of this if I had the slightest reason to hope that anyone from Ubuntu might be at all interested in fixing this bug.

This might happen if you have /home on its own partition. So when you get to the "Partition Disk" bit of the installation, make sure you have the /home partition marked for reformatting. If you don't want to do this (perhaps because you have files you'd like to rescue) then give the username you supply at installation time (the one that will automatically be granted administrative rights) a new and different username. Don't re-use the old name.

As you have been having trouble every step of the way, I'd try and keep things as simple as possible, and let / use the whole partition, and don't make a seperate partition for /home

From your post at #19:
That's very strange, do you have a link?
If you are booting from the CD you hust click the Install icon on the desktop. Or, when the CD boots you get a choice of "Try ubuntu" or "Install ubuntu". Perhaps the second option would work better for you.
Strange, as most graphics cards "just work", even if not at their maximum capabilities. Probably just pressing the Return key would have answered OK for you.

Re your first point - thanks - I can't remember all the details - as I say I'd be prepared to try to reconstruct the situation if I thought anyone at Ubuntu might be interested in fixing it. But I think (can't be sure now) that it didn't involve the /home partition, rather the /boot partition

(1) The link to info about installing from an existing partition is
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/In...tion/FromLinux

(2) Well, I used the Try Ubuntu option to find out what was mounted.
I used the Install Ubuntu option to try to install. But I suspect that it was using the installation s/w on /dev/sdb4, since it demanded that the partition on that disk be unmounted, and I couldn't unmount it because it was "busy"

(3) Thanks - if it ever happens again I'll try that.

Cheers

Jeremy

In case you give up with the new Ubuntu, I think Debian will be a good choice. In fact, Ubuntu is the "unstable" branch of Debian. Try the latest Debian Lenny 5.05, which is a more tried-and-true approach.

And if you don't mind me asking, why change from Fedora then?