Placement of /home on external drive causes Natty Narwhal to not boot past Plymouth
 

I recently reinstalled Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" Daily 20101124 on my netbook and decided to place /home on an external 500GB SimpleTech hard drive because the netbook's internal SSD is only 8 GB.

Well, when I boot into the main SSD to try and test out the system, I have two problems:

First of all, GRUB is unstable and won't always find the kernel to boot. In particular, I have to hit <Enter> one, two, even three times just for GRUB to find the kernel and boot the system. However, that's not all:

When the system is booting, I wait endlessly for X to start. It doesn't. The Plymouth splash screen stays there and it looks like the system is endlessly booting with no progress.

Would you guys suggest chrooting into the drive and doing a "sudo apt-get dist-upgrade" by any chance? This being in order to make the system on the drive up-to-date? If so, I will see if it boots. I hope so.

You must realize that you are probably the most knowledgeable person who hangs out at LQ on Ubuntu development. Since this problem is related to changes in the version that you are using it is unlikely that anyone here has any experience using that version.

Thus, lonely is the journey of he who leads the way for others to follow.

I love your enthusiasm.

Did you copy your /etc/resolv.conf into your system before chrooting into it?
Anyways, why are you running an OS, that is even in pre-alpha stage, if you are not a developer?

So, you keep insisting on using alpha/beta releases then demand help. With almost every release.

Launchpad is for getting/giving pre-release code feedback.

It already was copied by Ubiquity (the installer).

In order to run the latest kernel, apps, etc.

As to this first one you might be best served to compile your own kernel with support for your usb built-in
This was just bad luck on your part. This only happened around the date that you got the daily from and was quickly cleared up.
You might be better off using a different daily. With the exception of the grub problem, natty has been as stable as one could expect since the repo opened up.Although this isn't always necessary, it never hurts to at least

Yes, but how do I use a different daily when the only way I can download is to boot into the daily I already have? Unless I somehow use the external hard drive to install it. Will see how that works.

The problem is that the SSD on my netbook is only ~7.5GB. There's no room to compile anything, which is why I want to place /home on an external drive so I can compile GNOME Shell.

I kind of agree. Maybe I should burn the newly downloaded .ISO to a DVD or something.

I agree. See above.

I tried this. No difference in the command.

Just a side note: If you want always the latest kernel and apps, wouldn't it be better to run a rolling release distro, instead a development version of a distro with a fixed release cycle? I think this way you wouldn't have to reinstall all six months (I heard that the upgrade in Ubuntu not always works), and can nevertheless have the latest software.

Thread marked Solved on account of (1) burning a newer daily image to CD, (2) booting into the CD and re-creating the USB key, (3) booting into the USB key, and (4) reinstalling.

However, I still needed a little more tweaking to get my wireless to work.

You see, the newer image contains the new Compiz-based Unity. The problem is that when the Compiz-based Unity loads it crashes Network Manager. I literally have to (1) press Alt+F2 and type metacity --replace, (2) right-click the upper panel to add Indicator Applet and Indicator Applet Session, and (3) press Alt+F2 and type nm-applet just to be able to connect to a wireless network for the first time. Thankfully, once the network is configured it will keep connecting.

Kenny,
Although I believe that the LQ forums are where the most knowledgeable linux users on the planet hang out, I am sure you know that the Ubuntu forums have a special sub-forum for discussing problems with development builds of Ubuntu. Here is the soon to be Natty development forum:
http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=394
That is probably the best place to discuss problems with early development builds of Ubuntu.
Please continue to post your findings about development builds of Ubuntu here though. I am always interested in following this stuff.
Also, http://www.phoronix.com/ follows the development of Ubuntu very closely. They also have frequent benchmarking results of Ubuntu pre-release builds.

I would have gone to Ubuntu Forums if the Mods weren't so evil. It seems as though anything I post there the Mods get mad at and give me an infraction for -- even things many LQ Mods ignore.

On a side note: Tommcd, why did you post in a solved thread knowing that it was solved to post an off-topic post? Reporting...

You report someone, because he recommended you to post regarding your development version of Ubuntu in a forum that is especially for development versions of Ubuntu? So you report someone, because he is trying to point you to a forum where you might get better help in the future?
Oh man, so you have to report me to, I would consider this mind-sick.

Okay sorry. It's just that I'm still so mad at the UF Mods that I would (1) have to create a completely new account and (2) dread going back there.

Reporting ???
I thought it would help you get more knowledgeable answers for questions about Ubuntu development builds.

Didn't I already post my answer to that issue? Look here to see it.