Upgrading from Ubuntu Server 9.10 to 10.04 proved less than smooth. As a result I ended up doing a clean install of Ubuntu 10.04.
Prior to the upgrade attempt I made sure that both my ZFS zpools (‘DISk1’ and ‘DISK2’) were safely exported using the export command:
sudo zpool export DISK1
sudo zpool export DISK2
For the fresh install I decided to physically disconnect the devices which are in the pools because Ubuntu doesn’t come with ZFS support built-in and so I didn’t want the installer or the installed OS to do anything funky with my disks before I’d installed zfs-fuse.
My server doesn’t have a CD drive and, although I have some spare ones along with IDE to USB adaptors, I chose to create a live USB stick. I tried the server edition but during setup it wanted to load CD drivers- which can neither be found nor are really necesary. There is probably a work-around for this but it seemed like it would be quicker to install the desktop edition and just strip out the stuff that I don’t need.
So I downloaded Ubuntu from:
www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download
and then used unetbootin (I used the windows executable under Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit) to create a bootable USB stick using the Ubuntu .iso I just downloaded.
After that it’s simply a matter of safely-removing the USB stick and booting the server with it. The install went smoothly but takes a little while longer than expected because it pulls updated packages via the network/Internet connection during the file-installation phase.
The first thing to strike me about 10.04 is the speed of the boot: now my BIOS/ POST takes longer to execute than the Ubuntu boot to a graphical login screen! And the time from login to usable desktop is a matter of a few seconds.
Once the desktop is up I open up a terminal and check for updated packages:
sudo apt-get update
but I get an error message:
E: Could not get lock /etc/apt/sources.list
which was resolved simply by doing a full reboot.
I then installed zfs-fuse. Zfs-fuse is available in the default respositiories:
sudo apt-get install zfs-fuse
I then shutdown the machine and reconnected all devices belonging to the zpools, rebooted and executed the following from a terminal: (note that zpool names are case-sensitive)
sudo zpool import
sudo zpool import DISK1
sudo zpool DISK1
finally executing the status cmd to check that all pools were functioning:
sudo zpool status
All zpools were imported correctly and read as ONLINE, however, the current zpool version was indicated as 13 and could be upgraded to 16. Therefore, I upgraded the zpools:
sudo zpool upgrade DISK1
sudo zpool upgrade DISK2
Next post I’ll install the services that I need.