Sunday, May 30, 2010

Ubuntu Lucid Lynx

My upgrade from Hardy Heron (8.04) to Lucid Lynx (10.04) went smoothly on desktop PC, but on laptop there were some small issues.

Here are 2 major issues then and how I solved them:

1/ Grub error: boot into text mode only, could not get GUI by startx or xstart command
==> SOLUTION STEPS: fix the old grub (not grub2) menu.lst (or edit boot menu directly)
* Change root partition from by-uuid ("root=UUID=asdf...") to by-path ("root=/dev/sda7")
* Change kernel version from old Hardy (2.6.14-19-generic) to new Lucid (2.6.32-22-generic)


2/ Sound error: could not hear sound, conflict sound system of YouTube/StarDict/VLC/MPlayer
==> SOLUTION STEPS: a little painful
* Run gnome-volume-control to uncheck "Mute" options, try changing sound theme (Ubuntu/NoSound/...)
* Install gnome-alsamixer or pavu, adjust the options and volume
* Resolve the libflashplayer.so location for Flash and libnpjp2.so location for Java RE.
* For StarDict, use aplay as command for playing sound files (usually in /usr/share/WyabdcRealPeopleTTS/ )


Some minor issues may be possible:
- (Gnome) combination (Alt+F2) does not work ==> SOLUTION: enable the "Gnome compatibility" plugin in CompizConfig S Manager (ccsm)
- Postgresql 8.3 startup failed due to memory segmentation ==> SOLUTION: open file postgresql.conf in /etc/postgresql/8.3/main/ and reduce value of the variable shared_buffers (for example 32M -> 16M)
- Some custom launchers' icons are changed ==> SOLUTION: find alternatives in /usr/share/pixmaps/


Hope this helps,