Updated my Ubuntu Laptop from 7.10 to 8.04 LTS Hardy Heron. The Upgrade had two big problems and one minor one. The whole upgrade took about 2-3 hours if you don't count the reading and tinkering. Total Time 5 to 7 hours (I read slow)
Big Problem 1. Upgrading broke my SUDO command. You get an error "unable to resolve host YOUR-COMPUTER-NAME" every time you type SUDO in a terminal window. After hours of poking around I found that you have to go to SYSTEM-ADMINISTRATION-NETWORKS then the HOSTS tab, find your MachineName * in the table and delete anything after it on its line in the table, including the period. For some reason 8.04 does not like your domain or network name after your MachineName in the HOSTS table. This breaks SUDO.
* NOTE - This is your loopback or home address 127.0.0.1
Big Problem 2- No matter what you select during the upgrade install, your wireless network will break if you have a Broadcom Chip set. To fix it you have to unblack list the Broadcom Driver by typing in the terminal "SUDO GEDIT /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist" just add a "#" in front of the last line "blacklist bcm43xx" then save it (when done it should read " # blacklist bcm43xx"). Then goto SYSTEM-HARDWARE DRIVERS and enable "Broadcom B43 Drivers". Which will cause Ubuntu to nag you about these not being FREE drivers. Ubuntu will then download and install the Broadcom drivers (did I mention that you have to have a hardwire network connection working in order to do this). You then have to goto SYSTEM-NETWORK and select the WIRELESS CONNECTION and Properties and add your WEP/WAP key. You then shut down and unplug your wired network and boot up. If you are lucky your wireless will work. If not you will have to change to a STATIC IP. by going back to SYSTEM-NETWORK and select the WIRELESS CONNECTION and Properties and change the DHCP drop down to static IP and fill out the three lines; IP Address, Subnet Mask, and Gateway. This is just guesing but the most common choices for those three fields would be;
IP Address: 192.168.1.21
SubNet: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.1.1
Those are just guesses. Because your router could be setup differntly which would make these numbers all wrong for you. Don't ask me why I choose 21 as the IP address, it just seams like a nice safe address..
* NOTE: You have to solve problem #1 to fix #2 because you will need the SUDO command to fix problem #2.
Minor Problem - The update for some reason puts FireFox 3 BETA 5 on your machine. Why would you promote Ubuntuv 8.04 as a stable LTS release and install Beta software. I think you should have installed the stable release and let the end user upgrade when Firefox 3 Final ships.
Conclussions:
I have fixed everything I've mentioned as of today. I don't know why problem #1 happened. Problem # 2 should turn out to be a blessing. Ubuntu has started offering NON-FREE-SOURCE drivers that just make your hardware work out of the box. I hope with the addition of the BROADCOM WIRELESS DRIVERS I will no longer have to spend two days fixing them after a new Ubuntu release. I'll admit, "Free would be better, but working is Nice!". One last thing before I go, there was a warning about CUPS (printers) during the install I told it to leave my old CUPS alone. This seams to have worked because I printed to a 7.10 machine's shared printer tody without any problems. So far the only sour note is that FireFox 3 Beta 5 has crashed twice while playing YouTube Videos. Thanks BETA Software.
