Linux installation snags

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS came out fairly recently so I've been installing it
on boxes for family members that don't like frequent upgrades.

I've bump into a number of tricky problems.  Each ate a bunch of my
time.  It's almost as if things are getting worse.

1. on a notebook that was happily running Uubntu 8.04 LTS: the 64-bit
   nouveau driver just did not work.  But the 32-bit one does.  (Also
   happens with Fedora 13 live CDs.).

   nv driver does work if you spoon-feed it a resolution (i.e. use an
   xorg.conf file).  nv is what 8.04 used.

   There are hints that kernel mode-setting for one driver (eg.
   nouveau) may not work with another driver (eg. nv) yet I am not
   sure that driver choice (in xorg.conf) affects modesetting kernel
   module choice.


2. on a desktop, the radeon driver will not run the monitor on the DVI
   port but will run it on the VGA port.  Both are supposed to be
   using the same signal ("mirrored") and clock rates.  xrandr thinks
   both ports are working.

   The same driver worked in 8.04.

   The video card is a Radeon 7000/VE.  Old, but fine for the task
   (driving a nice Dell 2405FPW).


3. on the same desktop, ubiquity (the installer) would show no disk
   drive as a target for installation.  It turned out that dmraid(8)
   detected the fingerprints of a Promise RAID system on the drive
   contents and Ubiquity would not touch it.

   1) Why no diagnostic to tell me why it was ignoring the disk?  As
      it was, I had to instrument some of the Ubiquity shell scripts
      to figure out what was going on.

   2) the drive was never used in a RAID and the hardware does not
      include a Promise card.

   2a) How could that happen?  Was this a false positive?

   2b) Surely Ubiquity should report a broken RAID array rather than
       just ignoring it.

I hope that this isn't a long-term trend.
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