At Work with Linux: Linux Mint 12 Installation Failure

-

This post will be short and sweet. I attempted to install Linux Mint 12, 64-bit, as a virtual machine using VMware's Player, version 4.0.1, on one of the workstations in the lab. The workstation was running Windows 2K8R2 as the host OS.

A very nice feature of Player is the ability to boot directly from the ISO rather than burning the ISO to physical media and then booting the virtual machine from that. I hate having physical media littering the lab, and the ISOs can all be stored on the SAN and accessed if needed at any time without having to hunt down a physical disc.

I had no problems booting Linux Mint 12 in this fashion. It booted and allowed me to begin the installation of Linux Mint on a VM. The problem is that about a third of the way through the installation problem the installer hung. Not once, but twice. Both times I started with a freshly created VM. After the second hang I basically gave up and moved on.

I suspect that the hang was due to a network access problem. I know the network was reachable, as I was able to configure the virtual ethernet controller with a manual IP address and the DNS server addresses. I could basically ping any address in the lab. The problem was trying to figure out how to configure the proxy server we use. Normally I don't worry so much about this as I can add those bits after the initial installation, and they pick up the updates that might be sitting out there. If it wasn't a proxy issue, then I don't know what the problem might have been. In any event I've moved on (see the next posting).

Too bad. I was really looking forward to giving this release a whirl.

Update 2 December

It's been fixed. Read http://blogbeebe.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-work-with-linux-third-times-charm.html

Comments

  1. Willem BrownDecember 01, 2011

    I had a problem installing behind a proxy. The following worked for me:

    1. Define the proxy (Menu -> System Settings -> Network -> Network proxy). I selected the "Manual" method and specified the proxy settings.

    2. Open a Terminal and check that the proxy variables are set (env command)

    3. Execute the "ubiquity" command in the terminal window. After it launched I was able to complete the installation.

    HTH.

    Regards
    Willem

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

All comments are checked. Comment SPAM will be blocked and deleted.

Popular posts from this blog

A Decade Long Religious Con Job

-
Image
I rarely write inflammatory (what some might call trolling) titles to a post, but this building you see before you deserves it. I've been seeing this building next to I-4 just east of Altamonte/436 and Crane's Roost for nearly 12 years, and never knew who owned it. Today on a trip up to Lake Mary with my wife I saw it yet again. That's when I told her I wanted to stop by on the way back and poke around the property, and photograph any parts of it if I could. What I discovered was this still unfinished eighteen story (I counted) white elephant, overgrown with weeds and yet still under slow-motion construction. It looks impressive with its exterior glass curtain walls, but that impression is quickly lost when you see the unfinished lower stories and look inside to the unfinished interior spaces. A quick check via Google leads to an article written in 2010 by the Orlando Sentinel about the Majesty Tower. Based on what I read in the article it's owned by SuperChannel ...
Read more

Ten Reasons to Ignore Ten Reasons to Dump Windows and Use Linux

-
There is a tradition amongst the hard-core Linux aficionados to extol Linux's various virtues as a list of 10 or more reasons to substitute (as in "dump") an existing Windows installation with Linux. There's no reason to point them all out; a simple Google search (" 10 reasons to use Linux ") will provide you with such lists stretching back through the years, as well as hours of entertainment. One very recent list caught my eye over the weekend, published by PCWorld. Their article, " Ten Reasons to Dump Windows and Use Linux ", seems to have hit a nerve with me. Normally I just ignore such journalistic pap, since the majority of it comes courtesy of one ill-informed blog or another (such as this one). But in this instance a "real" publication put some time and journalistic "credibility" into this list, which places it in front of a wider audience than the typical blog poist (again, such as this one). So let's consider al...
Read more

Former Eclipse user re-evaluates Eclipse 3.3M5

-
Image
I've been using NetBeans for a while now, starting with version 4.2 in beta. One of NetBeans' key selling points (in my not-so-humble-opinion) is Java GUI building with Matisse . That feature continues to be quite powerful and unrivaled, especially for a free-as-in-beer IDE. I even wrote a lovely paean to the wonders of NetBeans and why I moved away away from Eclipse to NetBeans . Now, it looks like I may have to eat some of those tastefully written words. What you're looking at above is a complete Ruby on Rails project hosted and running within Eclipse 3.3 Milestone 5 on Windows XP. Milestone 5 was released this past Friday, February 9th. I installed it Saturday, and then went on a plugin hunt to fill out additional features and capabilities. Why did I decide to re-install Eclipse, especially a milestone? So that I could get a complete integrated development and test capability in one convenient package for Ruby on Rails. Like a lot of other folks I've been playing ...
Read more