Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex Server 8.10

This afternoon, I upgraded, well, more accurately, rebuilt my server using Ubuntu’s latest release, Intrepid Ibex, aka 8.10.  After several hours of transferring data back and restoring configurations, I’m quite pleased with the results.

The installer is largely unchanged from Hardy Heron, 8.04.  One new & welcome change is the newly integrated support for installation to dmraid devices.  These devices are largely SATA RAID controllers, such as the Intel Matrix controllers, largely software-driven.  I preferred this to the Linux RAID code, since replacing a drive/rebuilding a mirror seems more straight-forward this way.  As my server includes an Intel Matrix controller onboard, I went for this option.  It worked very well.  The device names are a bit long (/dev/mapper/isw_diaedigfhd_Volume03), but that’s fine.  I did a pretty basic layout, with 250MB of ext3 for /boot, a 4GB swap partition and the rest as JFS for /.

Also new in Intrepid is DKMS.  What’s that, you say?  Your lucky day, I say.  At least, if you use software that requires special kernel modules.  Back in the good old days, when you did something like that, every time you upgraded your kernel, you had to rebuild your custom kernel modules as well, a largely manual process.  DKMS takes the manual part out of the picture here.  You install a DKMS package, and when you update a kernel, the drivers from you DKMS packages are automagically built and installed.  I’m excited about the possibility of vmware module and DAHDI (the new name for zaptel) DKMS packages!

I’ve already installed VMware Server 2.0, which went well, aside from a bit of trouble compiling the vsock module.  I suspect this will get worked out before too long as well..

Intrepid Ibex, it’s worth the trip.  If you’re  looking to update an existing server, change your sources.list and dist-upgrade away.

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