Ubuntu 10.04 : GRUB 2 Issue

I should start by saying that the latest Ubuntu is GREAT. The startup time puts Windows to shame (what exactly is Windows doing for all that time?) and wireless connectivity works flawlessly.

However, I got an unpleasant surprise when I installed it on my Acer laptop. The some reason, GRUB 2 mis-detected my Windows partitions and thought that the hidden recovery partition was the main Windows installation. When I attempted to boot into this partition, I got an unfamiliar Acer screen and, worse still, the Ubuntu partition was completely destroyed! (By completely destroyed I mean that GParted showed the partition as being unallocated.)

After re-installing Ubuntu and reading the GRUB 2 documentation, I came up with the following solution:

1. Disable the os-prober - this is the script that detects the windows partitions and adds them to grub.cfg. You can do this by simply adding the following option to /etc/default/grub:

GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER="true"

2. Put a modified version of the windows menu entries in /etc/grub.d/40_custom - see here for more details.

3. Run update-grub - this recreates the grub.cfg file. In fact, grub.cfg is updated every time there's an update and that's why you should never edit it by hand.

Dual boot restored!

SQL Developer

At last, I am in my new house, I have working broadband, and (thanks to my recently purchased network cable) I can use Ubuntu again.

I was having an issue with SQL Developer a while back where the application launches but just displays an empty frame. Having tried various different versions of Java, SQL Developer and combinations of the two, I was still none the wiser ... but tonight I finally cracked it! Turns out all I needed to do was turn Visual Effects (System - Preferences - Appearance) off.

Ubuntu + Juniper

I've now successfully set up my development environment on Ubuntu so I can work from home without needing my work laptop. I had a few issues with installing Juniper, but these have now been resolved ...

First issue: Firefox wouldn't install the Java Plugin. Solution: apt-get the plugin and then put a symlink in the Firefox plugins folder ...

> sudo apt-get install sun-java5-plugin sun-java5-fonts

> sudo ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/jre

/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so /usr/lib/firefox/plugins

Second issue: the juniper install needs to run as root and will prompt you for the root password. Solution: set a root password ...

> sudo -i
> passwd

To lock the root account again after you've finished ...

> sudo passwd -l root

And should you need to unlock (ie. set the password back to what it was before) ...

> sudo passwd -u root

Third issue: the juniper scripts don't work properly so it attempts to install them every time (note that this doesn't seem to prevent you from logging in!) Solution: You need to overwrite the default scripts with some provided in this rather excellent post on Ubuntu Forums.

Fourth issue: the lastest Subversive plugin for Eclipse doesn't seem to work on Ubuntu. Solution: use the old one:

> http://www.polarion.org/projects/subversive/download/1.1/update-site/

Fifth issue: Eclipse crashing randomly when it attempts to synchronise with SVN. Solution: this was either because I was running Eclipse under Java6 or because I had Java5 and Java6 both installed - it went away when I rolled back to Java5 only.

That should do it!

Goodbye Vista!

So, I finally made the switch to Ubuntu. I'm afraid Windows Vista was the final nail in the coffin for me. I had to buy a new laptop with 2GB of RAM just so I could run it at an acceptable speed, it didn't even come with MS Office (so I was using Open Office anyway) and it just seemed horribly complicated.

Ubuntu, by contrast, seems to be fairly easy to use and it 'just works', which is nice!