[sf-lug] Running Upgrade to 16.04 on the Intel Compute Stick STCK1A8LFC

[Ken Shaffer]

With the supplied Ubuntu 14.04 at End of Life on my STCK1A8LFC Intel Compute
Stick (ICS), I thought I'd try an upgrade to 16.04.  I've been running
Xubuntu 18.04
on the stick from a USB thumbdrive, with a 4.19 kernel added for bluetooth.
Adding 4.19 was a simple matter of installing four 4.19 packages (two headers,
kernel, and modules). I plan on running 4.19 or later on the upgrade to
eliminate the need for the special packages supplied with the ICS for
its hardware.

The ICS supplied packages for HDMI audio, wireless and bluetooth for the 4.4
kernel, but recent (upstream) API changes (yeah on a Long Term Support kernel!)
starting with Canonical's 4.4.0-143 kernel made me want to get off the 4.4
series (which is the default in 16.04 too).  (Note, while this change was not
Canonical's, they had already messed up the 4.4 headers which required
an edit to let
the HDMI audio compile. (how can you mess up headers you ask? Well, you grab a
release candidate, and then don't notice that the final version was different.
Bug filed, nothing was ever done.) Note, the 4.19 kernel packages did not
install successfully on the 14.04 system, some tools were too old.  Not worth
any time to fix, since I know 4.19 works fine on an 18.04 system.

The ICS' 1G memory and 1G compressed swap is sufficient, but the 5G
root on the $40
ICS was really too small for the update.  After cleanup of old log files, old
kernels, and getting rid of all the libreoffice packages, I made more room by
using a 16G micro SD card in the ICS, and linked /tmp, /usr/share, /usr/src, and
/var/cache/apt/archives to populated directories on the card. This gave me just
enough room for the update.  The kernel in use was the 4.4.0-146, the latest
offered in the HWE packages, and the same one used on the default 16.04 release.
Change the Update settings to notify for new LTS distributions, and the
Sofware Updater offered the upgrade.

Run df to find the free space on root -- 49% used was not enough free
space for the upgrade.
Getting rid of the last 4.4 kernel with working sound (4.4.0-142) did the trick.
With root at 42% used, the update decided it had enough room and
started downloading
packages. Note that there is another gigabyte+ of space on the ICS in the
recovery partition, which I did not attempt to use.

About 2.5 hrs later, the upgrade finished.  After reboot, the wireless
did not work.
Rather than messing with the 4.4 kernel, I tried the 4.19 kernel, and found that
while the generic header package did not install (a dependency upon libssl1.1,
and 16.04 uses libssl1.0), the kernel and modules installed fine, and worked
(HDMI audio, wireless, and bluetooth).  After some cleanup, like deleting the
libreoffice packages again, I had a 76% used root.  Note, that the micro SD card
still had the links to /usr/share, /usr/src, and /var/cache/apt/archives.  I
probably couldn't compile a driver without the generic kernel headers, but no
compiles are needed like under the 4.4 kernel. If there really is a need for the
headers, install the package, copy the headers, purge the package, then restore
the copied headers. Leaving the package installed causes the package manager to
complain and quit.
I'm also still running the unity interface.
All in all, a successful upgrade. Now to decide if I want to upgrade
again to 18.04.  There's no time pressure, with a couple more years of support
for Ubuntu 16.04.
Ken