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

[John Strazzarino]

Ken,

Thanks for very complete information about your upgrade.  I hope to be at the next meeting on May 5th with my intel NUC to see how we can make it run Linux.

John


Sent from my iPad

> On May 1, 2019, at 4:25 PM, Ken Shaffer <kenshaffer80 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 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
> 
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