Virtual PC is infamous for it’s inability to support Linux installations. There are always hacks required to get through the installation, but once installed your Linux machine should work fine.

So I wasn’t completely surprised when I ran into issues while trying to install the latest server version of Ubuntu 8.04. A quick Google search lead me to find out (via a comment left in a blog post) that to get the installation working you need to do the following:

  • Boot off the CD (ISO) and then choose your language
  • Press F6 on the next screen and you’ll see a long string of text near the bottom of the screen.
  • Type the following before the trailing dashes: noapic nolapic vga=791
  • Press enter and continue the installation.

ubuntu-server

So far so good.

And remember, that Ubuntu 8.04 is a LTS (long term support) version, which means that Ubuntu will provide support and updates for 5 years for the server version.

Update: looks like I’ve got more trouble shooting to do, as the virtual machine doesn’t boot after the installation appeared to complete successfully. Getting a heap stack error with lots of hex characters.

UPDATE 2!!! I’ve found the solution to this problem from this link: https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/32307

There are two steps to getting it to work, the first is what I mentioned above about adding the extra boot options by pressing F6 before starting the install. But all you need to add is: “vga=771 noreplace-paravirt”

The second part is the tricky bit – and you have to do this before the end of installation. So on the last stage of installation, where it says “Press continue to complete installation”, you have to press the “Go back” button instead and you’re provided a menu – choose the option to launch a Shell.

Type the following commands:

  • chroot /target /bin/bash
  • aptitude install linux-generic
  • aptitude remove linux-server linux-image-server linux-image-2.6.24-16-server linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.24-16-server
  • exit

Now we have to edit the Grub menu to add the same options to the boot command that we did before:

  • nano /target/boot/grub/menu.lst

Look for the line that says: “title Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.24-18-generic” and then add the same boot options to the end of it so it looks like this:

  • kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-18-generic root=UUID-XXXXXXXXXXX ro quiet splash vga=771 noreplace-paravirt

Press Ctrl+X to Exit the editor and choose Yes to save. Then type the following commands:

  • chroot /target /bin/bash
  • update-grub
  • exit

And then return to the installation menu by typing “exit” again, the select “Finish the installation” and “Continue”. After the system reboots, you need to press Esc while the Grub menu is launching and select the generic boot option that we just edited.

Hope you enjoy your new Ubuntu Server!