Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) Alpha 6

(2009.09.17)

Introduction
The Ubuntu developers are moving quickly to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source Community has to offer. The Karmic Koala Alpha 6 is the sixth alpha release of Ubuntu 9.10, bringing with it the earliest new features for the next version of Ubuntu.

This is an alpha release. Do not install it on production machines. The final stable version will be released on October 29th, 2009.

Upgrading from Ubuntu 9.04
To upgrade from Ubuntu 9.04 on a desktop system, press Alt+F2 and type in "update-manager -d" (without the quotes) into the command box. Update Manager should open up and tell you: New distribution release '9.10' is available. Click Upgrade and follow the on-screen instructions.

To upgrade from Ubuntu 9.04 on a server system: install the update-manager-core package if it is not already installed; edit /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades and set Prompt=normal; launch the upgrade tool with the command sudo do-release-upgrade; and follow the on-screen instructions.

New features in Karmic
Feature development for Karmic is happening with full speed. Please see the Karmic blueprint list for details.

Please test and report any bugs you find:
http://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs

Updated Packages
As with every new release, packages--applications and software of all kinds--are being updated at a rapid pace. Many of these packages come from an automatic sync from Debian's Unstable branch. For a list of all packages being accepted for 9.10 Karmic Koala, please subscribe to karmic-changes:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/karmic-changes

Upstart
As part of our boot performance work, we have now transitioned to Upstart. If you are testing on your primary machine, we strongly suggest having an Ubuntu Karmic Alpha 5 LiveCD available, or creating an Alpha 5 USB startup disk before doing an upgrade. This will allow us to help you recover in the case that something goes wrong during the boot of your system after upgrade. We request that all bugs affecting the performance or functionality of boot be tagged with ubuntu-boot in Launchpad.

Software Store
Ubuntu Karmic Alpha 6 includes the Ubuntu Software Store. It is temporarily located under System, with a plan to replace Add\Remove in the Beta release. We kindly request users to try it out, and report any bugs they find.

GNOME
Ubuntu Karmic Alpha 6 includes the latest GNOME 2.27.91 development release.

Empathy has replaced Pidgin as the default instant messaging client, introducing the Telepathy framework.

The gdm 2.27.91 login manager is a complete rewrite compared to the version in earlier Ubuntu releases.

Kubuntu
Kubuntu includes its first Netbook release, Social from the Start and the latest KDE packages. See the Kubuntu technical overview

Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud Images
Alpha 6 includes alpha images which are common to Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) and Amazon's EC2. You can try out the latest Karmic server alpha instantly on EC2 using a preconfigured AMI, or download an image and put it into your own Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud. For information on using UEC images on Amazon EC2, see the EC2 Starter's Guide.

Ubuntu One file sharing
Ubuntu Karmic Alpha 6 ships the Ubuntu One file sharing service by default, providing tightly integrated file synchronization of your computer with other computers and the Ubuntu One network storage service.

Linux kernel 2.6.31
Alpha 6 includes the 2.6.31-9.29 kernel based on 2.6.31-rc8. The kernel ships with Kernel Mode Setting enabled for Intel graphics (see below). linux-restricted-modules is deprecated in favour of DKMS packages.

hal deprecation
Karmic Alpha 6's underlying technology for power management, laptop hotkeys, and handling of storage devices and cameras maps has moved from "hal" (which is in the process of being deprecated) to "DeviceKit-power", "DeviceKit-disks" and "udev". When testing Alpha 6, please pay particular attention to regressions in those areas and report bugs.

New Intel video driver architecture available for testing
The Intel video driver has switched from the "EXA" acceleration method to the new "UXA". This solves major performance problems of Ubuntu 9.04, but could use further testing to flag any regressions it may bring.

Feedback about the new "kernel mode setting" feature is also heavily appreciated. This will reduce video mode switching flicker at booting, and dramatically speed up suspend/resume. Please see the instructions and feedback page for details.

New default compiler
Karmic uses GCC-4.4 as the default compiler, which in some parts is more strict than GCC-4.3, see list of changes. Please make sure to test packages on karmic or in a karmic chroot before upload.

ext4 by default
The new "ext4" filesystem is used by default for new installations of Karmic; of course, other filesystems are still available via the manual partitioner. Existing filesystems will not be upgraded.

If you have full backups and are confident, you can upgrade an existing ext3 filesystem to ext4 by following directions in the Ext4 Howto (note that the comments on that page at the time of writing about Ubuntu's use of vol_id vs. blkid are out of date and are not applicable to Karmic). Maximum performance will typically only be achieved on new filesystems, not on filesystems that have been upgraded from ext3.

GRUB 2 by default
GRUB 2 is the default boot loader for new installations of Karmic, replacing the previous GRUB "Legacy" boot loader. Existing systems will not be upgraded to GRUB 2 at this time, as automatically reinstalling the boot loader is an inherently risky operation.

If you wish to upgrade your system to GRUB 2, then see the GRUB 2 testing page for instructions. See also the upstream draft manual.

Some features are still missing relative to GRUB Legacy. Notable among these are lock/password support, an equivalent of grub-reboot, and Xen handling.

iSCSI installation
The iSCSI installation process has been improved, and no longer requires iscsi=true as a boot parameter; the installer will offer you the option of logging into iSCSI targets if there are no local disks, or you can select "Configure iSCSI" in the manual partitioner.

Putting the root filesystem on iSCSI is now supported.

AppArmor
A lot of work went into AppArmor for Karmic. The parser has been improved to use cache files, greatly speeding up AppArmor initialisation on boot. AppArmor also now supports 'pux' which, when specified, means a process can transition to an existing profile if one exists or simply run unconfined if one does not. Improved support for globbing has also been added, most notably when using wildcard matching for the binary of a profile. Significantly, the AppArmor patch for Ubuntu has been heavily reworked and now fully uses the upstream LSM hooks. This makes AppArmor in Ubuntu very self-contained and a good candidate for future inclusion in the upstream kernel.

New profiles
In addition to the above changes to AppArmor itself, several profiles were added. Enforcing profiles for ntpd, the GNOME document viewer (evince), and libvirt are enabled by default. Complain mode profiles for Dovecot are now available in the apparmor-profiles package. A new profile is provided for Firefox as well, though it is disabled by default. Users can enable this by using:

$ sudo aa-enforce /etc/apparmor.d/usr.bin.firefox-3.5

Please see the SecurityTeam/KnowledgeBase for a full listing of readily available profiles in Ubuntu.

Libvirt
Libvirt now contains AppArmor integration when using KVM or QEMU. Libvirtd is configured to launch virtual machines that are confined by uniquely restrictive AppArmor profiles. This feature significantly improves virtualisation in Ubuntu by providing user-space host protection as well as guest isolation.

Uncomplicated Firewall
The Uncomplicated Firewall now has support for filtering by interface and egress filtering when using the ufw command. Documentation for ufw is also improved to help users better utilise the ufw framework and take full advantage of Linux netfilter's power and flexibility. See UbuntuFirewall#Features for a full list of features.

Download Alpha 6
Get it while it's hot. ISOs and torrents are available at:
(Ubuntu Desktop, Server, and Netbook Remix)
(Ubuntu Server for UEC and EC2)
(Ubuntu Desktop for ARM)
(Kubuntu Desktop and Netbook)
(Xubuntu)
(UbuntuStudio)
(Mythbuntu)
(Edubuntu)

Known issues
As is to be expected at this stage of the release process, there are several known bugs that users are likely to run into with Karmic Alpha 6. We have documented them here for your convenience along with any known workarounds, so that you don't need to spend time reporting these bugs again:

# When installing Ubuntu from Alpha 6 in a dual-boot configuration with another operating system, such as Windows Vista, the grub2 configuration will not present an option to boot to the other OS. Investigation of this issue is ongoing. (430141)

# Installing a UEC cluster controller under Ubuntu Server will hang on reboot due to a bug in the eucalyptus init scripts. As a workaround, you can log in to the server remotely via ssh and change the CLOUD_PORT value in /etc/init.d/eucalyptus-cc to 8774. This bug will be resolved for the Ubuntu 9.10 Beta. (430758)

# Installation of a eucalyptus node will not properly configure the bridge network setup in Alpha 6. To correct this after install, log in to the node and run the command sudo sed -i "s/^iface $interface inet dhcp$/iface $interface inet manual/" /etc/network/interfaces && sudo service networking restart, where $interface is the primary interface of the machine. Cluster nodes installed using Ubuntu 9.10 Beta will have the correct configuration set automatically. (430820)

# The OEM installer end-user setup will fail to start in Alpha 6. Investigation of this issue is ongoing. (431941)

# Choosing the "Install Kubuntu" option from Kubuntu and Kubuntu Netbook LiveCDs will start a live session instead. As a workaround, you can launch the installer from the live session desktop. Investigation of this issue is ongoing. (431169)

# Installing using Wubi will run to completion, but after reboot the newly-installed system will fail to boot with the error message "Could not find a bootloader configuration". Investigation of this issue is ongoing. (431285)

# In some configurations, users will be unable to use the auto-resize option due to a timestamp problem during ext3/4 filesystem check. Investigation of this issue is ongoing. (431786)

# Some users with Intel video chipsets will experience a black screen on reboot after install because the fbcon module is not being loaded. As a workaround, users can boot with the i915.modeset=0 option. Investigation of this issue is ongoing. (431812)

# Encrypted partitions other than the root filesystem will not be mounted in Alpha 6 due to a bug in the cryptsetup package. This bug has been resolved immediately post-Alpha 6; as a workaround for this issue users are recommended to upgrade to cryptsetup version 2:1.0.6+20090405.svn49-1ubuntu4 before rebooting. (430496)